Zefrank, Al Gore And George Bush Walk Into A Bar…
Scott Rosenburg’s post, In defense of Al Gore’s history lesson, reminded me of an online project I came across the other day called, State of the Union.
The project is the brainchild of Brad Borevitz, who created it to analyze the State of the Union addresses given by US Presidents from 1790 to 2006. I grabbed two screenshots that I found interesting:
and
What did I find interesting?
- Lincoln was probably having an honest discussion about “insurgents” and “insurrection” in 1861
- Lincoln’s address spoke to a 16.2 grade level, Bush to a 9.6 grade level (although I assume the “applause” text must bias the results)
- The State of the Union has a consistent downward SMA regarding the grade level of the text, peaking with James Madison’s address on December 5, 1815 (25.7) and bottoming out with George W. Bush’s address on February 27th, 2001 (7.6)
- Bill Clinton scored just as low of a score as (9.1) as George W. Bush
Scott sees anti-intellectualism at work in today’s political and media circles.
Boris finds it at play within the patterns of speech our leaders use to communicate with the populace…
Even zefrank receives anti-intellectualism comments on his vlog nowadays.
So is our nation getting dumber? Or are the powerful simply lowering the bar of intelligent discussion to dishonestly promote a “no citizen left behind” policy while engaging in a twisted form of propaganda?
Duh, I dunno.
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Al Gore, America, anti intellectualism, Bill Clinton, Brad Borevitz, George Bush, politics, Propaganda Model, Scott Rosenburg, State of the Union, zefrank.
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Another interesting thing: Noting in the text of the speech when the audience applauded seems to have begun with GWB (hence the prominence of the word “applause” in his speeches). I wonder who decided to begin doing that, and why.
In general though, I think it’s disturbing that speeches - and our expectations of our leaders - are being dumbed down so much.
i’m guessing that the “applause” inclusion is just an oversight of closed-captioned results, though i’m not sure why brad didn’t normalize his analysis… and why it only appears in bush’s speeches.
as for the dumbness… the way i see it, our expectations are being dumbed down as a result of the power class wanting the average joe to believe that they speak for him, because they speak like him.
our expectations then seem to be a knee-jerk response to that strategy, often represented by right-leaning media and political figures.
but who am i to say, i only have a grade 16 understanding of language; half of the state of the unions fly right over my head. ;-)