Somehow, this reminds me of Chelsea’s comment when reprimanded for calling her Secret Service protectors her “personal trained pigs.”
“But mom and dad do it….”
Well, at least he did put some effort into learning how to salute. But it’s one more indication of the rarified academic radical atmosphere in which he has lived his entire life.
It’s a tad hyperbolic to suggest Obama has spent his entire life in a rarified academic radical atmosphere. He spent his entire adolescence in Honolulu where you can’t walk down the street without passing a soldier, sailor or corpsman. He has probably heard the word corpsman many times. Corps is a french word, like so many military words. Many struggle with French words. The most you can make out of this is that he doesn’t read french as well as english off a telepromter.
Chelsea Clinton called the Secret Servicemen assigned to guard her her “personally trained pigs”? And said that’s what her parents called them? Gosh, that conjures up a disturbing image of leather dominatrix attire, strap-ons and, of course, cigars.
“Yee-haw! That’s the way, Hillary! Make ’em squeeeeall!!”
Chelsea Clinton called the Secret Servicemen assigned to guard her her “personally trained pigs”? And said that’s what her parents called them?
According to one of them, yes.
It goes back to the sixties term of endearment that radicals had for police officers.
So misprounouncing a word is the same as calling a cop a pig? Really, Rand, that’s a reach.
Jardinero1’s point is also well made – Obama did in fact grow up in Honolulu, home of several large military bases. I suspect he’s had at least as much contact with the military than you have, maybe more.
“The most you can make out of this is that he doesn’t read french as well as english off a telepromter.”
Imagine the feeding frenzy if GWB had said it.
So misprounouncing a word is the same as calling a cop a pig?
No. Thanks for playing, though.
Obama did in fact grow up in Honolulu, home of several large military bases. I suspect he’s had at least as much contact with the military than you have, maybe more.
Nonsense.
Well, at least he didn’t put an extra ‘e’ on ‘Potato’.
Nonsense? Obama did not in fact grow up in Honolulu, home of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Hickam Field and Schofield Barracks? That’s quite a few military installations for one city.
It’s nonsense that this would intrinsically cause him to have as much contact with or knowledge of the military as I have.
A few points:
1 – “Corpseman”? It doesn’t even make sense as a word. Short of a character in a D&D adventure (a zombie, maybe?), what would a corpseman do?
2 – He didn’t write that speech (no surprise, and it’s not a negative comment, just an observation).
3 – Esprit de corps. Marine Corps. There’s probably more words, compound words, or nouns with “corps” in them, but has he never encountered any of them and not figured out the pronunciation?
4 – It’s French and thus harder to read off a TelePrompter than English? God forbid he order snails as ess-car-got. And for a guy who seemed to be hung up on pronouncing India’s neighbor as Pahk-ee-stahn, to miss corpsman is a bit of a blunder, no?
5 – And I knew how to pronounce it, and what it meant, when I was nine or ten.
I knew how to pronounce it, and what it meant, when I was nine or ten.
You weren’t fortunate enough to be raised and mentored by communists.
Just about every large port city in the United States has a military base near it. That doesn’t mean every citizen of those cities is at all familiar with any military personnel. I grew up near Homestead Air Force base but the only military people I “mingled” with were the retired vets that met at the VFW post my dad belonged to. In fact, my father had been in the army before I was born, but I never thought of myself as someone “familiar” with military personnel or what to call them. And in fact, when I was much younger I made the same pronunciation mistake Obama did — pronouncing “corps” as “corpse,” until I actually heard someone saying it. That’s how I also found out I’d been mispronouncing “banal” (to rhyme with “anal”) and “Goethe” (not the correct German way but as if it were an English word). The reason I did so was because I was a bookish child who stayed in my room reading and avoiding humanity. And my other excuse was I was a child. Obama is an adult. Even if, as I suspect, he was much like me (rather bookish and inexperienced) when he was growing up, he’s got no excuse now. So much for our super-articulate President Super Smart; for all of Bush’s quirks I’m sure he knew how to pronounce “corpsman.”
Oh — and one more thing: if Obama had been so “familiar” with military personnel as you claim he must have been, then he would have known how to pronounce the word “corpsman.” You undercut your own argument.
You weren’t fortunate enough to be raised and mentored by communists.
Deprived childhood. Dad was an AF chopper pilot, Mom a former AF nurse.
And heck, I forgot “Peace Corps”! Not to mention a drum corps, or the Army Corps of Engineers. It’s even on (at least some) bottles of skin cream and lotion – “for the body.”
I have a shady corpse in my backyard. It has a little pond and it’s a nice place to read a book.
It was a gaffe. That is the most you can make of it. Does anyone commenting here has any idea what word might actually have been keyed onto the teleprompter. For all we know it might have said “corpse mun.”
And I still don’t see how it has anything to do with the string of non sequiturs starting with Chelsea Clinton, leading to mom and dad, to saluting, to the rarified, radical, academic atmosphere.
Well, if Dan Quayle would have said it…
And I still don’t see how it has anything to do with the string of non sequiturs starting with Chelsea Clinton, leading to mom and dad, to saluting, to the rarified, radical, academic atmosphere.
That’s your problem, not ours.
“Well, if
Dan Quayleany Republican would have said it…”FIFY
Give it a few years, and this one will find its way onto somebody’s e-mailed list of “Bush-isms.”
Obama mispronounces lots of words. For example, he pronounces “socialism” as “pragmatism.”
Obama has had lots of contact with the military. In Hawaii he used to help out his Uncle Frank pass out leaflets outside army and navy bases telling US soldiers and sailors that they were the lackeys of the capitalist plutocrats, and that they should desert and join the struggle of working classes.
Nah, I just made that up. It isn’t true . But why wouldn’t it be?
“Well, at least he didn’t put an extra ‘e’ on ‘Potato’.”
An “extra” one? In addition to the one that’s not there?
Well, neither did Dan Quayle. The genius teacher who made up the cards for the spelling bee did it, and Quayle hesitated because it didn’t look right to him. But he figured the teacher must be right, and so was branded as a moron in a huge media campaign that ended any hope he might have had to be a presidential candidate.
The most interesting thing about this is that any time Quayle debated Gore, it was the latter who looked like a complete moron (he’s not, but Quayle ran circles around him).
I think it’s only fair to rub this … president’s nose in any misstep, and do so as relentlessly as possible. God knows he gives us a lot of opportunities. He should be putting Biden out there more, to make himself look smart by contrast…
It is possible that is a simple mispronunciation.
I’ve never quite understood why we expect our president to have perfect pronunciation of every word in every speech. I’d much rather have GWB’s policy on “nu-kle-er” energy than a BHO ban on “nu-clear” weapons.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that BHO will “unintentionally” make ostensibly small “errors” that seem to be there to send a message. Scratching his head with his middle finger for example during several debates.
Or perhaps it might be Freudian slip on his part.
“He should be putting Biden out there more, to make himself look smart by contrast…”
Oh Biden does a fantastic job of this on his own for the most part. Why just today when he was swearing in Scott Brown as a senator he then said afterwards, “After the microphones are off I wanna talk to you about your daughters……”
Titus, what you have is a copse. Don’t worry, it’s not contagious.
Well, as a committed socialist, the O man should have heard of the Peace Corpse and the Civilian Conservation Corpse and the hated Marine Corpse.
…and when you show up late to the blood bath, some guy named HANGTOWN BOB, will have stolen your 15 pixels of fame and whit!! To paraphrase Michael Keaton, “I thought of that first, but Bob said it already!”
.
.
But, this isn’t JUST a gaffe, gaffes occur once.
When a speaker [or teleprompter reader] uses a term more than once it shows a lack of familiarity with the topic, the correct pronunciation, or both. However, there IS a third possibility.
Was this an effort, in a long line of such efforts, to remind people that regardless of this CORPSE-MAN’S primary function of helping wounded soldiers, and often wounded or sick civilians, that said CORPSE-MAN’S employer has the primary function of turning live people into CORPSES? Let’s face it, if there’s a function most liberal Democrats like better than calling military people blood thirsty, then I’ve missed it. Yeah, this could be a gaffe, but IMHO, it’s a calculated gaffe, aimed a Obama’s far-left ‘psychophants’.
And the only two words they heard were Navy, and CORPSE. Michael S’Moore was yelling “YEAH, yeah, CORPSE, CORPSE, the Navy makes CORPSES!! Good one Barry, Good ONE!”
I don’t know, the young Navy sailor Obama was speaking of is of Haitian descent, and he’s working in Haiti, the land of voudoun and the raising of zombies from the dead, of which there are no lack these days. Maybe corpse-man is what Obama really meant. After all, he apparently saw zombies in the audience at Las Cruces, New Mexico on Memorial Day, 2008:
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/05/27/will-media-report-obama-seeing-dead-people-memorial-day-audience
Oh, no, the copse have never come out there. It’s quite peaceful…