UK: The GOP comedy show

The Economist

Newt's big week!

THIS is getting comical. The GOP's game of whack-a-frontrunner continues. Rick Sperry? Herman Crain? Who? Newt Gingrich, PhD, now reigns supreme (in some polls), lending some support to the proposition that hot air rises. Now he'll be able to say for the rest of his life that for a time in 2011 he led the race for the GOP nomination, and, oh boy, he will. I hope he enjoys the moment. It won't last. About the worst thing that could happen to Newt Gingrich's candidacy is a good, close look from the opposition, the press, and primary voters. But that's what he'll get this week. John McWhorter, a linguistics professor turned think-tanker, steps up to take a good, hard, unblindfolded whack at the Gingrich piñata (which takes the shape of the side of a barn). Unlike Mr Sperry, Mr Gingrich is a talker. The trouble is, as Mr McWhorter relates, is that falsehood and nonsense so often ride the wind of his cocksure bloviations:

Gingrich may be a master of academic exercises—his ability to make bookish references and formulate long sentences demonstrate as much—but that does not mean he knows what he is talking about.

Gingrich's patterns of speech are largely analytically acute, and sometimes aesthetically interesting, but substantively, they are very often lacking. Language is supposed to be a package that carries substance, but Gingrich is sometimes so pleased with his uninterrupted stream of words, that he mistakes it for an actual flow of ideas.

Mr McWhorter goes on to use Mr Gingrich as a perfect illustration of the sociolinguistic observation that rough speech is often rich in complex ideation while fancy, impressive-sounding smooth-talk may be as empty as Kim Kardashian's gaze. Nor is Mr McWhorter impressed with the way in which Mr Gingrich deploys his academic credentials for rhetorical gain:

Gingrich seems to have interpreted his academic training rather as a way primarily to burnish his own ego—to confuse supporters into following him, rather than to clarify matters of importance.

He is obviously well-practiced at this sort of scholarly and linguistic malpractice.

Obviously! If you pay attention. Which we will do. For a week. And we'll find out about more than Mr Gingrich's inane grandiloquence. For example, we'll find out that Mr Gingrich's enthusiasm for traditional marriage is so great he's done it three times.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/11/romneyphobia