I mentioned earlier that Joe Biden told the Boston marathon bombing survivors that "it was worth it!" Not once, but twice, and then he said he really meant it. His supporters tried to defend him by arguing that he meant that "it was worth it" to take time out of his busy schedule to attend the memorial and hear the survivors speak. I think that's ridiculous...
Regarding the Trent Lott and Joe Biden gaffes:
Often people speaking publicly will say things clumsily -- and often these things get pounced upon by their political opponents, who cast the statement in the worst possible light, regardless of what the person clearly intended to say.
One way to tell whether someone is being fairly criticized for what they said or whether what they said is being deliberately misinterpreted in order to score political points is to look at the methods used by the critics. If the critics take one snippet of the speech, provide little to no context (or misleadingly spin the context) then it's probably political gamesmanship rather than legitimate criticism. If, on the other hand, the critics in addition to providing the sound-bite also provide an accurate quote of the longer passage from which the soundbite came, give a fair summary of the context in which the soundbite was made, and delight in providing links to primary sources so that others can check the matter out for themselves, then the criticism is likely legitimate.
Let's look at both the Trent Lott gaffe and the Joe Biden gaffe.
In the case of Trent Lott praising Strom Thurmond, here's the controversial passage, from a
Media Matters for America item concerning it:
“I want to say this about my state [Mississippi]. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Now this is a bit poorly worded, such as Lott's use of the word "we". Since Lott was only 7 years old at the time, it's pretty likely he didn't actually vote for Thurmond in that election. A sensible non-contortionist reading of the passage is he's saying his friends and family voted for Thurmond in that election, they felt good to be doing so then, and Lott still feels good today about their choice in that election.
The excerpt which is most often quoted is "
if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either". That's also poorly worded -- it's vague as to exactly what problems Lott is referring to.
One can engage in contortions (as sunmaster appears to me to be doing) to come up with policies Thurmond
might have had in mind.
But the simplest and most sensible interpretation is that Lott is referring to the platform Thurmond ran on. That was foolish on Lott's part; he may have thought he was speaking vaguely enough he couldn't be nailed for it, or he may simply not have been thinking. But he had just said, with no hint of regret, that his family voted for Thurmond in 1948, and that he still felt that was a good choice.
Thurmond's platform in 1948 -- pretty much the entire reason for him running -- was support of segregation. I don't see any sensible way to interpret Lott's comment, without indulging in a lot of contortion and invention, that doesn't take it to be a statement of support for Thurmond's segregationist views.
The Media Matters article has the earmarks of fair criticism. It present the full passage rather than just the snippet. It presents the context fairly. It provides checkable primary sources so that people can look up for themselves the things Media Matters is claiming. And it provides additional information to support their interpretation:
On December 11, 2002, The Washington Post noted that Lott made a similar remark in 1980: "Twenty-two years ago, Trent Lott, then a House member from Mississippi, told a home state political gathering that if the country had elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond to the presidency '30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.' The phrasing is very similar to incoming Senate Majority Leader Lott's controversial remarks at a 100th birthday party for Thurmond last week."
In contrast we have the Joe Biden gaffe of telling Boston Marathon bombing survivors "It was worth it!" Here's the controversial passage:
“Let me say to those quote ‘survivors’ [who spoke previously]. My God you have survived and you have soared. It was worth it, I mean it sincerely, just to hear you speak. You are truly, truly inspiring. I have never heard anything so beautiful.”
Like Lott's passage, this is poorly worded; the word "it" is vague and has no clear antecedent.
But if we take out the distracting "I mean it sincerely", the sentence becomes a little clearer: "It was worth it just to hear you speak". That's still unclear, primarily because of the word
just; but take out
just and what remains is the kind of sentiment one would would expect a speaker to say on this type of occasion.
"
It was worth it to hear you speak. You are truly, truly inspiring. I have never heard anything so beautiful.". Read like that the reasonable interpretation of what's being said is that the speaker is glad to have taken the time to attend the ceremony because he was moved and touched by the words of the survivors.
Rush Limbaugh appears to be one of the primary propagators of this one, although his echo-chamber certainly helped spread it.
The snippet Limbaugh and the echoers kept repeating is "It was worth it!" And Limbaugh comes up with a creative interpretation of what that meant:
Rush Limbaugh said:
n his mind, he was addressing the toughness. He was complimenting the toughness of the people. "It was worth it to show that we can handle these people. It was worth it to show that we at the Regime could help you through this. It was worth it to demonstrate that these people who committed this tragedy (don't say "terrorism") can't get away with it. It was worth it so that we could show you how qualified, competent, and good we are.
But there's nothing in Biden's actual words to indicate the it refers to the bombing. That would be an extraordinary thing to say.
Given the two possible interpretations ('Coming here was worth it just to hear you speak today' v. 'You getting injured and others getting killed was worth it just so I could hear you speak today') the sensible choice is to assume he meant the former, unless strong evidence is provided that he meant the former. I see none -- only clever rhetoric by partisans such as Limbaugh -- and I am baffled as to why you would choose to believe the unlikely interpretation over the likely one.
