Huh? What? I fell asleep there
Philistinism in the domain of culture has been paralleled by similar trends influencing public debate and political life. One of the clearest manifestations of this process is the manifest decline in the standards of political debate. Spoon-feeding the public with sound bites has become a highly prized political skill. Professional speech-writers pursue their task as if their audience was composed of easily distracted children and, not surprisingly, political discussion tends to be shallow, short-termist, and bereft of ideas. This is the age of "micro-politics," where, in Britain at least, politics presents itself through the depoliticized language of managerialism, technocracy, and business.
It [a study by The Princeton Review] reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. According to the analysis, during the debates of 2000, Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7 and Gore at a high seventh-grade level (7.9). In 1992, Clinton achieved a seventh-grade standard (7.6), Bush managed to achieve a sixth-grade level (6.8) as did Perot (6.3). Their contribution compares poorly with the Kennedy-Nixon exchange, where both candidates used language appropriate for tenth-graders. In turn, their achievement appears feeble compared to that of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, whose scores were, respectively, 11.2 and 12.0. No doubt sections of today's cultural elite would interpret the decline of oratory since the nineteenth century as, on balance, a positive development. In today's political rhetoric George W. Bush's sixth-grade language is obviously more "inclusive" and less "elitist" than that of Abraham Lincoln. But this inclusive language is symptomatic of a general tendency to treat the public as if they were not capable of understanding arguments that would test the mental capacities of a precocious ten-year-old child.
Political rhetoric in the UK is also becoming a lost art. During the 2003 party conference season, the leaders of the main parties reached a new low in the content of their speeches. Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservative party, attempted to imitate an angry thirteen-year-old arguing with his friends in the playground. The main focus of his conference speech was repeatedly to call Tony Blair a "liar." For his part, Tony Blair's conference oration was so vacuous that several people who were in the audience told me that they simply could not remember what he said.
From Where have all the intellectuals gone?: including "a reply to my critics", by Frank Füredi.
It [a study by The Princeton Review] reviewed these transcripts using a standard vocabulary test that indicates the minimum educational standard needed for a reader to grasp the text. According to the analysis, during the debates of 2000, Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7 and Gore at a high seventh-grade level (7.9). In 1992, Clinton achieved a seventh-grade standard (7.6), Bush managed to achieve a sixth-grade level (6.8) as did Perot (6.3). Their contribution compares poorly with the Kennedy-Nixon exchange, where both candidates used language appropriate for tenth-graders. In turn, their achievement appears feeble compared to that of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, whose scores were, respectively, 11.2 and 12.0. No doubt sections of today's cultural elite would interpret the decline of oratory since the nineteenth century as, on balance, a positive development. In today's political rhetoric George W. Bush's sixth-grade language is obviously more "inclusive" and less "elitist" than that of Abraham Lincoln. But this inclusive language is symptomatic of a general tendency to treat the public as if they were not capable of understanding arguments that would test the mental capacities of a precocious ten-year-old child.
Political rhetoric in the UK is also becoming a lost art. During the 2003 party conference season, the leaders of the main parties reached a new low in the content of their speeches. Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservative party, attempted to imitate an angry thirteen-year-old arguing with his friends in the playground. The main focus of his conference speech was repeatedly to call Tony Blair a "liar." For his part, Tony Blair's conference oration was so vacuous that several people who were in the audience told me that they simply could not remember what he said.
From Where have all the intellectuals gone?: including "a reply to my critics", by Frank Füredi.