Obama on race: a fail for grammar
You can read the full text of the Barack Obama speech on race -- and it's worth your while to do so, because I fancy it's going to be much discussed, debated and dissected over the next few days. I'll leave the verdict on its political effectiveness to others who are not constrained by Ö÷²¥´óÐã editorial guidelines -- but I will ask just one question.
Is it Senator Obama, the former editor of the Harvard Law Review, or his speech-writers who don't know the difference between "who's" and "whose"? I've checked several online versions of the text as provided by the Obama campaign, and they all agree that he referred to "the white man whose been laid off ..."
Ouch.
Peope these days do not know or care about correct English . EVen Ö÷²¥´óÐã presenters use Americanised phrases like the totally meanless - when you think about it , "for free " or "got" when they mean "was" . Both jar on my consciousness but is it really to be criticised or is it the natural developement of language ?
Complain about this postGood thing you have those "editorial quidelines." Otherwise, you would have to talk about something other than the spell checking abilities of some poor, beleaguered secretary.
Shame of you!
Shame!
(Hope that was proper enough "English" for you)
Complain about this postI am an American. I turned to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã to get an unbiased perspective on Obama's speech, and was astonished to find this silly trivia.
Complain about this postThe media got a whole two days out of this story until the next meaningless one came along about a few government contractor trainees viewed the candidates' passport files. Not much in them of any value to anyone looking for political scandal. Of course the story about reverend Wright and the resulting Obama speech replaced the story about Geraldine Ferraro which in turn replaced the story about governor Spitzer. How fortunate for the candidates that there will always be meaningless trivia like this to distract the public's attention from the real issues like the looming recession, the financial crisis, national security, what the government will give away in a global warming treaty and what it will demand in return from foreign countries like China and India. And that doesn't even begin to address the questions of whether or not Obama and Clinton are too inexperienced to be President or whether McCain as a former prison of war for five years who had been tortured by the North Vietnamese is ultimately mentally stable enough to have his finger on the trigger of ten thousand hydrogen bombs. Back to whether Obama's speech about race was a political success, grammatical errors, and passport file snooping, the issues America pays CNN's, MSNBC's, and Fox's sponsors to subsidize and pretend it's valuable news. Copycat Ö÷²¥´óÐã is no better. Perhaps we should call it BNN.
Complain about this postI am not surprised!
Complain about this postObama's rhetoric about "hope" & "change" is just a grammatically @ ideologically misspelled propaganda...
Imagine him being the Commander in Chief...!!!
nit picking very sad!! could he (Robin Lustig) have anything more concrete to report or is he just bored by his work. I used to respect him but now i think he may well have lost the plot!
Complain about this postYou cannot always trust websites, you fool!!
Complain about this postSo what? Don't you have anything more substantial to add to an important dialogue like this?
Complain about this postClear grammar is a sign of clear thinking.
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