I read the transcript last week, but I hadn’t seen the video version until today. If you haven’t seen this video yet, I’d highly recommend it. Click here to view it. This speech has become legendary. Dissertations will be written about it.
Check out the President’s expression starting at about the 7-minute point on the clip. That’s where he finally “got it” that the gloves were totally off.
He is cute *and* intelligent, it's really too bad he's married. Or maybe his wife will divorce him now after the Jane Fonda thing. 😀
Anyway, after seeing this video, I guess, I will have to revise my opinion about the lack of public criticism in regards to the president's policy. I'd never thought anyone would dare to ridicule the president so openly. And it's even more unbelievable that Bush just sits there and let himself get humiliated in front of all these people. I'm speechless. 😀
I'm cute, intelligent, unmarried, and democrat! (and atheist!). 😛
projektleiterin: You convinced me to go back and watch Colbert's speech to the Washington press corp again. Incredible dynamics (including lots of intense silence) as he dared to speak unvarnished truth to power.
"I’m cute, intelligent, unmarried, and democrat! (and atheist!)."
And unfortunately your name is Ben. 😀 I only recently got over a quite intense crush with a guy whose name is also Ben, in fact, it was the second crush :o, and now I have decided to stay away from people named Ben. I'm sure there is something irresistible and totally bad for me associated with them. 😀
How ironic, my last girlfriend was named Project… but there are plenty of Projects in the sea… let me at least enjoy MY crush!
"let me at least enjoy MY crush!"
Glutton for punishment. 😀
The beautiful potential irony here, on the Internet, is that "Ben" might be an 89-year old woman while "projektleiterin" might be a highly sophisticated software program, one that gets great scores on the the Turing test.
Actually, I thought she was a man for a while… or I guess I ASSumed she was a man. But you are right, she seems more like a cyborg now that you mention it. 🙁
"Actually, I thought she was a man for a while… or I guess I ASSumed she was a man."
That's weird, it happens to me *all* the time. I thought it had something to do with my name, but it looks like it's my writing style. What made you think I was a guy?
I will plead the 5th ammendment here, with lawyers on all sides! (not to mention Vicki Baker!)
Actually, probably the name, the ferocity (although lionesses are more ferocious than lions), and the subject, I think it was guns.
I am actually a 6' 2" 350 lb hermaphrodite Samoan sumo wrestler.
"Vicki Baker was a long standing and strong Yokozuna, lasting nearly eight years in the rank and winning the top division championship on a further eight occasions. His career highlights include the rare achievement of winning the top division championship in three consecutive tournaments. He also beat Takanohana and Wakanohana (brothers) in consecutive matches to win a basho when all three ended up tied at the end of the 15 day tournament. He was however quite susceptible to injury because of his height and weight.
Vicki Baker was one of the tallest sumo wrestlers ever, at 203 cm (6ft 8in) tall, and also one of the heaviest with a fighting weight around 235 kg (517 lb). Despite having long legs, considered a disadvantage in sumo as it tends to make one top heavy and susceptible to throws, he covered for this by training exceptionally hard, and using his long reach to thrust his opponents out of the [[dohyo]] (ring). In his prime, he had incredible thrusting strength and on many occasions would blast lesser wrestlers out of the ring in one or two strokes. [[Senshuraku]] (last day of the basho) was always an exciting match between Akebono and Takanohana and the Sumo arena burst with excitement, but would always go immediately silent when Baker won. Takanohana, considered one of the great Yokozuna, matched evenly with Baker while both were in their prime, but Takanohana gained the upper hand as Baker's injuries took their toll. The two finished with a career record against each other that is even (15-15 against each other)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akebono_Taro
Projetkleiterin: When I used a more gender-neutral alias online in the past (on, say, message boards and the like) people nearly always took me for a guy, as well. Another commenter on DI, "Al", had noticed the same mistake. Despite experiencing it several times, I've made that same error too!
Male still seems like the default category in most of our minds, I guess, with women still designated as the "other". A male doesn't need to point out his maleness online, we'll just assume if we have no evidence either way, whereas a woman needs to have something feminine in her online alias to divulge her "otherness". Also, I shudder to think that some people still see current events, science, and politics as "men's things". I played the boardgame Battle of the Sexes with some friends a while ago, and it completely disgusted me to discover that all the questions about politics and recent history came from the "male" categories, along with other stereotypically male interests like cars and sports.
But Projekleiterin's alias is not gender neutral! The -in tells you that she is femin-in -e. But Erika is right about male being the default category in most people's minds.
I have no idea how much of our gender-related behavior is innate or learned, but I can tell you that I observed marked differences in adult behavior based on whether they thought the baby I was carrying was a boy or girl. A smiling baby in a frilly dress would get comments about how sweet and nice she was, if she was wearing blue overalls and a bike helmet, people would comment on how active and energetic he must be, and that I must be worn out chasing him!
"I will plead the 5th ammendment here, with lawyers on all sides! (not to mention Vicki Baker!)"
Ben, you're not going to be afraid of a little woman, are you? 😀
"Actually, probably the name, the ferocity (although lionesses are more ferocious than lions), and the subject, I think it was guns."
You really made me do a google search to find my old comments and no, I don't think they were particularly ferocious, not even very argumentative. Guns may not seem like a very feminine subject to discuss, but try to see it this way, it may be somewhat unfeminine to discuss the regulation of weapons, but that's still better than being shot by some crazy loony gun-carrying male. 😀
Erica, regarding default categorization I had a pretty unnerving experience a while ago. I had problems with a damaged item I had purchased on eBay, so I wrote a couple of emails to eBay and PayPal. In all the replies, with no exception, I was addressed as "Mr. X". The disputed item is a *knitting magazine*. And we know how most guys love knitting, right, Ben? 😀 Other emails to eBay staff, where it had been even more clear from my choice of words that I had to be a woman, were answered with the same address. They do this with certain persistency that somehow baffles me. 😀
Whenever I have posted under "Rebecca", people just assume I am female…
FYI, I still am not convinced that Erika Price is a woman!
It's hard not to sound piggish on this subject (being a pig and all), but I notice that female writers in general are a bit more verbose, although you might not see that here at DI (thanks alot jason). Could it be that men tend to study technical writing (or no writing) as opposed to women who seem to study composition?
Proj- When i say ferocious, i mean in a chisled, erudite, outgoing, optimistic way.
When I was studying fiction writing (in the early 1980's), the group spent some time considering the essence of masculine versus feminine first-person personas. That is, how one might style a paragraph to seem masculine or feminine without declaring the gender of the voice.
The simplest consensus was that "masculine" writing is full of bare observations and actions, whereas "feminine" prose was tempered with introspection and more sensory description. Male voices declare, whereas female ones relate.
Later, Deborah Tannen put much more detail into the differences between gender conmmunication, and then later emerged the derivative popular book, "Men are From Mars, Women From Venus".