Greg Sargent ascribes it to an “obscure (rhetorical) tense”. What, exactly did Barack Obama say in an interview with a French media outlet? Obama’s exact words lead the following excerpt, Sargent’s follow:
Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.
Hard-core rhetoricians will note that Obama was employing an obscure tense known as the “conditional,” and an arcane rhetorical device known as a “hypothetical.” He said that if you were to take the number of Muslims in America, then one could see America as ranking up there with other Muslim countries – in numerical, hypothetical terms.
So Sargent’s defense of Obama – the Obama did not call the US a “Muslim country” is correct. But let’s use that obscure rhetorical tense in another way:
If one were terminally unable to understand basic arithmetic, one could claim a status that the numbers prove is ludicrous - in numerical, hypothetical terms.
Because the US ranks below Tajikistan in the number of Muslims living here.
You have to decide if Obama is incapable of understanding numbers in any real sense of the word, or if Obama is willing to flat out spin complete falsehoods – hypothetically, of course – in order to curry favor for himself ahead of a speech.
Either choice reveals rather a lot more about the man than I suspect he calculated when he made his patently absurd statement.
As I said earlier, Sargent’s defense is quite correct – as far as it goes. Had George Bush made a claim like this, however, I rather suspect that Sargent would not be defending it. Rather he would have been all over the statement as fraudulent, stupid or both.
If the media was doing its job, they would be treating Obama’s statement as the ridiculous object that it is.
Via Memeorandum
And your point is (on the top of your head). But on a serious note when you review his words do you think perhaps he means what he said, after all he is a noted legal perfesser….
What great leader once said, “The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belong to one category.”
Hint: His first name begins with an “A.”
And the point I want to make is that if you don’t study your math and science in school, you end up as either a journalist or a politician. And, your stuck in life either making up lies, or spinning them, to stay alive.