Wellstone Memorial Redux
“If White House Was Surprised by Applause at Tucson Pep Rally.” Jim Hoft asks, “Why Did They Ask For It On Jumbotron?”
Click over for the damning photo.
I suppose the excuse du jour will be that these weren’t stage directions, just merely the assumption that the president would have to pause while the expected hosannas rained down upon him. But presumably, if you put “APPLAUSE” into the text on a Jumbotron, a sufficient number of people in the audience will do just that.
And as always during solemn memorial services, t-shirts with text printed in an all-caps avant-garde typeface were provided to all attendees.
Update: If you missed the rock concert memorial service but still want to pick-up a T-shirt, no worries: Ebay has you covered.
Update: Readers seeking a glimpse of the newly becalmed tone of the president’s supporters in the wake of his call for increased civility during his speech on Wednesday are welcome to peruse the comments to this post.
Update: Doug Ross has related comments.
More: The next existential crisis in a teapot for the left awaits here.
Late Update (12:00 AM 1/17/11): Now that we’ve hit 100 comments of everyone going at it hammer and tongs, I’ve decided to close the comments, if only to aide in the president’s call for a new civility amongst his base on Wednesday. Thanks all, drive safely!
Late Update (2:45 PM) 1/17/11): Rush Limbaugh, Guy Benson and Kathy Shaidle disagree with Jim Hoft’s take, and presumably they’re not on Media Matters’ payroll, investigating Sarah Palin’s uterus or looking to manufacture a cheap diversion after a dreadful week for the left. Obviously, reasonable people can disagree on the audience influence of, what I noted above on Saturday, was the captioning for hearing impaired in the grandstands.
It’s closed captioning for the deaf.
Really? The deaf can’t see the people applauding all around them?
As a closed captioner, the standard is to send [APPLAUSE] when you can’t see the audience applauding on the screen. If you only have an audio feed to caption from, you send [APPLAUSE] when you hear applause.
The idea is that I don’t get to decide when a deaf or hard-of-hearing person gets to “hear” something from the closed captions. We try very hard to describe all sound on the feed, especially when it impacts the way someone is speaking. The applause was making many speakers stop speaking that evening, and so we send the [APPLAUSE] when we can.
Just an innocent question………
When the speaker get a loud and raucus negative crowd reaction, do you insert “Boo’s and Catcalls” on the screen??
If I hear booing and the speaker pauses to acknowledge it or otherwise reacts to it, yes, I send [BOOING] in captions. I’ve done it several times. I didn’t hear Jan Brewer being booed that night, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. If I had, I would have sent [BOOING].
Joseph,
Thank you. I was curious.
“Really? The deaf can’t see the people applauding all around them?”
Ed, the question is not whether the standard practices of closed captioning are all completely necessary, or whether the deaf could perhaps do well enough without some of them. The question is whether the use of “[applause]” is indeed standard.
If your criticism of Obama is really that he didn’t take care to ensure that those doing the closed captioning deviated from standard practice to avoid including any information that might potentially be redundant, then just say that explicitly.
If it’s not, then you’d do better to just retract the original criticism than to find yourself pivoting towards such an absurd argument.
Come on Ed; you can’t be this ignorant. You should be embarrassed. Think a little bit about how closed captioning works and post a correction.
“For the deaf” who are watching it on TV. It’s called closed captioning, Ed.
It doesn’t appear at the event, but is added to the TV signal through the wizardry of modern technology.
How can it “not appear at the event” when it’s in a photo of the Jumbotron shot at the event?
Sigh. Since you seem not to understand, here’s a simplified explanation: There’s no point in reduplication of effort. Having a separate transcriptionist at the event and at the news network is pointless. They have _one_ guy typing out the transcript, and that goes to both the jumbotron, and to everyone else. With that in mind, it should be obvious that the VAST MAJORITY of people reading the transcript, aren’t at the event. Is that clear enough for you?
Are you deaf? It was closed captioning. This is standard practice for closed captioning. They not only print the words, but the sounds.
Are you going to correct your error and apologize for it? Nope! You wingnuts just LOVE THE LIE.
Looking for scumbags, are you? Check the nearest mirror!
Please remember that this was also broadcast to the overflow audience who were not in the auditorium and that a professional captioner is not going to be thinking “Well, they can SEE the clapping so I don’t need to include that”. They are trained to write in or etc. They write exactly what they hear.
If you want to tell for sure or not if it was “scripted” then go to the part of the speech where Obama says “Gabby opened her eyes.” According to reporters, that section was NOT in the original written speech. So, if this were actually captioned live, it would be included. If it were scripted, it would not be included. It’s really not that hard to investigate this. Did anyone bother to call the University and ask to speak to the person who is responsible for captioning and find out the facts?
As a deaf person, we appreciate it when everything that is happening – including noises – is broadcast on the screen. Some people are so intently looking for something criticise that they’ll latch onto anything
Pathetic.
A very hearie thing to complain about because you don’t understand, or care, how important things like this are to us.
In general, we do care about things in general and people in particular, Michael R., and I appreciate your comments because, as a hearing person, I might not view events from the same perspective. How could I?
In this case, we are discussing the pervasive hypocrisy of the left, including the president. I do not know, nor do I care whether the [applause] was prompting the audience or merely an incidence of closed-captioning. The point is this: the president and his administration have proved to be hypocrites of the first order, and this pep rally memorial proved it once again.
Uh, let me see if I got this straight, Kathy; it’s a story about someone who claims that the closed captioning on the Jumbotron was actually “audience instructions,” yet when someone points out the facts, you say “Who cares? The point is something else entirely.”
Are you really that dense?
Um, no. We are “refudiating” an erroneous and spiteful post that Mr Driscoll ought to correct, rather than insulting Americans and dishonoring the memory of the dead. But I see you’ve given up any claim to decency and honesty, and decided to follow the right-wing extremist line.
I’m now reminded of that idiotic “Obama flag” flap during teh campaign, when some idiots mistook the Ohio state flag for something Obama made up to, idunno, be self-aggrandizing or something. When forced to admit that they were objectively wrong, they still maintained that they were “right, in PRINCIPLE”.
What Stephen is saying is that the captioner does not have to be in person at the event and the jumbotron image is first fed to the television feed and then to the jumbrotron image. The captioner could be in NYC and captioning the feed at the signal there. What was on the jumbotron was on the television feed, not a separate closed circuit feed.
TUCSON – Thousands of people flooded into Tucson’s McKale Memorial Center to hear President Barack Obama speak this evening. The center is now full, and people are being directed to go to the U of A football stadium to watch the event on a Jumbotron screen.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/12/20110112arizona-shootings-memorial-people.html#ixzz1B985qIV3
Just admit that you were wrong Ed or we’ll have to assume you’re as dumb as you look. Although there is a strong likelihood of both
you guys are a riot.
Nice try, though. Maybe in the new spirit of “oh, no, we aren’t engaging in vicious and mean-spirited baseless attacks on the President”, you can find something with some substance to whine about. Or you can just start calling him “Hussein” again.
Isn’t that his middle name? Why would that be contentious?
Did people refer to George W. Bush as “Walker”? Just curious.
Actually, the left constantly referred to his father as George Herbert Walker Bush, clearly attempting to portray (slur?) him as an out-of-touch elitist.
But, obviously the “Applause” was part of the close captioning. Ed, just admit you made a mistake. It won’t matter ultimately, because the loving tolerant left already hates you, and will never be willing to work past that hate. They love it too much.
Interestingly enough that was also GHWB’s nickname during the war. Apparently everybody called him by all four names to make fun of his bluebloodedness.
Because Barack goes by “Barack.” Calling him Hussein is disrespectful and childish.
Because he does not habitually use it himself in daily discourse? Because the standard etiquette is to refer to someone by the name that they, themselves, prefer?
If it was intended as closed captioning, why was it on a separate line from the rest of the text.
Obama is just finishing up a sentence that ends in SCHOOL… and if this was closed captioning, if would show:
SCHOOL… [APPLAUSE] and not
SCHOOL…
APPLAUSE
That’s the way it’s typically done.
[applause] would only appear on the same line if the speaker were the one applauding.
When there is a new speaker, or sound from another source, it will usually be placed on a new line to help note that fact.
I’m not trained in closed captioning, but I would like to point out that “applause” is a noun. If you were giving the audience instruction to “do something” that would be a verb, i.e. “applaud”.
The commenters have pointed out that this blogpost is inaccurate. Will the writer correct this mistake?
No, Daniel, he won’t, because his mind is already made up, and the facts do not matter. And, as Kathy said, if we are wrong, we will invent some other reason to criticize the President.
OT
It is now obvious that Barry is a total doofus.
I’m just noting it for the record in case the liberals posting here had missed it.
he really is a total dork. Sorry.
Had thought your UPDATE was likely intended as sarcasm, but all comments preceding mine have indeed been incredibly civil in pointing out your error in repeating Mr. Hoft’s grievously mistaken original post.
Do you not know what closed captioning is?
Have you never seen it before?
This is embarrassing.
It was obvious that this is closed caption.
Will the original poster apologize ?
[crickets]
Hey Ed
[you're a fucking idiot]
Ah, here’s the toned down rhetoric the left talked about, the civility.
Keep making love to that chicken, Ed.
This is actually sorta funny. Hoft posts with the usual dim certitude regarding something he is mistaken about — it was close captioning — and the usual ideological lemmings charge the nearest cliff in order to get in on the fun. And then double down on the stupid when called on it.
Priceless.
“and the usual ideological lemmings charge the nearest cliff in order to get in on the fun”
Isn’t that exactly what you’ve done here?
No. The best way to describe this a schoolyard scene:
School kid: Hey everybody, look, Jim is eating snails again and now Ed’s doing it too.
(Everybody rushes over, points and laughs.)
Ed: These aren’t snails, they’re chocolate truffles.
(More laughter)
Various wingnut commenters: Gee, sure looks like chocolate truffles to me, and who cares if it’s really snails, Obama is still a Islamokenyancommufascist.
All this is missing the point, which is the tone of the memorial was unseemly from the get-go, starting out like a pep rally and then really being a pep rally. It was creepy and utterly tacky.
I don’t think any of us are in a position to say this unless we’re from Tuscon or we had relatives hurt or killed in this shooting. From my outside viewpoint, it seems like the city of Tuscon was traumatized by this incident and needed to rally together for the sake of not losing hope. Funerals and memorials need a glimmer of hope or the bereft just can’t go on. You might criticize the university for having such a big memorial with so many people attending, but I don’t think that’s fair either. It’s a big place and the shooting affected a lot of people. I cried when I saw the speech — despite all the applause. But Jon Stewart took down this “tonal” criticism better than I can.
You are EXACTLY on target….I was going to give this event a chance but from the beginning it turned my stomach…smacked of a launch for Obama’s run in 2012…certainly NOT a memorial service….and the T-shirts OMG! BAD TASTE OBAMA!
Loughner was right about one thing: Words have no meaning. Indeed.
Yes I suppose all those victims and families of victims who were cheering and clapping were utterly tacky.
Yes, that’s the overall point, but Ed’s example does not illustrate it.
Even a broken clock isn’t this stupid 1338 times a day.
“Readers seeking a glimpse of the newly becalmed tone of the president’s supporters in the wake of his call for increased civility during his speech on Wednesday are welcome to peruse the comments to this post”
After five hours of arguing with a mouth breathing idiot (while we both look at same beautiful blue sky) that it is indeed blue and then have him tell me it is red– ya get a little frustrated.
In the end I want to club a baby seal right after I get done clubbing the idiot.
Don’t be an idiot.
Oh no … an “avant-garde typeface”!
Wingnuts say Courier is the font of mourning.
Nope, Garamond. It’s cleaner, easier to read through the tears.
Kerners are go!
Get a grip. This is really pathetic, trying to turn closed captioning into some kind of Stalinist crowd-mind control.
The crowd grieved the way they wanted to, apparently, so who made y’all the grief police anyway? Do you go around to memorial services and give everyone a score on how appropriately they grieve? That’s just morbid.
The blog post title is kind of funny since this is the exact same knee-jerk inanity used to criticize the Wellstone memorial. It was closed-captioning then, too. Nice to see that right-wingers believe in recycling, even if it’s just stupidity.
You mean the Wellstone funerally, right?
I’d also like to echo what an earlier commenter said: Despite OP’s “UPDATE” claims that these comments are uncivil, I think this affair has been very tame and polite. Considering how inaccurate is this original blogpost, it would be pretty easy to troll here with abandon. But with little variance each piece of criticism is reasonable in tone and substance.
So for this reason especially, I think the readers of this website deserve a correction.
“The next existential crisis in a teapot for the left awaits here.”
heh, i guess you know whereof you speak, eh, ed?
[....] are used in Closed Captions to describe audio cues that are not dialogue. It can be [music plays]… [phone rings], and in this case, to it describes the crowd clapping, [applause].
They are not commands, requests or instructions. I always watch tv & movies with Closed Captioning displayed. It’s obvious that Ed Driscoll has never seen Closed Captions before and has absolutely no clue how they work.
You can either correct your post, Ed, or you can go on proving to everyone that your allegiance is to partisan narrative rather than reality. Your call.
I am an unabashed conservative but when I saw this on Hoft’s blog I wondered whether it was closed captioning.
The day before Hoft claimed that the new RNC Chairman Reince Priebus (not Hoft’s favorite candidate for the job) had said let’s kill Obama . Hoft posted a link to Priebus saying exactly that, however the link was incomplete. When the statement was seen in context it was clear that Priebus said Obama but meant to say Osama (bin Laden)
Hoft is like the NYT: Prolific but very biased and hence unreliable.
All of that said, Obama turned a memorial service into an unseemly campaign event.
Please explain how Obama turned the memorial service into an unseemly campaign event. The University chose to hold the event in a sports arena. The University distributed T-shirts to the attendees. The event was shown on the Jumbotron because many people could not see the stage which had been set up. The [Applause] notation on the screen is closed captioning for the deaf. If you listened closely to the President’s speech, it was quite obvious that there were no “applause pauses” in it. It was also quite obvious that he was surprised and somewhat taken aback the first time applause erupted spontaneously during the speech. So, please explain how the President turned this memorial service into something else, provided that you can do it without spouting lies.
I still would like to know who paid for the shirts, and who came up with the idea OF a t-shirt at a memorial/remembrance speech. And how was the title chosen. Creepy idea for one. For seconds, is it odd that the same title was the title of a post on the Obama election website in 2008?
You libtards don’t get it.
Ed’s absolutely right on this. It’s almost as if the White House cretins are IMing you orders in real time. This country has gone backwards for sixty years and people like Ed are here to FIX IT!
Now get out of the way.
So rather than spending your time writing posts that call people retarded, maybe you could reply to the criticisms of Ed’s position, as he’s been unable to do so effectively.
It requires no “orders” to flock to stupidity and mock it.
Every time a conservative calls a liberal a libtard, Sarah Palin crys.
No, wait, right, conservatives get to use the word retard because they are accurately describing liberals or something.
Oh yeah and calling for armed revolt is freedom of speech but calling those who are calling for armed revolt a bunch of hot-headed inflamers and agitators is the moral equivalent of destroying conservatives first amendment rights.
Me, I’ll never forget George W. Bush’s pep rally on the ashes of almost 3,000 dead at the World Trade Center. I mean he must have planned the pep rally because he brought his cheerleader bullhorn.
Family values! Wolverines! Fight them over there! Pogroms! Blood libel! Founding fathers!
My, what charming posts.
(1) When was the [APPLAUSE] closed captioning created? Before the speech or during the speech?
(2) Was [APPLAUSE] displayed before or after the actual applause started?
If [APPLAUSE] was created before the speech, or if it was created by an Obama-supporting captioner in real time but before the applause started, then this deserves to be ridiculed. A video+soundtrack of the speech that showed the Jumbotron could resolve the timing question.
Applause signs were and I presume still are used in television studios when recording some shows before a live audience. The signs tell the audience when to applaud. It is easy to imagine the same thing happening here, but that doesn’t mean it happened.
Unless Jim Hoft was certain that the [APPLAUSE] was not created as a description of the applause after it occurred, then he should not have posted as he did. Same for Ed. It is an understandable mistake, but it still deserves an apology.
Here you go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70kGCnqiKNY
Thanks for the link.
That video was posted to YouTube on Jan. 13, before this kerfuffle began, so at least its dating does not disqualify it as high quality evidence of what actually happened.
I downloaded the 308 MB 720p version for the highest resolution.
While the Jumbotron is seen through almost the entire video, the closed captioning is visible but not particularly legible. Still, it is often possible to recognize captioned words from their length and overall shape, that appear on the display soon after Obama says them.
I did not view the entire video, nor did I locate the exact moment during the speech that the photo on Jim Hoft’s site was taken. That moment may or may not be recorded in the video, which appears to me to be a fairly complete compilation of highlights of the speech, not the entire speech.
I watched enough of the video to locate four instances when the closed captioning appeared to display [APPLAUSE]. After that, I stopped looking, because the pattern was clear. In all four instances, the word was displayed a few seconds after the audience applauded. It was not a prompt for the audience to start applauding, but a description of applause that had occurred.
Had the word been repeatedly used as a prompt, that should have been obvious many times throughout the speech. I never noticed anything similar to [APPLAUSE] appearing before the audience had already applauded.
So, FWIW I think Jim Hoft and Ed made a mistake here. It’s an understandable mistake, but it deserves to be corrected.
I thought the POTUS looked (somewhat) annoyed at the in-appropriate response and applause during his speech at the memorial. But after saying that, what else should he have expected when promotional political T-shirts were handed out by his politcal handlers before the service? The crowds behaviour was boorish and disrespectful, not on par with the Westboro Baptists at our war dead’s services, but certainly they lacked a sense of propriety.
So, does anyone have the gumption to just seek out some video footage of this part of the speech and put the “captioning vs. applause sign” debate to rest for once and for all, or are we just going to continue to argue over a still frame that proves nothing one way or the other?
Well, at least we now know that Ed lacks the grace and courage to admit an error.
It’s not the mistake that’s shameful. It’s embarrassingly hanging on to it long after it’s obvious he looks ridiculous.
This is the greatest blog post and comment thread ever. Over the years, I have read a lot of blogs, read & participated in lots of comment threads.
But this one is priceless, a classic. Keep it up, Ed!
You do not advance the conservative agenda by being the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. You instead make it look like that it is comprised of a bunch of children. One eventually has to start to wonder if that may be the case.
Fisrt the right wing lies about the Wellstone funeral and now, ten years later they REPEAT the lie and even use the orignal Wellstone lies as “proof”.
If you are too stupid to even understand how closed captioning works, and too egotistical to admit you made a mistake, why should ANYONE pay ANY attention to anything else you say?
They SHOULDN’T.
So why are you here…paying attention???
So why are you here…paying attention???
Because mocking people we think are acting stupid is FUN! Plus, it might make people who are on the metaphorical fence realize how idiotic certain positions are.
Not to mention the Twain adage: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
Obama and his staff can take care of themselves, but these smears and lies about closed captioning do a tremendous disservice to us deaf/HOH individuals.
Okay, this may be the dumbest “conspiracy theory” I’ve ever heard. Turn on the closed captioning on your TV while watching the Golden Globes tonight. See the [APPLAUSE} legend on your screen when they announce a winner? THAT’S NOT TELLING YOU TO APPLAUD.
Driscoll, you’re part of the problem.
i find it a bit curious that the herds of the closed-captioners union have somehow flocked to ed driscoll’s article within minutes of each other
i didnt see the jumbotron during the speech but i heard it on the radio, live, and the applause did not sound spontaneous and there were times (when obama mentions the federal judge murdered was an appointee of hw bush)— the lack of reaction reminded me of a group of sycophants waiting for instructions from their master on how to behave–
all the spin about how obama was already slated to appear at the venue and this and that is typical lefty smokescreening
the pep rally was nothing more than another manipulation designed to “show” obama as presidential again, whoop up the college kids much like the beatles did to teeny weenie boppers, and maintain the “conservatives” and their talk-radio hosts as the ones responsible
my hat’s off to you ed, if for nothing more than stirring up the hornet’s nest….
kudos!!
You sound concerned and loonie.
The applause did not sound spontaneous on your radio?
What does that even mean?
Also, “Damn kids! Get off my lawn!”
also, how convenient it is for the manipulation to be cradled in an untouchable taboo— DEAF PEOPLE!!!—> the hordes of deaf persons that somehow all flocked to the event to see obama
oh those crazy right-wingers are so lame they dont even know what closed captions are!!!!
or
oh those manipulative and deviant statists cloak their propoganda in the sanctity of “closed captioning”
so any attempt to sniff out reasons for the most bizarre political theater i’ve witnessed in years gets immediately blunted by the “insensitive nay sayers and closed caption unionizers”
the hordes of deaf persons that somehow all flocked to the event to see obama
It wouldn’t matter if there weren’t a single deaf person in the audience, they’re _still_ legally required to provide captioning. There’s this wonderful law called “The Americans with Disabilities” act, you might want to look it up.
Mr. Driscoll, I really wish you would correct this error.
I’m a conservative. I’d like to trust your work. Moreover, I’d like you to be perceived as trustworthy. If you aren’t, then a voice is removed from the debate. I don’t want any conservative voices to be removed from the debate. It’s not helpful.
Those who enter the arena of political debate have a choice: Their work will be either about them, or about their ideas. Failure to acknowledge errors demonstrates that ideas are not the priority. It shows that the speaker is concerned more about personal pride and reputation than the quest for truth, which is what the whole “debate” thing is supposed to be about in the first place.
Frankly, while I’m sure you’re a fine guy, I’m not interested in Ed Driscoll as Ed Driscoll. I’m interested in the ideas expressed by Ed Driscoll. In the political context, that ultimately is the only thing anyone is interested in. And that’s the irony of the thing: If you do want to serve yourself over the long term, you should devote yourself to truth and humility even when it comes at the expense of short-term pride.
When [music] appears, all the deaf people hum tunelessly. Also, the words that aren’t in [...] are all repeated by the entire crowd, because that’s what everyone does in the video. I’m certain that’s how it worked and there’s audio and video proof of this. The part where 14,000 people say they just visited Gabby: electric!
I should note that I’ve attended many basketball games at the University of Arizona, thus I have 35 bank accounts from various sponsors, donate money after every 3-pointer, weigh over 600 pounds from all the Coca-Cola products that are advertised, and I slavishly obey every instruction given to me. And that’s why it always takes a security member to tell me when it’s time to leave.
You know what wouldn’t make sense? Using APPLAUSE instead of APPLAUD which would be the correct why of soliciting APPLAUSE(meaning something that is happening).
ap·plause
n.
1. Approval expressed especially by the clapping of hands.
ap·plaud
v.intr.
1. To express approval, especially by clapping the hands.
Notice how applaud is a VERB, meaning the action of applauding, and how applause is a NOUN, meaning something that exists. So if Obama or his team where trying to elicit APPLAUSE they would of course put APPLAUD on the screen (most likely not in brackets).
Controversy debunked.
No, applause signs typically use the word “Applause.”
Here’s one:
http://www.studio-lights.com/products/signs/applause-sign.htm
it appears as if this has turned into trollstock
must have pushed the proverbial buttons e.d.
Daxypoo -
Perhaps you could explain how “this country has gone backwards for the past 60 years”?
Do you feel that the struggles for civil rights during this era, caused America’s “decline”?
Yeah, wacky libs. All you need to do publish a desperate and foolish partisan smear, then dig your heels in and refuse to rescind it after it’s been clearly and decisively refuted dozens of times over, and they’ll all point it out on your blog. Buncha trolls if you ask me, don’t know that they’re getting at.
All you need to do publish a desperate and foolish partisan smear,
It’s called a mistake, not a “desperate and foolish partisan smear.”
then dig your heels in and refuse to rescind it
I agree. This is not a big deal, but once Ed gets around to reading these posts he really should acknowledge his error and apologize.
after it’s been clearly and decisively refuted dozens of times over,
No, the only real evidence presented in these posts was the video linked by “Done” in response to my post #34. Gratuitous assertions are not evidence. The video does appear to provide credible evidence that Jim Hoft and Ed were wrong.
Ed, you may want to look at this picture.
http://jamesurbaniak.tumblr.com/post/2789569700/
To: The Proprietor of This Website
Dear Sir:
Are you ever going to admit that your salivating glee with which you rushed to make Our President look stupid caused you to make a hilariously ignorant assumption? Are you ever going to admit that dozens of people have now (correctly) called you out for your idiocy?
Didn’t think you were. But please, prove me wrong. I won’t be holding my breath, though.