It is that time again.
After what seems like 37 years of nonstop media coverage of one presidential election, everyone is officially done. Done talking about the election. Done reading about it. Done remembering why they ever cared in the first place. Much like eating the same thing every day for over a year, even if you were immensely enjoying yourself in the beginning, you mostly just want to throw up now. Even the media, the people most responsible for getting everyone to the edge of nausea, are over it. Sadly, they still have to write about the campaign.
Just when you thought there was nothing left to scrutinize about the candidates that wouldn’t require a colonoscope, up steps Politico with a think piece analyzing the way Donald Trump speaks:
In the 2016 presidential contest, there has been one thing that supporters and detractors of Donald Trump have agreed on. The chest-pounding real estate mogul from New York has emerged as the quintessentially masculine candidate. Love him or loathe him, Trump’s campaign has been defined by the ways he has asserted his maleness—mocking his opponents for their low energy, bullying his critics, sneering at perceived weakness, boasting of his sexual prowess, vowing to hit back twice as hard as he’s been hit.
But academic research has picked up something that thousands of hours of campaign punditry has missed completely: Donald Trump talks like a woman. He might be preoccupied with grading women’s looks, penis size and “locker room talk,” but the way he speaks and the actual words he uses make for a distinctly feminine style. In fact, his speaking style is more feminine by far than any other candidate in the 2016 cycle, more feminine than any other presidential candidate since 2004.
More than just a comical curiosity, this fact about Trump’s mode of communication might help explain how a candidate who has been so extensively rebuked for his mean-spirited attacks on immigrants, women, the disabled and even prisoners of war has managed to attract support from millions of voters who adore the way he says openly what they feel. To some, Trump’s ascent is evidence that society still prizes the masculine over the feminine, but what’s happening is more complex, and Trump’s style has qualities that go beyond mere blustery aggression. Research has shown that the more feminine a speaker’s style, the more likable and trustworthy he seems. For Trump, who has been derided for his multiple contradictions and outright lies, that advantage might well have persuaded his supporters to listen to him and not the chorus of media fact checkers.
At first, it seems that this might just be an “out of ideas” fluff piece to use as filler during the end of the election cycle, but there is more than that going on here.
First, the candidate scrutiny in this election has been even more one-sided than usual. The media is always all-in for the Democrat in any presidential election and, as is typical of star-struck lovers, they overlook a lot of flaws. This year though, they have been so busy labeling almost all close-examination of Mrs. Clinton “sexist” that they’re practically breaking their necks to look the other way. On the rare occasions that they do scrutinize, it’s nonsensical garbage that in nonetheless spun to make Her Madameship look like she’s next-level awesome.
This is a no-brainer for the MSM, as even the most devout Democrats know that Dame van der Cankles doesn’t wear well with the public upon closer inspection. The public will become more acutely aware of this painful fact if/when she becomes president. There’s a good chance that very few people will complain if she doesn’t give many press conferences.
The real reason that Politico devoted over 1500 words to the nuances of Donald Trump’s vocal style has nothing to do with curiosity or a lack of fresh subject matter this deep into the cycle. As with so much of the Trump coverage in this never-ending bad dream of an election, the media is really talking about the media. It’s right there in the last paragraph quoted above, where the writer looks for what “might help explain” the fact that the man they’ve spent a year telling everyone to hate isn’t hated by everyone.
“What is wrong with you, stupid Everyone?”
The media, old and new, in America tend to congregate in ideologically homogeneous communities, most often in coastal enclaves. They don’t meet or associate with people who have different political opinions. As such, the poor dears struggle emotionally when word of “those” people reaches them. They flail about for an explanation, because people just aren’t supposed to be that way. More often than not, leftist media types will find an academic to back them up with some cockamamie (always wanted to use that word in a post) theory, as Politico did here.
If you need to pause for a moment to register shock that academia and the MSM would be working in cahoots I’ll understand.
As with “expert witnesses” in a trial, leftmedia folks can find an academic to tell them whatever they want to hear about conservatives and/or Republicans that will explain why they just won’t assimilate, like, say, they are psychopaths. The academics are even willing to completely reverse the data just to stay friends with their media buddies.
Guess which version of that story got more press? We can pause again, if you’d like.
That, my sane friends, is how we get to the point where the double-secret lilting feminine quality of Donald Trump’s communication style is an explanation for why the rubes in flyover country like him. In no way can it be about policy or the fact that normal Americans have very different priorities than those who spend the majority of their waking hours engaged in vapid back-patting so they won’t get voted off of Leftist Island.
What Politico’s obedience school-trained academic has done here is basically use almost 2000 words to say that Trump supporters are mindlessly responding to a dog whistle. As a veteran watcher of progressive lunacy in the media, I will have to admit that this one went an extra mile or so for creativity. “Republicans are psycho” is knee-jerk leftist stuff. “Trump talks like a girl” is the kind of thing one comes up with when mixing large quantities of wine, amphetamines, and spicy food.
Bonus points for the effort there, but allow me to offer some friendly advice from the other side of the aisle: stockpile some of that wine.
You’re all going to need it when you realize that everyone outside of your cocktail party has stopped listening to you.
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