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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   34949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Joe Biden made the following remarks:

“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well, let me tell you something, I don’t, I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know, the Puerto Rico where I’m fr -- in my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent honorable people,” he said. The president then added: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”

First this guy is the gift that keeps on giving. I really suppose he lowkey wants to tank his party out of spite with juuust enough plausible deniability. Let's start with unpacking. First - he twists what was said - it was a comedian act making a joke, not a speaker. Subtle but important difference. Even Jon Stewart pitched on the controversy by saying - I find this guy funny something is wrong with me.

Second - this comes from the president, is not a part of comedy act, and the republicans decided to give democrats run for the pearl clutching gold. And without some charity there is no way to deflect (I do think personally that he meant the speakers of the rally, but let's be honest - he deserves exactly as much charity as Trump campaign and kill tony got).

Now the media didn't let it slide even if they gave him somewhat more charity. It's called gaffe, where as a comedian joke is taken at face value. But that is to be expected in a way.

Do you think this will affect meaningfully the election?

Various Biden friendly transcribers have done a reasonable steelman of his words with clever punctuation (not least of which is the white house's):

"And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been. "

There's a few other clever transcriptions around culture war Twitter which try to make it look like he was only talking about the comedian (sorry I can't find any easily, but I've seen them out in the wild).

The video is pretty damning if you take it as face value, but it could be taken as a senior moment if a viewer was going to be charitable.

I think Team Trump is making hay out of it with a Deplorable/Facists/Garbage meme at the moment (again no link sorry), reinforced by the positive Trump tweet.

tldr; I think this will shift the needle slightly, but the speed of the culture war is moving so fast right now, it might all be forgotten by tomorrow as the next event hits.

Even trascripts are not be trusted. I already knew that when Donald J. Trump's speeches that contain asides weren't transcribed to include punctuation, making them seem even more rambly than they are, but this is more egregious than the ACLU misquoting RGB. The latter at least included square brackets, this transcript of Biden doesn't contain any clue it is altered.

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