Barack Obama Journeys From "Yes We Can" to the Imperial "I"

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Avoid The great I Am at your own peril.
There is none greater or likened unto The Great I Am.
The Great I Am is The Truth; The Great I Am is The Light; The Great I Am is The Way.
The Great I Am is I Am.

mikael hannes zuntag of RI 2:51PM December 31, 2009

"Do you at least have the decency to be embarassed?"
being preached to about decency and sense of shame & embarassment by a liberal is the height of hilarity!hahahahahaha

P. Lamont of NH 8:12PM November 16, 2009

It's apparent that liberals are still spewing hatred for George H. W. Bush, however, keep in mind that he did his duty of keeping us safe as required by the Constitution for the Commander-in-Chief. President Obama doesn't get it, He's never served, has never run a business, and hasn't produced a birth certificate to prove that he is authorized to be President. As a Christian, i know that he is one of God's children, but as a President, and leader, he leaves much to be desired. It is written, "by their fruits you will know them".

John L. Haitgh of PA 3:27PM June 16, 2009

"Lee S of DE" is correct in one aspect--noting that "I am not the only one who noticed" is another way of trying to cash in on someone else's observation. But this story is much worse than that. George Will has been notoriously fact-challenged in most of his recent columns. I don't mean that he simply lacked the facts to support his views--he simply made them up or completely perverted their meaning. Mary Kate Cary (along with Stanley Fish) simply confirm that it is all too easy to fall for the recency fallacy. The trouble is, all three trumpeted a theory could have been easily verified and proved WRONG.
Several commentators, including at least one prominent linguist, performed a simple analysis--they looked at Obama's ACTUAL speeches and counted the ACTUAL number of times the President used first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my). Turns out that the frequency of use of these pronouns has not gone up one bit since inauguration. In fact, the inauguration speech was more heavily laden with "I" than any of the subsequent speeches.
But that's not the worst of it! Obama's proclivity for the use of first-person pronouns is actually substantially lower than that of Bill Clinton. AND George W. Bush was guilty of "I"-dropping at nearly twice the rate of Obama (and higher than Clinton). The researchers did not bother going back to GHW Bush's speeches--the point was quite clear. There is no substance to this story!
There is a simple message here for Mary Kate Cary: if you rush out with a me-too piece, you will look like a fool too! If you want to stand out in the crowd of idiots, do something that George Will never will--apologize!
To twist the irony further, the version of the story now online is "corrected"--apparently, it was not corrected for facts.

Victor S of MA 5:43PM June 10, 2009

So, you simply lifted a story idea from George Will and Stanley Fish. You didn't bother to do any fact-checking whatsoever. Never mind that their ideas had been thoroughly debunked on a publically available source. And you passed off blatant falsehoods as homespun truths. Really, I just want to know if this makes you blush at all.

Lee S of DE 3:48PM June 10, 2009

EPIC FAIL. It's a good job you don't get paid to write this.

Dave of KS 8:41AM June 10, 2009

By the way, 'we' isn't second person; both 'we' and 'I' are first person, but 'we' is plural where 'I' is singular. There doesn't seem to be much concern for the facts here though, so I suppose it doesn't really matter that the grammatical terminology is also wrong.

Brett Reynolds 8:17AM June 10, 2009

The trouble with this post is that it's factually incorrect. Geez. Doesn't anybody check the facts any more?! Go to the linguistics Web site
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1495#more-1495
and read about statistical analyses of speeches by Obama, Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43.
You'll read statements like "So, in point of fact, Obama's inaugural address used the first-person singular 8 times less often, in percentage terms, than Bush 41's inaugural did," with charts and numbers to back up the assertions.
Or this: "...in that GM takeover speech ... Obama used first-singular pronouns at a rate of merely 1.7%. Compare George H.W. Bush's Radio Address to the Nation on the Economy (2/22/1992), where first-person singular pronouns achieved the rate of 4.5%, more than two and a half times more frequent."
Remember SCIENCE? Remember FACTS? It should be a crime to mindlessly repeat/report untruths.

Fiddler of WA 7:26PM June 09, 2009

HW Bush used "I" more than twice as often as Obama in his Inaugural Address and first press conference (1.7% and 5.48% of total word count respectively, versus 0.2% and 2.65% for Obama):
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1495
Just because a thousand pundits repeat an ill-founded claim about language to support their political views, doesn't make that claim correct. Say what you want about HW's and Obama's attitude toward governance, just for heaven's sake *try* to be accurate when making quantifiable claims (such as how often he says "I").

Kate of NY 5:38PM June 09, 2009

Unemployment continues to raise. We bailed out GM and Chrysler and they still went bankrupt. We are now 11 trillion in debt. If this is success what would failure look like.

William Proulx of CA 3:22PM June 09, 2009