I absolutely loved the Semiotic, Non-verbal Communication, and Linguistic Anthropology courses I took as an Undergraduate and Graduate Student with Myrdene Anderson and the late, great O. Micheal Watson. This summer, after I found out O. Michael was in hospice due to esophageal cancer, I tried to compose a very short note to send to him, and I did. I did compose it. It said, “Hi Mike, I just want to say hello, and thank you for all you taught me. Everything I ever write or do professionally is and will be influenced by your work on paper, film, in the classroom, and by the conversations we had through the decades.” He passed away before I got it to him. Strike while the iron is hot. I know that and I continue to learn painful lessons that bring adages to life.
I learned so many complexities from Mike; healthy irreverence, skepticism, laughter, and turning things on their heads can only happen in an enlightening or illustrative manner after lots and lots of reading, research, more reading, critical observation, analysis and discussion. Comedy takes talent, jest takes training. “Meme-ing” takes resonance with an iconic cultural element.
The cultural icon called up by the gaffs made by Romney is the impersonal, unconnected, and cruel boss. Mitt Romney is Ebenezer Scrooge without the visits of the reflective and instructive Ghosts.Beyond that basic semiotic truth we can deconstruct meaning unintentionally, we presume, carried by word choice. The language we use contains “libraries stuffed with binders full of personal information” about us. So today I am looking at several of Mitt’s phrases turned meme.
Binder Full of Women
Romney: “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, “Can you help us find folks,” and they brought us whole binders full of women.”
In fact, Romney did not direct women’s groups to bring him female candidates, Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein points out. A non-partisan collaboration of women’s groups called Massachusetts Government Appointments Project (MassGAP) was responsible for the effort in 2002, when the group’s leaders realized that women held only 30 percent of the top appointed positions in the state. From: HuffPo
The hub bub over the last day about binders has taken on a life of its own. But what Romney said is significant, not only because he did not go out in search of women to put in high positions, though he takes credit for it, but that this sort of expanded ego blurs the distinction between what happens around him and the actions for which he is actually responsible. In a world where all your needs are met, and religious practice and privilege has sent you to France rather than Vietnam, you have never had to worry about money, and your Church tells you that you are better than others and in fact have risen to a church leadership position where he could excommunicate people and make decisions that could not be questioned. It is easy to see how you could come to expect deferential treatment and see situations involving others in the abstract, The “women in binders” literally betrays the fact that Romney sees people as numbers, as statistics. This is probably related to what has been termed, “entitled Mormon male syndrome.”
If you take nothing else from this post, watch this video that discusses lots of issues that those folks who have not lived among Mormons might have. Thought there wasn’t time to discuss it, The White Horse Prophecy is also worth knowing about. Media certainly gave huge amounts of coverage to wacko theories about Obama, yet fails to discuss real questions that people would have if they knew about Mormonism and what many believe to be Romney’s motive for wanting to be President. If Obama had to show his birth certificate, I would certainly like to hear Romney answer the question as to whether he feels he would be fulfilling prophecy, if not doctrine – which White Horse is not, as a President.
Kill Big Bird
Romney: ““I’m sorry, Jim—I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to—I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That’s No. 1.”
Again, Romney is showing that he believes that as an upper class male, socio-economically and religiously (that he is entitled to make decisions for everyone else. He doesn’t say, “I do not think it would be prudent for the U.S. to continue general educational programming on television.” He says, “I’m not going to keep on spending money…” That, to me, seems to be a very dangerous attitude. It is grandiose and perhaps narcissistic. The country’s money would not be his to spend, when and if he should he become President, as this statement seems to reflect.
He is a man who had the authority over, as the stake president, over and advised an LDS member woman, who happened to be his children’s nanny, and who was not married, that if she did not give her child up for adoption, that he would excommunicate her. He would have no problem axing Big Bird.
47 Per Cent
Romney: “All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”
Again, he is seeing people as statistics, and his generalizations do not fit with the facts. But he tells his backers what they want to hear.
I Like to Fire People
Romney: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide this service to me.’”
That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? He enjoys his power. “The good service I need” is quite distinct from “good service.” Again it is all about what is going on in his head.
His phraseology exposes a gigantic, ego-centered world where he is inherently correct. Such an ego would be extraordinarily dangerous in as President of the United States.
When something goes viral, it does so for a reason. The deep cultural reason will probably not be evident to the people engaged in replication of the meme, but thankfully there is an intelligence that resides below conscious level and above the level of the individual. It may be a perverse sort of serendipity that Romney’s foot in mouth and the memes it engenders, while it does not show any semiotic savvy on his part, does give us another chance to examine the man, the mind, the ego – Mitt Romney.
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