"She's already working on my brain.
I only looked in her eyes but I picked up something I can't explain.
I'm picking up good vibrations,
She's giving me excitations,
Good, good, good vibrations."
Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys, 1966
Not for Elizabeth Warren. There really was something about her.
Too many people got a bad vibe.
A year ago two Massachusetts political professionals were warning me. "Warren isn't all that popular."
They came to this conclusion reluctantly. Both know Warren well and like her. She share the same politics and want her to succeed. She won't, they predicted.
One of them, Larry DiCara, said that "Her ability to relate to regular working people in middle America is almost zero. She doesn't connect with blue collar people I talk to, and I talk to a lot of them." DiCara did not cite misogyny. He cited her vibe to working people. She turns them off.
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| Trigoboff: Indignation |
A college classmate, Chip O'Hare, wrote me insisting it wasn't misogyny. She gave the "impression that she was the smartest person in the room, the personification of elitism and had all the answers. Her speaking style was strident and somewhat preachy (sorry!). Even my wife grew to dislike her and she likes everybody!"
A reader and sometimes commenter on this blog, Michael Trigoboff, is a Computer Science professor at Portland Community College. His Ph.D. in Computer Science at Rutgers led him to Xerox in Palo Alto, the place where the modern feel of computers--their user interface, their "vibe"--was created. He had a long, successful career in the industry.
He observes politics. He notes that computer programmers are "highly obsessive" and need to enjoy getting every detail right. Their work is literal. The denoted meaning--the exact written code of a program--is the message. Yet, in politics, it is the opposite, not about denoted language. What is important is human, intuitive, wordless, and subjective.
His brief Guest Post offers one word impressions, observations consistent with the advice I give to candidates, the head's up that at most voters will know seven things about them when they vote, and the most important will be a single impression of who they really are.
Michael Trigoboff Guest Post
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| Trigoboff |
"This is much deeper than “misogyny.”
A very smart political analyst (I forget who) once said that a good way to evaluate a candidate is to watch them on TV with the sound turned off. That way you can tune in on the emotional message they are sending without being distracted by the often irrelevant (politically speaking) content of their thoughts.
There was definitely something I didn’t like about Elizabeth Warren. With the sound turned off, it was like she was constantly berating me. My wife felt the same way.
Find some video and try it yourself. Here’s what I saw,:
Warren: indignation
Bernie: anger
Biden: compassion
Klobuchar: warmth (I sent her $$$)
Pete: robotic
Kamala: uncertainty
Booker: unfocused manic intensity
Trump: imperial scorn."
A very smart political analyst (I forget who) once said that a good way to evaluate a candidate is to watch them on TV with the sound turned off. That way you can tune in on the emotional message they are sending without being distracted by the often irrelevant (politically speaking) content of their thoughts.
There was definitely something I didn’t like about Elizabeth Warren. With the sound turned off, it was like she was constantly berating me. My wife felt the same way.
Find some video and try it yourself. Here’s what I saw,:
Warren: indignation
Bernie: anger
Biden: compassion
Klobuchar: warmth (I sent her $$$)
Pete: robotic
Kamala: uncertainty
Booker: unfocused manic intensity
Trump: imperial scorn."
5 comments:
Over the weekend, I watched a few minutes of the first Trump vs Hillary debate with the sound turned off. When Trump was speaking, Hillary kept looking at him with a kind of uncertain look on her face. When Hillary was speaking, Trump never looked at her and had a scornful expression on his face.
That’s where I got the phrase “imperial scorn” for Trump.
I can understand why those words were used for reactions to the candidates. I react to most the same way. (The biggest difference is that Pete didn’t seem robotic to me, but “safe” — the one I’d want watching over our country. Confident but not cocky, not angry — yet standing firm. Wow!). But in regards to Elizabeth’s indignation... I didn’t like it, but it was a whole hell of a lot better than Bernie’s anger. Yet Bernie has lots of supporters. It appears that too many people find a vibe in women that is just not right, whereas if she had the same “vibe” as a man (like Bernie), they’d be even more against her. Though I had several I liked better than her (started with Kamala, then Pete, and would have also felt pretty good with Amy), as things moved along, I figured it was especially a shame that Bernie didn’t drop out, because I began to think Elizabeth might be the best to beat 45, if she could only get that nomination.
"This is much deeper than misogyny."
Are funny looking eyebrows, and a high voice, deeper than misogyny? Or is the comment the very example of misogyny?
Bernie and Warren seem to be almost the same person in mannerism and physical oddities. The only difference I see is that one is a woman and one is a man. Although I like them both, I personally resonate with Warren more.
Is Bernie not indignant? He is as much or more so than Warren is. I actually like that about both of them. Why did the author use different words to describe each of the candidates?
Sometimes prejudice is not purposeful, sometimes it is unconscious, inherent bias.
I think it is important for us to ask ourselves if inherent bias is playing a part in our perceptions.
As a side note, I want the smartest person in the room to be president.
Why did the author use different words to describe each of the candidates?
Sometimes prejudice is not purposeful, sometimes it is unconscious, inherent bias.
I think it is important for us to ask ourselves if inherent bias is playing a part in our perceptions.
Once you ask yourself the question, how do you answer it? It seems to me that it would lead to incapacitating levels of self-doubt.
I wouldn’t do that to myself, and I wouldn’t advocate that anyone else do it to themselves.
Hmmm...I thought we left personality contests behind after high school elections. Guess not. Sorry planet earth.
Andy Seles
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