The overwhelming idiocy of America’s obsession with “gaffes”
"most of what gets called “gaffes” are not at all gaffes. They’re expressions of beliefs and political and ideological positions that turn out to be intensely unpopular or offensive to a segment of the population, and the press, usually so careful in our language, tosses them in the same linguistic barrel as when Palin said “refudiate” or when President George W. Bush talked about “how hard it is to put food on your family.”
Take last week, when Jeb Bush offered that Americans need to work longer hours. The proposal was immediately attacked by Democrats, and Bush was forced to address the comments later that same day after the swift and substantial backlash. Bush’s rush to clarify his unpopular comments was reported on seemingly uniformly as an effort to mend his “gaffe,” as though he simply misspoke or exhibited the sort of clumsy speech his brother is known for. Major political news outlets assigned the word “gaffe” to Bush’s proposal–Politico, the Boston Herald, Business Insider, The Hill, and Vox, among others.
Bush was presenting his solution to the anemic recovery after the financial crisis of 2007-08. Bush’s remedy includes Americans working longer hours, a point he reiterated in his clarification. The word “gaffe” seems to have been so widely assigned to the initial comments simply because they offended wage-working Americans and became an early weapon for Democrats against the GOP front-runner. But it’s not a gaffe if it’s a repeated belief. And it’s not a gaffe just because a well-considered belief turns out to be an unpopular way to view Americans from someone in a position of wealthy political aristocracy."
