No, it’s not a typo or a grammatical error. David’s recent post about Phil Johnston’s “remarkable” quote about Gabrielli reminded me of what I personally found most remarkable about his comments at the convention: has anyone ever heard a political speaker who was freer of affect when making what present themselves, semantically, as “enthusiastic” statements? A fellow delegate turned to me and said, “It’s like a Saturday Night Live routine.” When, following Deval Patrick’s speech, Johnston said, “I told him after he finished that he reminded me of the speeches of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King,” he had the tone of someone proofreading an actuarial table. The disjunction sent my mind associating: “What do Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. have in common?” Hmm, does this mean that Phil would like to see Deval Patrick (politically) knocked off, too? Especially given Phil’s charitable activities on behalf of the Gabber, one has to wonder…
Sorry, but I don’t see how Johnston wins this one.
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If he smiles while introducing one candidate and not another, he’s skewered. Heck, if he gets an itch where he can’t scratch and he griamces while up there, people will read into it.
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His only safe option was being a robot. A rather convincing one, at that. It felt that he decided that he didn’t want to risk unequally distributing emotion, so he decided to give out none at all. Not pretty, but exceedingly fair.
My take on Johnston’s comment: I love RFK and MLK as much as the next Democrat, but we need some more recent heroes.