Obama’s sentiment about sediment on 60 minutes…

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Chalk this post up to my interest in how the English language is used (and misused). I thought college linguistics was fascinating. I guess my fascination with presidential speech patterns is somewhat understandable.

Bear in mind that the last president particularly drove me to distraction with his misusing or mispronouncing about every thirteenth word that he uttered. I suppose I’m used to being hyper sensitive to listening to the chronic mistakes GW made.


I’m guessing most folk probably didn’t even notice this and if they did wouldn’t care but the other night (Sunday to be exact) on 60 minutes President Obama interchanged two words. He was talking about Guantanamo, Cheney and the creation of more anti American “sediment.” He clearly had meant to say “sentiment.” Many people mix those two words without realizing it, just take a look at the internet.
For the record: sediment is the matter that settles to the bottom of a liquid, while sentiment is a feeling, emotion, attitude or opinion towards something.

However, that wasn’t the interesting thing… everybody makes mistakes and the rest of the interview was pretty coherent. Afterwards I listened to what the different station’s pundits had to say about the 60 Minutes segment and they varied from “it was awful he laughed inappropriately at the economic crisis” to “he was informative, sincere and spoke directly to the issues.” Of course no one mentioned the mistake because it’s not a very important one in the scope of a speech.

I had to laugh though because when I got to Rachel Maddow afterwards they had shown the clip where Obama misstated as part of a story on Cheney. When Rachel spoke about it she very clearly enunciated the word “sentiment” with a smile. I’m pretty sure she noticed the switch. So is that the jaws of the liberal/socialist/left leaning media monster that we keep hearing about being too gentle on Obama? So she’s mean to that nice, sweet hearted old Dick Cheney while she’s indulgent towards that contemptible, nasty Barack Obama. Mildly amusing. And not to be soft on Rachel but she was a Rhodes Scholar and has a doctorate in political science. I think she can take it.

If it had been Bush it would have just been simply another day, another speech, another mangled word, because after all George W was certainly our most “misunderestimated” president.
Wait what’d he say?

G’night,

Laura