Did You Know...

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

Did you see Obama’s pitch for Cap & Trade on Tuesday night… er, I mean his speech stressing the importance of plugging the hole and cleaning up the Gulf? I didn’t, because I was distracted by a funny looking oven mitt and a shiny ball bearing, but it’s a good thing I didn’t see it because I wouldn’t have understood Obama’s genius anyway:

(CNN) — President Obama’s speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night’s speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence “added some difficulty for his target audience,” Payack said.

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: “That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s secretary of energy.”

“A little less professorial, less academic and more ordinary,” Payack recommended. “That’s the type of phraseology that makes you (appear) aloof and out of touch.”

Obama’s problem isn’t that people listening at an 8.5 grade level can’t understand his words and phrases — it’s that 2nd graders can understand his inactions and the government’s insane bureaucratic delays.

Lucky for Obama then that with each brilliant speech he gives, fewer and fewer of us morons are tuning in — Tuesday night’s “green energy” sales pitch included.

In order to fully comprehend an Obama speech, you must be an Obama Scholar.

**Written by guest-blogger Doug Powers

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