Hurricane Victims Testify
Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 09:08amNew Orleans residents tell Congress how they were abandoned by the government during the hurricane. One woman compares her experience to being in a concentration camp, and is chastened by a Florida Republican who says, “Not a single person was marched into a gas chamber and killed.” Glad we got that all cleared up. Sigh.
ivon on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 10:15 am
The Floridian Republican is right. References to WW2 to describe discomfort are made way too often.
Ms Hodges needs a history lesson or two.
freakgirl on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 10:28 am
I don’t know. I know what you mean, but these people have lived through their own personal disaster and it seems that it devalues what has happened to them by questioning their verbal skills.
ivon on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 10:54 am
True, but their lack of verbal skills devalues what happened to at least 6 million people.
Just telling what actually happened would paint a better picture than comparing it to a concentration camp.
GeekBoy on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Isn’t that sniggling over language, though?
When somebody says, “My drive home was a nightmare,” you don’t correct them by asking how they could have possibly been driving while asleep.
When somebody says, “My wife’s going to kill me for coming home late,” you don’t offer to call the police to prevent a potential homicide.
When somebody is on a losing softball team, and they say, “I feel like I’m on the Titanic,” you don’t point out that they’re in the middle of a baseball field and not literally on a sinking ship.
It’s analogy. It’s exaggeration. Is it politically incorrect? Probably. But there’s a good chance that, as you say, this woman “needs a history lesson” that she never received. She may not realize she’s devaluing anything. But I can guarantee that the Florida Republican knew exactly what HE was doing. And it had nothing to do with being outraged by a “concentration camp” analogy.
Want to throw somebody off during a debate about something? Correct them when they pronounce a word wrong — it makes them feel stupid, puts them on the defensive, and shakes their focus on the topic at hand.
Having said all that, Ivon, I agree that WW2 references are too often used. But for better or worse, Hitler, the Holocaust, and concentration camps are part of the human vocabulary now. I say it’s better to remember these horrible concepts and reference them inappropriately than to forget them entirely and risk having humanity repeat them. And if comparing Guantanamo or that stadium in New Orleans to a “concentration camp” decreases the odds that we repeat such acts of inhumanity like that ever again, I’m more than willing to let people overexaggerate.
ivon on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 3:54 pm
“It’s analogy. It’s exaggeration.” Your examples, yes. But this woman was speaking before a congressional panel, which I don’t think is the right place to overexaggerate.
And her “I’m going to call it what it is” tells me she actually thinks that what she went through was as bad as being in a camp.
You may call it sniggling over language, but I think her story loses a lot of credibility when she uses words like that. If she tells it like this, how are we supposed to know how bad it actually was?
GeekBoy on Wednesday, December 07, 2005 at 4:22 pm
Yeah, but wasn’t her analogy used within the context of giving actual details about her experience? It’s not like she stepped up to the microphone, said, “It was like a concentration camp,” then walked away. The concentration camp thing was a figurative addition to the literal specific details she was giving about “stranded senior citizens”, “scowling rednecks”, and “pointed guns”. Presumably, those details told Congress how bad it actually was.
You quote her on the “I’m going to call it what it is” line, but ignore her very next sentence: “If I put a dress on a pig, a pig is still a pig.” Unless she’s actually a fashion designer for pigs, this sentence tells me that: 1) she’s using figurative language at this point; and 2) she’s not very good at using figurative language, because that metaphor sucks!