Letters to the Editor
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Face it - it's just socially condoned misogyny
Okay, so, according to Mr. Browning: "women have to be very careful they don't sound like what I call 'the voice of civilization.'"
I find this apparent rejection of civilization very disturbing. Why should we think it's a good thing to be "uncivilized": i.e. have a wasteful energy policy, a boorish foreign policy, a tax policy that rewards the unproductive and greedy, a government run by kleptocrats? Why do we go around trumpeting ourselves as the big force for civilization if we actively reject it?
Worse yet is the statement that women either have to sound like harmless little girls or sex objects to not evoke a negative reaction. Add the fact that, as little girls or sex objects, said women will not be taken seriously and the unmistakeable conclusionis that there is no apparent way for a woman to be taken seriously.
By the way, I like Sen. Obama's baritone, too - but I don't contrast him with Sen. Clinton - I compare it with the juvenile squeakings of the Current Occupant. Jeeze, seven year olds are more articulate - and have about the same timbre.
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No..
His policy positions give him the edge, you f*cking moron.
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Speak up
Who would deny that Obama has a very pleasing voice? Who would deny that of Orson Welles, Roland Barthes too had a fascinating voice, but to attribute Obama's success to his vocal cords is really over looking his use of it. He uses his voice to convey his thoughts.
He began by repeating "WE" as in "WE the people." Is there a more emotional phrase than that beginning to our Constitution?
His "Yes we can," the prelude to more complex ideas that he is now beginning to lay out one by one, the under-lying current being that the will of the people is what will carry these idea to completion in acts.
Just as Roosevelt's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself,"
was the beginning of the end of a long dark night for millions of Americans in a time of suffering and despair, what Obama is offering is an end to the feeling of helplessness and fear the Bush administration cultivated to obtain power and abuse of power.
His voice certainly helps, so much the better if it rouses from a long sleep citizens who will perhaps regain their own voices
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It's not just America who does this!! Did you guys miss the Hazda data???
Sheesh. Read much? This is why I hold no hope for humankind - seriously. Even when it's laid out in black,white, clear and clean, people see what they want to see. Or, what their DNA tells them to see. And hear, as it turns out.
After having spent what felt like a million years in grad school at the psych factory, I am actually aware of these responses to the medium rather than the message. And how the medium shapes the message.
Knowing this, I always do what I can to control for these things as I listen to a candidate, or anyone who's trying to convey content. It's hard to do. But, even then, what I get from Hillary is desperation and shiftiness. With a little hubris on the side. Her wagons are circled and it's an impermeable membrane - and I mean that in as a blocked 2-way street. What I get from Obama is a real zen-like confidence, which, to me, signals an ability to keep a cool head in a crisis, an ability to accept, consider and hold in his head while acting all stakeholders' views, and an ability to change or adapt as new information appears on the scene. And that's the kind of skill set I think is crucial for the next phase in the American experiment; something I simply don't see Hillary being able to do .
We all know that Hillary can turn nasty and is too prone to circle her wagons and push others out - from denying her "Village" ghostwriter any credit to her disastrous handling of health care "reform." She's a fighter because that's all she knows how to do. And, as I've said before, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. Hillary will have to fight, because A. it's all she knows how to do and B. not just Republicans but her own party will likely not be inclined to work with her AT ALL because of this.
I'm no Obamabot. I was originally for Edwards. But I think putting the Clintons back in the White House would be unmitigated disaster. Time to enter the 21st Century, folks. Baritone or no.
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Superficial is as Superficial Does
Forgive me for posting again so soon, but I had another (different) thought.
We're all (mostly) down on Americans for their superficiality, going by a candidate's voice, appearance, have-a-beer-with impressions. But seriously - what other information is the media giving us - other than which candidate is ahead at the moment?
Substantial news coverage has become rare, particularly on cable news, which is what people tend to watch, because they're (duh) watching cable channels. In most TV news, the focus is on gossipy trivia and cattiness. It's facts-optional messaging.
Given this is all most of us hear, what other bases do we have for making a decision?
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Churchill is a terrible example
If you listen to recordings of Churchill, he has a terrible voice and a pronounced lisp. "We shall fight them on the beech-thes, we shall fight them on the sthores... We shall never thurrender!"
In fact, it is so disconcerting to listen to that one has to really pause and wonder how he inspired people in the same way when you watch film of Hitler you think "why didn't he seem crazy to the people in the audience?"
Different traditions, different technologies, different cultural expectations all play a part in this. Reducing this to some universal love of a deep voice is sophistic (like almost all commentary published in this country).
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Kennedy May Have Had Coaching, But Nixon Still Had the "Better" Voice
It is often pointed out that television viewers thought Kennedy had won the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, but radio viewers thought Nixon had won. Usually, this thesis is advanced to prove that the better looking Kennedy had the advantage on television. What the thesis ignores is Nixon's fine voice, and the advantage it gave him on radio. I happened to hear one of his State of Union speeches on radio -- the one where he was endorsing environmental reforms that would get him drummed out of today's GOP, and quoted T.S. Eliot -- which might also get him drummed out, and was struck by the quality of his voice.
As someone suggests to Frank Skeffington, the hero of "The Last Hurrah," he could have had a career in braodcasting if politics hadn't worked out for him.
Other studies of reactions to voices suggest that people pay more attention to female voices than male voices, or at least men do. The Air Force tried male voices on audio warning systems inside aircraft, but discovered that they tended to be dismissed or ignored for too long. The recordings were switched to female voices and reaction times improved.
During the the Battle of Britain, most of the controllers directing the fighters to the oncoming Lufwaffe over the radio were female. The movie "Stairway to Heaven" even used the pilot-controller communication as the premise to set up a rather elaborate romance between pilot David Niven and controller Kim Hunter.