Quote:
Originally Posted by transplant99
As much as you dismiss those that won't understand the "loaded question" reference that Nenshi posted, they are still his constituents as much as those that do understand what it all means.
As an example this was needed to be explained to a 14 year old boy, who is a huge fan of Nenshi and follows him religiously on twitter. He came to me with it as i was watching football yesterday and even after a bit of a discussion and explanation, he was still somewhat confused as to the context. This is a child who saw his mother abused by his father when he was young.
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In other words, our political representatives should campaign to the lowest common denominator; essentially, treat the electorate as if they're fourteen years old.
This is exactly the problem with the present political model that's furthered by sensationalist shock-jock hacks like Levant: you must not confuse or frighten the plurality of potential voters who are too dumb or too lazy to figure out what you actually stand for or what you're actually saying. Instead, they'll listen to the loudest voice willing to put the issue in the simplest terms possible, accuracy being of no issue.
If it were me I'd rephrase the question to Ezra as "why do you think your audience members are all complete idiots and can't figure out when an oft-used phrase is being used rhetorically?"
Really the way for Nenshi to respond to the issue would've been in a longer-than-140-characters editorial that could be referred to any time any question came up. "The mayor addressed that in his piece in the Herald, I'll refer you to those comments."