Sunday, May 11, 2008

Is "bearings" a slur?

Somewhat to my discomfort I have in the past defended both Bill Clinton and Hillary on this blog. It now seems to fall to me to defend America's great empty vessel as well.

Obama said recently (See e.g. here) that McCain had lost his "bearings". That has widely been interpreted as a slur on McCain's age. Perhaps I am missing something but I do not see that at all. Anyone of any age can lose their bearings at times. I have certainly lost my bearings on some occasions when I have been driving around a strange city and one can certainly lose one's bearings in the course of a long argument.

If Obama had said that McCain was losing his "marbles" that would certainly be an accusation of mental incompetence but I cannot see it for "bearings". I actually think that what Obama said was part of his usual politeness. I think he was just saying that McCain was making a forgivable mistake.

"Bearings" was I think originally a nautical term and referred to the direction that needed to be steered in navigation at sea.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How can anyone who only has the Race, say anyone has lost their bearing?

Mobius

Anonymous said...

What Obama was actually saying was that McCain has lost his way, (like feeble) meaning he's to old to figure things out. It was definitly a crack meant to bring negative attention to his age!

Anonymous said...

The truth is that it looks like the McCain campaign has decided to give the Democrats a taste of their own medicine.

Specifically they've examined the candidates references to him in great detail and found something they could take and inflate into an issue. It only means that the Democrats are facing a serious campaigner who's going to take the battle to them instead of shoring up the home defenses and waiting for the enemy to attack.

Longview

Anonymous said...

In college ROTC we used to have a bearing award that was given to cadets that lost their bearings and did something dumb. It was a large heavy bearing about the size of a softball that weighed a ton. The cadet had to carry it around to official ROTC functions as penance for a certain period of time or until it was awarded to someone else. I guess we were all guilty of age discrimination.