Crossroads Podcast: Somebody’s Supporters Got Trashed
When teaching my old Reporting for Public Media course, I used to stress that one of the biggest problems students would face when using direct quotations in their news stories was what I called “buried pronoun” syndrome.
Believe it or not, this grammatical puzzle is making news right now and, thus, played a key role in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast.
Why? Maybe this New York Post headline will ring a bell: “White House transcript attempts to alter Biden’s ‘garbage’ dig at Trump supporters in desperate bid to spin massive campaign blunder.”
We will focus on that, before discussing the role of religious, moral and cultural conservatives in this year’s White House race.
But back into the grammar trenches.
When people talk — especially when explaining long, complicated subjects — they rarely use lots of specific nouns and names. Instead, after making one specific reference (to former President Donald Trump, perhaps) the rest of their quotes will simply say “he.”
Journalists, however, have to make sure that readers and listeners can connect all of those vague pronouns to the specific name or noun (the antecedent) that came earlier. Thus, in paraphrased quotes, journalists often repeat the last name or use some kind of clarifying language, such as “the former president” or, in some publications, “orange man bad,” or worse labels.
In the controversial Joe Biden quote mentioned earlier, everything pivots on whether there is a clear antecedent for the word “his.” Here is a key part of a National Public Radio explainer with this headline: “Harris urged unity in her closing argument. Biden's 'garbage' line undercut that.”
Read carefully, because this gets complicated:
In a video call … with Voto Latino, Biden was making comments about the comic at the Trump rally when he said something that sounded like he was calling Trump supporters “garbage.”
The White House quickly issued a transcript seeking to put Biden’s comment in a broader context, insisting that Biden had said "supporter's," to refer to the comedian's quote and not "supporters."
"And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a 'floating island of garbage.' Well, let me tell you something. I don't -- I -- I don't know the Puerto Rican that -- that I know -- or a Puerto Rico, where I'm fr- -- in my home state of Delaware, they're good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter's -- his -- his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American."
Later, Biden attempted to clean up his remarks on x.com, saying that he was referring to the comedian’s joke at the rally.
OK, what is the antecedent for “his” in the term “his rally”?
That would be Trump.
While we are seeking clarity, which is hard in the throes of campaign combat, it’s also appropriate — even when dealing with a blunt joke — to ask if comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s “floating island of garbage” line was aimed at the citizens of Puerto Rico or referred to years of headlines about the island’s civic and environmental struggles with lots and lots of literal garbage.
It’s clear that “Trump” is the antecedent in the “rally” reference. It's clear that Hinchcliffe is the antecedent in the alleged line “his supporter's — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it's un-American." Is Biden saying that Hinchcliffe demonized Latinos or that Trump has done that?
The vast majority of listeners were almost certainly going to think that “his supporters” — like 99% of the strong language used by Democrats — was a reference to the former president.
This leads us to Lutheran Public Radio host Todd Wilken’s question: What does this firestorm have to do with religion?”
If “garbage” refers to ordinary Trump voters — including many conservative evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox Jews — then news consumers who have been alive during recent campaigns are probably going to connect this episode with similar moments of candor by other Democratic candidates.
Remember this 2008 classic from Barack Obama, care of The Guardian?
Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
That evolved into “God, guns and gays.”
Or how about this 2016 New York City fundraiser line from Hillary Clinton?
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
Jump in the time machine of your choice (I suggest this option, or this one) and check how religious conservatives responded to the content of those quotes.
Now, we have that vague “garbage.” Will this gaffe inflame any religious, moral and cultural conservatives who — after Trump team’s efforts to soften GOP stands on abortion and some other issues — may have been considering voting for a third-party nominee or even staying home?
This leads me to an essay that I recently wrote for the new website created by the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi: “Evangelicals again likely to give overwhelming support to Trump.” In that piece, I reused a typology that I created several years ago, while describing various “white evangelical” approaches to Trump.
In the podcast, I argued that the Biden rukus may affect SOME of them. Here is the key part of the Oberby essay:
Truth is, millions of white evangelicals will vote for Trump — again. But this doesn't mean that their views of him are identical. After the 2016 election, I created a typology describing six kinds of "white evangelical" voters in the Trump era. Here is an updated version of those camps:
(1) Many evangelicals have supported Trump from the get-go. He's their man and, if he is reelected, they believe everything will be GREAT.
(2) Others may have supported Trump early on, but they have always seen him as a flawed leader but the best available. They see him as complicated and evolving and are willing to keep their criticisms of his character and actions PRIVATE.
(3) Many evangelicals returned to the Trump tent when it became obvious that he would be the GOP nominee, again. They believe he is flawed, but they believe he can be trusted — at the very least — to protect their interests on First Amendment issues.
(4) There are many lesser-of-two-evils evangelicals who, while intensely skeptical about Trump, say that they cannot back Harris, with her fiercely liberal track record, under any circumstances. They remain convinced that religious conservatives must be willing to criticize Trump in public, for all the world to see.
(5) There are evangelicals who never backed Trump, and they never will. Many voted for third-party candidates in previous elections and will, again, or simply stay home.
(6) Finally, as illustrated by the press-friendly "Evangelicals for Harris" coalition, there are voices on the evangelical left who say, "No Trump, ever.”
No way that the “garbage” gaffe affects folks in the first two camps or the final two.
But what about the reluctant Trump voters trapped in the middle?
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