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Friday, April 20, 2012

Communication experimentation. Try this, and leave a comment of your impressions. Michele Bachmann prognosticating on oil pricing, when they are pumping all they can out of North Dakota and Twin Cities pump prices are kept high - with only one refinery in town but with us being the closest major metropolitan market to the drilling here, drilling now. Are we seeing sincerity, or something different? I look at blink rate ...

[UPDATE: THE PARAGRAPH AFTER THE QUOTE HAS BEEN REWRTTEN FOR CLARITY] First, read MinnPost, here, but hold off playing the embedded Shark Tank video.

Then read Forbes, here, on twelve detection clues.

Then go back to MinnPost and view the video with the sound off, not tracking the words, but the unspoken communication.

MinnPost in presenting the video quotes a part of the Bachmann presentation:

“This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem,” Bachmann said, adding later: “The president is a complete and utter fraud and a hypocrite on this issue, with all due respect to the president."

Again with sound off from the start, before listening/watching with sound on, make your best guess of where in that video Bachmann drops each of these little hummers - first "tar baby" in connection with President Obama, then later, when she, Bachmann, calls someone else a "total fraud" it again being Obama, "with all due respect" she says. Watch it more than once, sound off, to decide your best guess for when she is dropping each of the two statements. Then see how close you came from non-verbal cues to pinning down the particular "tar baby" text that has gained Bachmann what she intended to gain, widespread press attention to her, independent of the quality of her ideas; and then later the "total fraud" allegation being lodged by her, against another. See if you nail it, or close to it.

NOW: Who do you trust these days? What non-verbal bases have you for the decision?

Try the same thing with online Romney video. Then Obama. Then perhaps the same resources, with sound on, and see if the impression is entirely different. Remember the reporting about the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. Those listening on radio were far more inclined to say Nixon did a good job, or Nixon won the debate, than those who watched it on TV.

Think it over.

__________UPDATE__________
It is hard to say. Where on the time line I believe I see Bachmann over-emoting non-verbally: :15-:25, 1:24, 1:48-1:55 (major), 2:03, 2:30. Making a wholly blind guess, I never did have the sound on because her voice grates om me so badly, but that early at :15-:24 she dropped the "tar baby" line; and then at the 1:48-1:55 she did her major embellishment. And that the other early noted times were transitional and then 2:03 and 2:30 were wrap-up and repeat. In putting this up I realize I might be wholly wrong, and that she dropped phrases into things at less emotive points, but I don't mind going on record. Keep a post-it handy when you do the soundless video play, and note times you see as striking, or indicative of Bachmann using overly contrived non-verbal reinforcement of the words she speaks at different points in the segment. Then see what, at those times, her chosen words were.

Please, do give it a try. Then, as said before, think it over.

I am guessing that somewhere in her lifetime travels she took acting classes, (but never mastered the subtleties of being really good at it). In St. Louis or some place she may have lived but never or infrequently mentions and with acting training never formally showing on her resume, for obvious reasons. I envision in her younger days her taking part in a play or two, something like that - during high school, possibly but more likely later, and really getting an emotional high from it that carried over to her wanting to become a career on-stage-a-lot politician. Not that such a supposition fits into the story she tells, of God's choosing nudges that she first doubts but then humbly yet willfully follows, that scenario, the one she touts. With Reagan the acting background was public knowledge. With Bachmann it is just a feeling, and one with no actual known public evidence to back it up and contrary to the official resume. So, take it as absolute pure speculation that we are presented with an actress with a drive to attain public notice - to have a stage, to be seen as important.

Here is a video freeze frame screen capture, a mannerism, around the 1:48-1:55 time of the segment, from the MinnPost - Shark Tank item - Bachmann drawing her head back, pursing her lips - part of an over-emoting sequence after having leaned forward toward the camera 5-10 seconds earlier, then at about 1:54, a brief look away, etc.


_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
As to things that may have never appeared in the Bachmann resume or saga, or that have gotten dropped along the way, I could find only one hit per current search engine algorithms, for the story of her having earned college tuition gutting fish in Alaska. Aptly enough, here. My guess is gutting fish in Alaska is not the image to project after having served long enough in the House to lock in full pension rights. By then, some of the lobbyists you crave and court might find "gutting fish" to be too distant from their clients' needs. Gutting fish and working on the Bachmann family dairy farm in Wisconsin shortly after marriage to Marcus Bachmann were past staples in the prior upward mobility saga that is getting less and less play these days. Acting lessons could have happened, and been written out of the story from the politician's roots. I do not know if the press has ever presented the question to Bachmann, "Were you always this way, theatrical, or did you take lessons to get here?"

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
BET online covers the "tar baby" speech, here, with a general analysis that does not overemphasize the "tar baby" language, and with a last paragraph noting things Bachmann said of Obama which, though not mentioned in the BET coverage, could equally be said or more appropriately said of Bachmann herself.