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08.29.2008 12:12 pm

Obama’s word cloud

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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Post-Dispatch graphic designer Erica Smith created a “word cloud” out of the 150 most repeated words from Obama’s speech Thursday night. If you aren’t familiar with a “word cloud,” it’s a pretty cool concept better seen than described:

obamawordcloud.jpg

8 comments

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I think someone is in another kind of cloud, perhaps with an illegal smile.

— selwyn
12:30 pm August 29th, 2008

Obama’s words: “I am my brother’s keeper.” But so you think he could spare a few extra bucks for his brother in Kenya living in a hut? Talk about more Democrat hypocrisy. Of course as typical this story has gone unreported by the pathetic P-D newsroom because of their disgusting left-wing bias.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24224774-2,00.html

Well, at least I have decided to set my expectations for the P-D very low.

— A CENTRIST
1:19 pm August 29th, 2008

Hey centrist lets try not to criticize when you start your sentence with, “but so.” If he was sharing money with his brother people would just say it is his welfare tendencies. All republicans do is pick on Obama because you are a group of scared people who, in their massive insecurity, chose a one term governor as a running mate.

— tj
2:33 pm August 29th, 2008

The most often word in Obama’s speech was “I”.

Funny how I don’t see it in this word cloud.

— Toad
3:46 pm August 29th, 2008

Toad…
You must have missed the part when he said this isn’t about him.

— Garrison
3:52 pm August 29th, 2008

Sorry about the grammer TJ, sometimes I am not perfect. Garrison, after the 320 “I’s,” Obama then said at the end, “This is about you.” Good thing he cleared that up. Actually, I was thinking that Obama is just waiting so he can take more money from me to give to his brother. You know how generous Democrats are with other people’s money, but not their own.

— A CENTRIST
9:09 pm August 29th, 2008

Would that Acentric and others of the ilk used the same rigorous standards regarding grammar and word usage in application to their presumptive (very presumptive) nominee Senator McCain.

If you want to nit-pick (aggressively so it seems), in this type of word counting procedure (to which I have already registered objections as being essentially meaningless), then articles of speech “a”, “an”, “the”; and, conjunctions, “and”, “but”, “or”, would represent the greatest number of occurences. However, since I listen to people present regularly, the most frequent occurences seem to be “um”, “ah”, “like you know”, and other pause fillers.

The two words in the above cloud that stand prominently are “American Promise”.

Before the predictable come-back, usually when one gives a first person speech, especially when one is giving a list of actions one is proposing, the word “I” is usually involved.

In accusatory posts and speech it is the word combination of “I” usually followed by “You” or the more vague and threatening (but irrelevant) “Them” or “They” or “Their”.

If we were to apply the same criterion to Toad’s 10 word sentence, the word “I” is 10% of the sentence. If we were to take Acentric’s most recent post, then out of 67 words total, the word “I” occurs 3 times, “me” once, “you” twice and “their” once, “he/his” 3 times and “money” twice. This would give the one paragraph of 13.4% personal pronouns with “money” being the only noun to occur more than once. What does this say? One less generous than I might conclude that Acentric is more concerned about money than anything else.

Again, “word clouds” and word counts do not tell anyone much of anything without the context and structure. But then again the “word cloud” reduces the need for anyone to actually have to think and reason.

— RHarnack
9:25 am August 30th, 2008

The yappers from the Axis of ignorance have chimed in again but, no matter. The clouds will be lifted from America’s eyes and the will see that John McCain is STILL too Ignorant to be President!

http://dangerousintersection.org/2008/08/04/15-reasons-john-mccain-is-too-ignorant-to-be-president/

— Tim Hogan
5:15 pm August 30th, 2008