I tweeted the other day about the Democrats’ newest up and coming “Identity Politics” obsession Pete Buttigieg, who either seems to be grossly exaggerating his linguistic bona-fides or the DNC Main Stream Media is doing a super duper hyper-inflation of his true abilities in this arena.
In the meantime, he is insidiously romancing the Left in his 2020 Presidential Candidacy with about just as much puffery and ballyhoo as the left complains of President Trump. Of course, when tall stories come from a smooth talking small town Harvard graduate mayor and/or from his minyans, who claim this alleged fluency in multiple languages, then it’s just seems so much all the more “special”.
Mr. Buttigieg speaks in broad sweeping platitudes and seems to have almost no clear policy proposals or unique ideas at all, except the same worn-out broken record-like talking points that today’s Democrats have thoroughly ossified. Their group think and sickeningly saccharine-like fawning over him is nauseating,– to put it mildly. I think I’d rather go back to seeing Beto O’Rourke’s ridiculous live stream of his teeth-cleaning. At least during that video, he was basically tacet!
That aside: as someone who lived in Europe for several years, who truly does speak four languages fluently for real (German Dutch, French & English) and who has worked as an interpreter/translator in all of them, I can tell you claims of Mayor Pete’s linguistic virtuosity are most likely total poppycock.
He probably has taught himself a few phrases or basic conversation in some of the languages he claims. Fair enough, but that is NOT fluency. He might possibly speak one or two fluently based on his background, or life experiences, but at this point only Maltese and English seem fit the bill in this scenario, given his father’s origins.
The main stream media’s silly oohing and aah-ing about his tweet in French vis-a-vis the tragic fire in the Paris Cathédrale de Notre Dame is laughable. Anyone today can construct sentences in foreign languages using Google Translate. Let’s see him truly conduct an interview in the languages listed in his repertoire. If he can, then I will gladly stand corrected.
Real language fluency is a skill that takes years of hard work and/or study and it is something that occurs when and if a person has:
1. been brought up in multilingual household, and/or
2. has studied languages or linguistics academically in a serious manner and/or
3. the person has lived in multiple countries abroad.
None of these, except those Maltese origins of his father, would seem to give a scintilla of credence to Mr. Buttigieg’s, or his publicist’s seemingly outrageous claim of being fluent in seven, yes, seven languages.
The Left and the main-stream media’s gullibility in this arena is quite striking since they are constantly calling out President Trump for his frequent hyperbole and embellishments. However in this instance they are all-believing and spinelessly supine in their reckoning of their newly beloved, anointed Mayor Pete. He, like most politicians so often do, is exhibiting typical political self puffery.
This behavior is very similar to what the current President often does, yet he never gets a pass for what is often de rigeur in the political landscape. The only difference is, Mayor Pete fits perfectly into the shibboleths of a particular identity political group that today’s Democrats adore: i.e. he is a fancy-dancy homosexual, which is one of the Left’s adored identity groups and he flaunts his exaggerations more elegantly than Mr. Trump. Chris Matthews probably has already had many more “thrills” up his leg moments from Mayor Pete than he did when then lightweight Senator Barack Obama was running for President in 2008.
The Left so often dislikes parvenus, as they frequently define the current President, but they are forever enchanté with those who stylize and spin their political speak with the most assiduous of élan! As usual, they devour this type of dainty dandy-like nonsense with a ravenous appetite.
Thoughts from an academic populist 