【词汇大师】怀念大师William Safire（2/2）

英语自学网

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怀念语言大师William Safire。老人不仅是语言学家，更是一位政治家，没有人能够忘记他为美国政府作出的杰出贡献。
TIPS
本篇仅为William Safire的话，没有主持人的话。
HINTS
Barack Obama
National Association
Advancement of Colored People

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"A candidate has to have ambition and a real burning desire to become whatever he's running for. And that's called fire in the belly. And it was a problem that Barack Obama had, because he was essentially cool, intellectual. He actually talked in paragraphs. So there was a feeling that he didn't have fire in the belly. He recognized that and worked out a phrase that had a resonance in the black community, because it was used by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 'Are you fired up? Are you ready to go?' And they would shout back 'Ready to go!' And that gave the feeling that, indeed, he had fire in the belly.
"You've got to remember that the most important thing about political language is its vividness, it's calling up of an image in your mind. In the nineteen thirties, someone who left under great criticism, it was said that he left in a hail of dead cats. You can envision a cartoon really of a man running with cats being thrown at him.
"And economists, political economists, also came up with a feline image. Cat lovers don't like this phrase, but when the stock market goes down and down and down, and then comes back up a little, they call that a dead cat bounce. When a cat hits the ground and bounces back, it doesn't mean it's alive, it just means that was what we'd call a sucker rally.“