To follow up on my last post about voices and politics, let me comment on what I think about the voices of our two main Presidential candidates — in sum, I think that they are both horrible. Well, I always found Trump’s voice just as annoying as everything that he says. Actually, it might be the way that he uses his voice to say what’s on his mind — his inflections and tonal modulations just scream out “BIG BLOWHARD WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT”.
As to Hillary Clinton, her speech-voice is like fingernails on blackboards, amplified 1000 times. I know that a lot of other men don’t enjoy her angry, screechy tones, and that a lot of women and progressive men have written articles calling us sexists for our vocal preferences. Well, that may be true; but it still doesn’t make Hillary’s speeches any easier to listen to. The ironic thing is that I’m old enough to remember hearing Hillary speak (on TV or radio, I never saw her in person — I didn’t work for any of those big financial firms who paid her to talk), back when she was First Lady or Senator from New York. She seemed a lot easier to take back then. Even her 2008 primary campaign voice didn’t seem especially offensive.
I believe that Ms. Clinton has recently tried to keep up vocally with Bernie Sanders, who was trying to sell the notion of revolution in his campaign. And to be honest, I didn’t particularly enjoy the “take to the streets” implications of Bernie’s voice. But I’m sorry — Hillary Clinton just can’t do Bolshevik revolutionary as well as Bernie can. You’d think that she could now calm down on the podium and » continue reading …