Talk:BIMBO comment

"a BIMBO comment is where the speaker repeats and denies a negative, causing the listener to believe the opposite of what the speaker is trying to say." [1]

"a BIMBO comment is a negative phrase that causes the listener to believe exactly the opposite. ... particularly when another party ... has determined the negative words." [2] Example:

"I don't see myself as an ideological zealot." (Senator John Ashcroft)

This does not look like a case where the speaker intends to deceive the listener; rather more like a case where the speaker fails to persuade the listener.

Re G. W. Bush - "No, he's not a moron at all, he's a friend of mine." - Jean Chretien responding to reporters questioning him about the widely-reported comment by his director of communications re Bush: 'what a moron'.

Looking at Chretien's Cabinet and other friends, this was quite damning. But it may be a better example than the Ashcroft comment.

How about ... "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" ... =-]

Unwilling to promote the continuing association of this phrase with the linguistic construct, I'm moving the content to the talk page.

Does that mean this page has become the talk page? :) --Menchi

I don't disagree with you.
OK, I'm anon, so I'll pick up the baton. It's not the talk page, unless I'm wrong.

The mind does not hear the "not". It just hears does.

Exercise #1. Which wisdom is easier to follow?
(1) If you don't clearly state the premise, then it may not be inferred by those who do not easily grasp the concept.
(2) Keep It Simple! Use the KISS principle.

Exercise #2. Which of these two commands is more likely to be obeyed?
(1) Be home early!
(2) Don't be home late!

Exercise #3. Which statement is more easily digested?
(1) The human brain does not handle negative logic very well.
(2) The human brain is adept at processesing positive logic.

I don't know where the pejorative "BIMBO" came from. It's a little too close to "blonde" for my taste. But there exists a flip side to the BIMBO coin, and that flip side is related to human logic processing.

The fact is, those little massively-parallel cranial coprocessors have a fairly long latency, so everytime you must invert logic, your brain must pause and flip everything around. This is a bad thing for sound bites. Causes too much work for lazy-brain.

Edit at will. I needed to share this. I didn't mean to just keep talking.