“I am your proudest frog” and other rhetorical devices
Gov. Jim Justice’s State of the State speech is no disappointment, a folksy and meandering list of recent accomplishments, from a planned $2.7 billion Nucor steel plant to “good gracious, all of the different things for travel, all of the different things that are happening.” It recycles much of the language from a speech Justice gave last December to proclaim a Day of Hope and Prayer, in which he points to a frog made out of coal on his desk and explains that “If you’re not proud of your own pond then you’re really not much of a frog.” He declares that the people of his state “absolutely are faith-based” and reads a long prayer:
[…] We celebrate the unbelievable birth of Jesus Christ. But we’ve got to remember that really, and I’ve said this before, but our mountains are high. And the tops are high. And our valleys are on the valley floor with the beautiful, beautiful streams. Covid has stretched across all of us, has it not.
He is—I cannot stress this enough—reading this. He then proceeds to thank God for the example of Babydog:
You know I say it so many, many, many times. The little bulldog that I carry around with me makes everybody smile. And she loves everybody. And I don’t know of a message for all of us that could be better than just that. If we could some way, somehow make others smile.
The recent State of the State address is a similar meat hose of language, a garbled list of things done and hoped for, all padded with love, pride, frogs, and the word absolutely:
Absolutely believe that of all of the frogs, I am proud.
I really believe we don’t get out of holes that we don’t know where we are in the hole. I really believe the Biden Administration is absolutely driving me at least crazy. That’s all there is to it.
So I think all of those, whether it be our healthcare people, our first responders, I truly love you. I am the proudest frog. So I'll just go with that.
I told you a few minutes ago, I am your proudest frog.
Men in power love to have their little things, their little sayings. “I am your proudest frog” is a Southern one, the down-home, Sunday-school foil to ex-Governor Cuomo’s hard-nosed, Covid-patriarch schtick. The former thinks that there is dignity in corniness, the latter that he isn’t being corny at all.
Both are in fact corny, both are stupid, and both are probably more effective than anyone might like to admit. Justice may sound like Trump on xylazine, but his self-awareness does emphasize his regional loyalty and authenticity:
You know, a lot of people will sit here with teleprompters and read to you and I— You know, I think I speak the most common language and I talk about frogs and I talk about Babydog and everything else under the sun, really and truly you know that I am talking to you just like we were sitting in your house talking to you.
The proud frog and the odes to Babydog are interchangeable props for a simple message: I am one of you and I am doing a great job.
Justice holding up Babydog was pretty crazy, but no crazier than the rest of the bit. To think of kiss my heinie! as some anomaly or breach of decorum would be to miss the point. A frumpled, tortoiselike coal baron praying about Babydog and the power of smiles is way more unsettling than someone telling Bette Midler, a tired Hollywood type who won’t stop tweeting ancient memes about how stupid Republicans are, to kiss his dog’s ass. The point of these speeches is for leaders to brag and posture. Jim Justice gets to grin sweetly as everyone stands to applaud, gets to be your loving frog and Babydog Dad instead of a millionaire with unpaid taxes and cleanup violations. Our valleys are on the valley floor.
One could be forgiven for forgetting what this has to do with anything at all. Speaking of the site of his future plant, the vice president of Nucor Steel remarked: “of course it’s a field now, but in my mind I can see a steel mill.”
ben tapeworm