Actress Ellen Barkin decided to attack Pres. Donald Trump over misspellings on Twitter. The “Animal Kingdom” matriarch called President Trump and his supporters “dumb” because, according to her, only those with low I.Q.s would ever misspell words at times.
Barkin the Bully
Ellen Barkin jumped right into caustic bullying to try and make her point about Trump.
“trump survivors, I mean supporters need to ask themselves only one question cuz the fact is irrefutable…Do you want a dumb president?” the “Ocean’s Thirteen” actress tweeted on Sunday.
Note that Barkin begins her Twitter thread by not capitalizing a) the first word in a sentence that’s also b) a proper noun. But I digress.
She continued, “By now, even you know you’re all pretty dumb so let me rephrase my question…Do you want a president who is as dumb or dumber than you? Think about it…”
Ah, calling the people you’re supposedly talking to “dumb” is always an indicator that a serious and honest question is coming. But anyway, here’s her big, brilliant point.
“The dude can’t spell,” she tweeted. “I’m not talking about big words like compulsory or obligatory but a single syllable word…moat. He spells it “moot”. But moot is already a ward. With a very different meaning. Can you see how something like this could crate a dangerous situation?”
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Does bad spelling mean you’re “dumb”?
First of all, it’s a 3rd-grade bullying tactic to mock someone for spelling words incorrectly. Anyone who’s gone through grade school, as a good speller or not, knows the fear of being asked to write on the blackboard and accidentally misspelling a word. Vice President Dan Quayle — not dumb — notoriously misspelled the word “potatoe” in 1992. Not to mention her disregard for the correlative increase in typos as people type on phones and other devices nowadays.
And her point about small spelling errors creating “a dangerous situation” is simply nonsensical. The fact is, our brains can fix a certain amount of misspelling. The Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University found that if enough of the letters are in the correct places, we can still make out the correct word.
When Trump tweeted out a since-deleted tweet lambasting the media for saying he wanted a “Moot stuffed with alligators,” everyone with a neuro-typical brain knew he meant “moat.” Because their brains automatically corrected for it in the context.
And anyway, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a notoriously poor speller by his own admission and lead a world power just fine. Maybe Ellen Barkin should read up before tweeting.
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Autocorrect fails
The other issue the “Animal Kingdom” actress failed to consider when she called Trump dumb is the issue of autocorrect on cellphones. Sure, autocorrect can be helpful at times, but it also is a miserable failure a lot of the time, too.
Even the best spellers who always re-read their tweets before hitting send can get undermined by the idiocy of an autocorrect fail. Or worse, when you know you’ve spelled a word correctly or close to it and it says there’s “No replacement found.” Where’s the “smartphone” superiority then?
Regardless of whether Donald Trump or anyone is a bad speller, Ellen Barkin assuming it’s due to low I.Q. or being “dumb” — which if she wants to get technical, means someone who cannot speak — is a poor argument. That she resorted to bullying and name-calling, and was so pleased by herself while doing it, indicates she’s the one who’s not too bright.
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