I've sat and watched Florida Representative Frederica Wilson over the past week and comical sequences or bickering with the White House. Then this 'empty barrel' verbiage came up.
Military people will use the term once in a while....but it's mostly the guys with history degrees. I've probably heard this term used at least a dozen times in my life.
It tends to lead back to the 1600s/1700s and be used for a ship which has a high number of barrels onboard which are empty. So as the ship rocks back and forth....creaking with hundreds of noises....the empty barrels will bump against each other and simply add to the noise. A full barrel would have stability and not bump against the wall of the ship. Eventually the ship term made it's way to land-usage and people would identify others who talked a lot....as 'empty barrels'.
Representative Wilson went full turbo after that usage and claimed that this was racist in nature....mostly because she went to the dictionary and read it there. I think she made up her mind that 'empty barrel' meant something over the slave-trade but it just doesn't fit that way.
Back in 2009...the 17th district of Florida (Wilson's district) was a 50-50 blend of Republicans and Democrats. In 2008....Obama ran and only got around 48-percent of the local vote. In 2012, after the Census results and redrawing of the Florida map (for more representation)....Obama got 86-percent of the vote. Yes, it's a gerrmandered-district....heavily designed for someone like Wilson.
The problem I see here for the news media is that every time you get Frederica Wilson up for a national interview....some Democrats watch the exchange and just shake their heads. She's like some character dreamed up on WWE-wrestling. If the Democrats were all hyped up to show intellectual landscape....with Wilson, you lose confidence. I think the White House realizes that and will keep heat on her.
No comments:
Post a Comment