Quick, say the word “Orion”. Did you get it right, with a long “eye” sound in the middle of the word and the stress on the second syllable?
Of course you did. What are you, the President of the United States?
The idea that led to the founding of Orion Energy Systems received a presidential salute of sorts today.
President Barack Obama just finished speaking at a White House roundtable on clean energy efficiency attended by Neal Verfuerth, Orion president and chief executive. Obama saluted Orion.
…
All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company’s name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on.After finishing his remarks and talking with a few people, the president returned to the microphone and said his prepared remarks led him to pronounce the firm’s name wrong.
“I suspect this is Or-EYE-on as opposed to OAR-ee-on. Just wanted to make sure that when I’m giving you a plug, that we’ve got the right plug. It’s Or-EYE-on.”
Here’s the video of the speech. He actually mispronounces “Orion” three times in three minutes and it’s obvious that the first time he stumbles over it that he suspects something is wrong. Instead of taking a moment to make sure he has the name of the company correct (which he did with the name of the owner of the company) though, he just keeps going as his teleprompter scrolls on, comfortable in his ignorance.
This is funny, but it’s also really sad. For goodness sake, I knew how to pronounce the word when I was six. How is it that our college-educated President who taught at a prestigious university had no idea how to say it until someone told him? It’s not like the company was named Eridanus or Boötes. I’d be willing to bet that more than a couple of the movies he gave Prime Minister Brown were made by Orion Pictures. I’m fairly sure he saw “Men in Black” in which Orion was a major plot point. There’s really no excuse for his bumble.
I can only imagine the ridicule that the MSM would have heaped on George W. Bush in the evening news broadcasts this evening had he shown this amount of ignorance. Actually, I don’t have to imagine. I saw what the media did to him for far, far less.
(via David Freddoso)
UPDATE: Linked in the Hot Air Headlines! Thank you.
Feel free to click another link or two while you’re here. I’ve already been romping around the classical imagery, have found a guide for dealing with unwanted Obama’s Witnesses, and found the courage not to quake in my boots as a Democrat from Washington (both of them!) threatens secession. You can also marvel as we practice “Diplomacy with a Blunt Object”.
UPDATE: Linked by Greg Pollowitz at Planet Gore who also points out the teleprompter’s response. Thank you!
If you happen to have a spare ten spot, why not drop it in the tip jar?
UPDATE 3: Frank J-alanche!
Tags: Media Bias, President Barack Obama, Science
Maybe TOTUS is referring to the Okinawan beer “Orion” — BHO is pretty close to the beer’s pronunciation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nU9n9AwiA
Is this Obama’s Potato moment?
perhaps the word simply got stuck in his esso fagus.
(esophagus)
You say Oh-RYE-un, I say ORE-ee-un, I say dumb-ASS, you say doom-AHSS, let’s call the whole thing off!!
His whole life he was called an oREEo. That where the mixup occured. Cut him some slack, Jack!
I am totally against Obamanomics, but that was not an egregious error. (Certainly David Letterman would have highlighted it had it been Bush.) Let’s stick to the worst thing government can do: choose the economic winners and losers by subsidies for the well connected and penalties for those in disfavor.
racist!!!!
Chris –
As long as the prez keeps using that teleprompter, we will see many, many more “potato moments”. And since he clearly has not a single original thought in his head, he will live and die by that teleprompter. This stuff would be comedy gold if anyone in hollywood or on SNL had any balls and was actually non-partisan in their work. Too bad
Maybe that’s how they say it back in Pock-ee-ston.
Patrick, you are right, but consider the reaction in the news had that been Bush or anyone with an R next to their name. And his relance on the teleprompter is very telling about his lack of stance on anything – he needs it to tell him what to say – I sense a very bad scene a la “the legend of Ron Burgundy” coming up in the next few months. Kind of like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bxuynicf9rI
I’m no fan of President Obama. On this point, though, I’m willing to cut him some slack, for the following reason (which I e-mailed originally to David Freddoso at NRO):
You write that President Obama was mispronouncing Orion Energy, OAR-ee-on. There is a well-known Chicago-based agribusiness broadcaster, Orion Samuelson, who pronounces his first name in this way. Mr. Samuelson has been on the air for decades and currently has a television show, This Week in Agribusiness, with Max Armstrong.
Geez, this is WITH a teleprompter!
Hey, I made the same goof… in the third grade!
And by the way, can anybody guess the name of the spacecraft that is the centerpiece of NASA’s back-to-the-Moon program, and the replacement for the Space Shuttle? Well, I know NASA isn’t a very big line item compared to the ones Obama is pushing now…
I’m not an Obama supporter, but I’ll cut him some slack on this one too. There is a small town in Illinois called Orion that pronounces it OAR-ee-un.
No Comment.
Well, maybe he thought he was in Michigan. There is a Lake Orion north of Detroit and it is pronounced Oar-ee-on. He never does seem to have a good grasp on where he is.
WOW – If you think Obama’s slip-up of Orion is something to mention, you must have had a field day with our former President’s verbal gaffs.
Barack Obama may be have college credentials. May, or may not, have actually attended college classes. The man is not college educated. You can give a monkey a college diploma. It does not make the monkey educated.
George W. Bush has been riduculed for his college C averages. Yet the one will not even release his transcripts.
Well, the former President did us the favor of spacing them out over eight years.
So which one was he most likely to encounter over his life – the small town in Illinois and/or lake in Michigan or the constellation/movie studio/plot point?
It shows you, quite simply, the planet that Obama is from. He is not one of us. He simply is not American.
The Oar-ee-on project will negate the need to rely on “nucular” energy as an alternative. I”d give him a break if his minions didn’t make him out to be so brilliant and make Bush out to be such an idiot.
Alex Trebek he ain’t!!!
[...] Quick, say the word “Orion”. [...]
“Yet the one will not even release his transcripts.”
Or for that matter, ANY of his records.
The problem with all those who are giving him slack for the mispronunciation is that only minutes before, the name of the company was being correctly pronounced. Either he wasn’t paying attention, or he was just reading the teleprompter sans comprehension.
Or Massachusetts
There’s that, geckomon, and that he did ask the guy who owned the company if he pronounced his own name correctly.
This president was sold to the American People,He is our “American Idol” – literally portrayed as a demi-god – the truth is he has feet of clay. And don’t forget this teleprompter.
There is a difference between intelligence and education. Wisdom and learning. I wish my fellow Americans would learn this.
He may destroy us before he is done with his nonsense. If we are lucky he will be just be another Jimmy Carter and we will rebuild after he is gone. (It took about 7 years to rebuild our finances/country after Ol’ Jimmy.) If not, well, inflation, taxation beyond our wildest nightmares, –I am 57 – I have no children. I pity the young who will inherit the Post-Obama broken and broke USA – I’ll be 61 by the time he is out of office; They will be shaking their collective heads for the next 40 + years, wondering why were they so stupid as to vote Obama into the highest office of the land?
Just as we do, now, with Carter.
Jim… here is your Serenity quotes of the day – they seem to hit home in times such as these:
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me, and I won’t push you. Dong-luh mah?
Another one for all of us who watch our government discard the constitution:
Young River: People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
(Mal speaking about colony on Miranda) “… on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people…better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.”
All three have been weaving in and out of my consciousness for weeks.
oh. He’s stupid. That can’t be good, can it? Stupid dirty socialists are probably worser than the devious and clever kind is my suspicion.
For all of you thin-skinned Obamabots, suck it up. We hear how Obama is so eloquent, well spoken, etc., and how Bush is so stupid – we continue to hear from some sites even though Bush isn’t POTUS anymore (http://www.slate.com/id/2214356/?from=rss). Obama has given us so many memorable moments during his ongoing campaign: 57 states; Special Olympics; St. Patrick’s Day teleprompter; the DVDs that can’t be played in the UK; marking the anniversary of the March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., Obama, speaking at a church, said his parents got together “because of what happened in Selma.” Obama was born in 1961; he claimed his father served in World War II, and when he came home, he got the services that he needed; jokes about Nancy Reagan having séances in the White House; mixes up the windows and doors at his new home (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RV3QxYBLhM); on his maiden Marine One trip Obama breaches protocol and makes life uncomfortable for an enlisted marine by shaking the the serviceman’s hand as he’s saluting his commander-in-chief (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR6wAn4NLv4); bangs his head as he boards his helicopter; and on …
Also no Obama supporter but there is a town in Michigan called Lake Orion that uses the Oar-ee-on pronunciation.
..there is no defense for being a fraud and a liar.
odumbo is a tool..an inarticulate tool.
I love the Obama apologists on here…not.
They start with the “I’m not an Obama supporter, but I’m willing to, blah blah blah.”
No. You are an Obama supporter LOL.
Now, if Soetoro had gone to Lake Orion or was meeting Orion Samuelson for the first time, and pronounced those ore-RYE-un, then I would cut him some slack.
He’s like a rock. Only dumber.
All through the campaign, he also pronounced Massachusetts as “Massa-TOO-Sets”. Hysterical. Uttered it twice during debates. It’s fixed now, though. A couple of days ago I heard him pronounce it correctly.
Yes, “the greatest oracle of our generation”. Uh huh. Sure.
Maybe the best teleprompter reader of our generation. BFD.
The guy’s an empty suit and a media invention. Period.
Actually, before I moved to Southeast Michigan I would have pronounced it correctly. Now that we’ve lived here where there is a town called Lake Orion (pronounced ORE-ee-un) – it’s a toss up if I would have caught myself.
But I don’t think Obama ever lived here in Southeast MI, so he doesn’t get a pass.
[...] for whoever is in charge of Obama: Never assume a word is so simple that you don’t need to spell it phonetically on his teleprompter. (No Ratings Yet) Loading [...]
[...] Sundries Sharck — He’s Starting to Make Joe Biden Sound Like Daniel Webster: He actually mispronounces “Orion” three times in three minutes and it’s obvious that the [...]
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Investment banks on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched teleprompters glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like someone left a cake out in the rain. Time for hope and change.
Hey, here’s a thought. Hooked on phonetics, the Teleprompter Addition. Puhleese. He had just heard it pronounced correctly mere moments before, and if it wasn’t for the fact he was shoved down our throats as being so intelligent, such an accomplished speaker, he wouldn’t be getting this much flack about it, he should have corrected that image, but he didn’t cause he likes being thought of as someone who does no wrong. When Bush said Nucular, it wasn’t offensive to the half of the country that lives in the South, we all say it that way, as did Jimmy Carter. No one gave that hayseed any flack over it, and he was a true dumbass.
When he visits the Mexican President in Chy-hooah-hooah next week, I hope he fails
Um, “OAR-ee-on” is not the “wrong” pronunciation. It is an uncommon pronunciation in America but it is far closer to the actual Greek than “or-EYE-on”, which, like saying “Cicero” “SISS-er-oh” or saying “karate” “car-RAT-tee”, is 100% an Anglicized bastardization.
Obama could have picked up the “OAR-ee-on” pronunciation any number of places — not least from reading a modern book on mythology that tries to give accurate Greco-Roman pronunciations for classical names — but it doesn’t really matter. There is absolutely no sense in which “OAR-ee-on” is “wrong” except in that it’s not the pronunciation the CEO of the company happens to prefer.
Yeah, Arthur, he was wrong.