George Will needs a mirror

Conservative columnist and baseball fan George Will is getting some well-deserved heat from the liberal blogosphere for yet another hack job of a column, wherein he takes President Obama and the First Lady to task for -- get this -- using first-person singular pronouns too much in their presentations to the International Olympic Committee on behalf of Chicago's 2016 Summer Olympics bid. Calling it an "ego trip" for the Obamas, Will goes so far as to count the number of times they use "I," "me," "my," and "myself" in the speeches:

In the 41 sentences of her remarks, Michelle Obama used some form of the personal pronouns "I" or "me" 44 times. Her husband was, comparatively, a shrinking violet, using those pronouns only 26 times in 48 sentences. Still, 70 times in 89 sentences conveyed the message that somehow their fascinating selves were what made, or should have made, Chicago's case compelling.

Of course, there's no logical or causal connection shown between the use of first-person pronouns and what Will diagnoses as narcissism, but then, logic has never been a strong point of conservatives or Republicans.

Well, University of Pennsylvania professor Mark Liberman decided to do a little fact-checking, and as it turns out, in comparison to Drunky McStagger and even Bill Clinton, the Obamas actually weren't very self-absorbed at all.

The last time George F. Will trotted out his opinion that president Obama is "inordinately fond of the first-person pronoun" [yes, he's done this before -- Ed.], I did some counts ("Fact-checking George F. Will", 6/7/2009). As I explained:

…since I'm one of those narrow-minded fundamentalists who believe that statements can be true or false, and that we should care about the difference, I decided to check. …

I took the transcript of Obama's first press conference (from 2/9/2009), and found that he used 'I' 163 times in 7,775 total words, for a rate of 2.10%. He also used 'me' 8 times and 'my' 35 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 206 in 7,775 words, or a rate of 2.65%.

For comparison, I took George W. Bush's first two solo press conferences as president (from 2/22/2001 and 3/29/2001), and found that W used 'I' 239 times in 6,681 total words, for a rate of 3.58% — a rate 72% higher than Obama's rate. President Bush also used 'me' 26 times, 'my' 31 times, and 'myself' 4 times, for a total first-person singular pronoun count of 300 in 6,681 words, or a rate of 4.49% (59% higher than Obama).

For a third data point, I took William J. Clinton's first two solo press conferences as president (from 1/29/1993 and 3/23/1993), and found that he used 'I' 218 times, 'me' 34 times, 'my' 22 times, and 'myself' once, in 6,935 total words. That's a total of 275 first-person singular pronouns, and a rate of 3.14% for 'I' (51% higher than Obama), and 3.87% for first-person singular pronouns overall (50% higher than Obama).

As a result of this previous experience, I had a first-person-counting script all ready to go, and it took only a few seconds to check the new transcripts. This time around, Barack Obama's Olympic remarks included 26 first-person-singular words out of 1130, for a rate of 2.3%. This is slightly below his typical rate for presidential press conferences, and a bit more than half the rate of the George W. Bush pressers that I measured earlier (2.3/4.49 = 51%, to be precise).

Naturally, I'm shocked -- shocked!! -- to discover that Will's charge of "narcissism" doesn't stand up to factual analysis. But I thought I'd take it a step further: given Will's well-known affection for baseball (which, at the risk of agreeing with anything having to do with George Will, I share), has he ever been, um, narcissistic himself?

I chose Will's baseball book Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other
Reflections on Baseball (New York: Scribner, 1998), mostly since I own the book (it was a gift) and it was the first one that came to mind. Also, because my copy of the book is in storage, it was fortuitous that the book has been excerpted, or previewed, on Google Books. So I went to the very first essay therein (for no other reason than it was first), deliciously titled "The Cubs and Conservatism," and I started counting. Two of the essay's pages aren't excerpted online, but there's plenty to make a representative sample.

And what were the results?

On pages 21, 22, and 25, which constitute the portion available on Google, there are 853 words. Of those, Will uses "I," "me," "my," or "myself" 29 times -- 3.4% of the total words. What was President Obama's percentage in Copenhagen again, George? Oh, yeah ... 2.3%.

"But," you point out correctly, "Will was comparing sentences, not total words." Okay, skippy, let's see ... Will tells us the president used first-person-singular 26 times in 48 sentences. That's a ratio of .5417. Meanwhile, in the excerpt of his Cubs/conservatism essay that is available online, Will used first-person-singular 29 times in 49 sentences: a .5918 ratio. And of Will's 49 sentences, six were of four words or fewer -- hardly sentences at all.

The raw numbers aren't all that relevant. I mean, who cares that George Will referred to himself in 59% of sentences from some obscure essay written in 1974 when President Obama pointed selfward in 54% of sentences last week? The point is this: before George Will accuses others of narcissism, he ought to protect his own glass house.