Media Messages: Sound Bites Gone Wild - Over 30 Sound Bites in 1 Statement

One form of sound bite is the use of vivid words - words that evoke the five senses and emotions or are different (often made up). 

This is one of the most frequently used sound bite forms and generally involves using one, two or at most three vivid words. 

So it was with great delight that I read in The Washington Times the following statement by Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas). It contains nearly 40 clauses or phrases, any one of which could be lifted out and used as a sound bite or quote. Most of these sound bites are vivid words, but a couple of cliches, absolute statements and a prediction also appear. 

To make it easier for you to keep score, I've numbered the sound bites.

1) Could it be a bad dream or a nightmare? 2) Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? 3) It's surreal; it's just not believable. 4) A grand absurdity; 5) a great deception; 6) a delusion of  momentous proportions, 7) based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come; 8) simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; 9) insanity passed off as logic; 10) grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; 11) evil described as virtue; 12) ignorance pawned off as wisdom; 13) destruction and 

impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; 14) violence, the tool of change; 15) preventive wars used as the road to peace; 16) tolerance delivered by government guns; 17) reactionary views in the guise of progress; 18) an empire replacing the republic; 19) slavery sold as liberty; 20) excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity; 21) socialism to save capitalism; 22) a government out of control, unrestrained by the Constitution, the rule of law, or morality; 23) bickering over petty politics as we collapse into chaos; 24) the philosophy that destroys us is not even defined. 

25) We have broken from reality; 26) a psychotic nation. 27) Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. 28) Money does not grow on trees, 29) nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits. 30) We're now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people's money, 31) exorbitant taxation, 32) deficits of trillions of dollars spent on a failed welfare/warfare state; 33) an epidemic of cronyism; 34) unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth...

Of course, 35) it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that 36) I'm seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so, 37) but just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-far-distant future.

Phew! What a bonanza for a reporter!