纽约时报 政客能成为像体育明星一样的英雄吗?(4)

 

Shortly after being sworn in in January, Representative Madison Cawthorn, a freshman¹ from North Carolina, wrote an email to his Republican colleagues, obtained by Time magazine, boasting that he had “built my staff around comms rather than legislation.”

今年1月宣誓就职后不久，来自北卡罗来纳州的新议员麦迪逊·考索恩给他的共和党同事写了一封电子邮件，吹嘘他“围绕通信而不是立法来建立我的幕僚”。《时代》杂志获取到了这封邮件。

In other words, his office planned to focus its energies not on lawmaking but on getting Cawthorn on TV to fire up the base.

换句话说，其办公室计划不把精力放在立法上，而是把精力放在让考索恩上电视煽风点火。

(This is not an irrational² plan: Contemporary politics is so focused on the culture war that Cawthorn will most likely accrue³ more clout⁴ railing about Democrats⁵' trying to turn the country “into a Communist ash heap” than by sweating the details of legislation to, say, help small-business owners.)(这并不是一个不理性的计划：当代政治如此关注文化战争，以至于考索恩很可能会积累更多的影响力，他会痛骂民主党人试图把国家变成“共产主义的灰烬堆”，而不是为帮助小企业主等立法细节而大费周折。)In February, as Texas suffered through days of blackouts that have been widely attributed to a failure to winterize its power systems,今年2月，德克萨斯州经历了数日的停电，人们普遍认为停电是由于电力系统无法过冬。

Gov. Greg Abbott appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News show to try to score political points by falsely blaming clean energy: “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” he said, while some of his state's residents were literally⁶ freezing to death.

州长格雷格·阿博特出现在肖恩·汉尼提主持的福克斯新闻节目中，试图通过错误地指责清洁能源来赢得政治加分，他说“这表明，绿色新政对美国来说是致命的，” 而他所在州的一些居民几乎快被冻死了。

During Joe Biden's short time in office, he has been praised for focusing more on governing and less on entertaining.

在乔·拜登短暂的任期内，他因更多地关注管理而非娱乐而受到称赞。

His aides advertise his diligence, catering⁷ to a post-Trump public desire for bureaucratic⁸ competence⁹. “Joe Biden is the president — he's not a pundit,” the press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters in February, noting that Biden would not be watching or opining on Trump's second impeachment¹⁰ trial.

他的助手们宣扬他的勤奋，以迎合后特朗普时代公众对官僚能力的渴望。新闻发言人珍·普萨基今年2月对记者说，拜登总统不是专家，既不会观看特朗普的第二次弹劾审判，也不会就此事发表意见。

Not staring at cable news all day and spouting¹¹ off on Twitter, however, is an extremely low bar by which to measure a president.

不整天盯着有线新闻，也不在推特上滔滔不绝，这是衡量一位总统的一个极低的标准。

The “under-promise/over-deliver strategy” is “working well for President Biden so far,” as the CNN White House correspondent John Harwood wrote on Twitter — but perhaps the reason Biden can afford to under-promise in the first place is that Americans have come to expect so little.

CNN驻白宫记者约翰·哈伍德在推特上写道，到目前为止，少承诺/多兑现的策略对拜登总统来说效果很好，但或许拜登首先能够少承诺的原因是美国人对他的期望太低了。

We do, however, still expect a lot of our sports heroes. Over the last few years, Lillard has been among the many to wade¹² into politics; last summer, he marched with Black Lives Matter protesters and released a song, as Dame¹³ D.O.L.L.A., about the police killings¹⁴ of George Floyd and others.

然而，我们仍然期待着许多体育英雄的出现。在过去的几年里，利拉德是许多涉足政治的人之一；去年夏天，他与“黑人的命也是命”抗议者一起游行，并发行了一首名为Dame D.O.L.L.A.的歌曲，讲述警察杀害乔治·弗洛伊德等人的故事。

Efforts like these have been met with criticism from right-wing commentators¹⁵ like Laura Ingraham, who once admonished¹⁶ politically active athletes to “shut up and dribble¹⁷.”

这样的努力遭到了劳拉·英格拉汉姆等右翼评论员的批评，她曾告诫在政治领域活跃的运动员们“闭嘴，专心运球”。

But athletes like Lillard recognize that it is their ability to dribble — their diligent¹⁸ mastering of the fundamentals of their sports — that allows them to have political impact.

但像利拉德这样的运动员认识到，他们运球的能力、对运动基础知识的勤奋掌握，使他们足以能产生政治影响。

As he told Dwyane Wade, “I know that's a part of why I've been able to get a lot of the things that I've gotten.”

就像他对韦德说的那样，“我知道这就是为什么我能得到现在很多东西的部分原因”。

This is an approach that politicians might do well to emulate¹⁹. For too many, there are no fundamentals, only showboating. Maybe it's time someone told them to shut up and govern.

这不失为政客们可以效仿的一种方法。对很多人来说，毫无基础，只有卖弄。也许是时候让他们闭嘴，管好自己了。

 

1 freshman   

n.大学一年级学生(可兼指男女)

参考例句：

• Jack decided to live in during his freshman year at college.杰克决定大一时住校。
• He is a freshman in the show business.他在演艺界是一名新手。

2 irrational   

adj.无理性的，失去理性的

参考例句：

• After taking the drug she became completely irrational.她在吸毒后变得完全失去了理性。
• There are also signs of irrational exuberance among some investors.在某些投资者中是存在非理性繁荣的征象的。

3 accrue   

v.(利息等)增大，增多

参考例句：

• Ability to think will accrue to you from good habits of study.思考能力将因良好的学习习惯而自然增强。
• Money deposited in banks will accrue to us with interest.钱存在银行，利息自生。

4 clout   

n.用手猛击；权力，影响力

参考例句：

• The queen may have privilege but she has no real political clout.女王有特权，但无真正的政治影响力。
• He gave the little boy a clout on the head.他在那小男孩的头部打了一下。

5 democrats   

n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Democrats held a pep rally on Capitol Hill yesterday. 民主党昨天在国会山召开了竞选誓师大会。
• The democrats organize a filibuster in the senate. 民主党党员组织了阻挠议事。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

7 catering   

n. 给养

参考例句：

• Most of our work now involves catering for weddings. 我们现在的工作多半是承办婚宴。
• Who did the catering for your son's wedding? 你儿子的婚宴是由谁承办的？

8 bureaucratic   

adj.官僚的，繁文缛节的

参考例句：

• The sweat of labour washed away his bureaucratic airs.劳动的汗水冲掉了他身上的官气。
• In this company you have to go through complex bureaucratic procedures just to get a new pencil.在这个公司里即使是领一支新铅笔，也必须通过繁琐的手续。

9 competence   

n.能力，胜任，称职

参考例句：

• This mess is a poor reflection on his competence.这种混乱情况说明他难当此任。
• These are matters within the competence of the court.这些是法院权限以内的事。

10 impeachment   

n.弹劾；控告；怀疑

参考例句：

• Impeachment is considered a drastic measure in the United States.在美国，弹劾被视为一种非常激烈的措施。
• The verdict resulting from his impeachment destroyed his political career.他遭弹劾后得到的判决毁了他的政治生涯。

11 spouting   

n.水落管系统v.（指液体）喷出( spout的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水

参考例句：

• He's always spouting off about the behaviour of young people today. 他总是没完没了地数落如今年轻人的行为。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Blood was spouting from the deep cut in his arm. 血从他胳膊上深深的伤口里涌出来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

12 wade   

v.跋涉，涉水；n.跋涉

参考例句：

• We had to wade through the river to the opposite bank.我们只好涉水过河到对岸。
• We cannot but wade across the river.我们只好趟水过去。

13 dame   

n.女士

参考例句：

• The dame tell of her experience as a wife and mother.这位年长妇女讲了她作妻子和母亲的经验。
• If you stick around,you'll have to marry that dame.如果再逗留多一会，你就要跟那个夫人结婚。

14 killings   

谋杀( killing的名词复数 )； 突然发大财，暴发

参考例句：

• His statement was seen as an allusion to the recent drug-related killings. 他的声明被视为暗指最近与毒品有关的多起凶杀案。
• The government issued a statement condemning the killings. 政府发表声明谴责这些凶杀事件。

15 commentators   

n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员

参考例句：

• Sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 体育解说员翻来覆去说着同样的词语，真叫人腻烦。
• Television sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 电视体育解说员说来说去就是那么几句话，令人厌烦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

16 admonished   

v.劝告( admonish的过去式和过去分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责

参考例句：

• She was admonished for chewing gum in class. 她在课堂上嚼口香糖，受到了告诫。
• The teacher admonished the child for coming late to school. 那个孩子迟到，老师批评了他。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 dribble   

v.点滴留下，流口水；n.口水

参考例句：

• Melted wax dribbled down the side of the candle.熔化了的蜡一滴滴从蜡烛边上流下。
• He wiped a dribble of saliva from his chin.他擦掉了下巴上的几滴口水。

18 diligent   

adj.勤勉的，勤奋的

参考例句：

• He is the more diligent of the two boys.他是这两个男孩中较用功的一个。
• She is diligent and keeps herself busy all the time.她真勤快，一会儿也不闲着。

19 emulate   

v.努力赶上或超越，与…竞争；效仿

参考例句：

• You must work hard to emulate your sister.你必须努力工作，赶上你姐姐。
• You must look at the film and try to emulate his behavior.你们必须观看这部电影，并尽力模仿他的动作。