Quote:
Originally Posted by mickthinks
You realise that doesn't address what I said? The question whether this particular action could reasonably be expected to make the child cry might appear to be settled by the fact that she cried and people didn't say "How weird! No one would have expected that".
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I don't think this analysis flies, for the simple reason that teenagers are
famed for unpredictable emotional outbursts.
Thus, even if no one would have expected a teenager to cry under a given circumstance, they might not comment on it directly.
You raise an interesting point here. Imagine that we had only the information that:
* At some sort of event where people were asking questions of the President, a teenaged child asked the President a question.
* The president responded with a sarcastic and dismissive "yeah, thanks."
Would people generally consider that rude? I certainly would. If you take out "teenaged child" and replace it with "person", it is a little more ambiguous -- adults are usually expected to handle some amount of good-natured ribbing, and one could argue that Bush's comment was intended to be commentary on the unpleasant circumstance he was in (the question related to something that had not gone his way, and most politicians hate answering questions on that topic).
However, when dealing with a kid, you might reasonably be more careful. The authority-figure to child relationship is one which creates a much greater duty of care; children are, by default, much more likely to be impressionable, much less likely to perform more abstract or detached analysis of social rules, and so on.
This raises an interesting point, which is that there is a way in which gender is relevant here: It is quite possible to, upon hearing a thirteen-year-old girl speak, not know that you're hearing a child talking. Young boys nearly always sound very distinct from adult men, but early-teens girls can have substantially the same vocal production range as adult women.
In which case, we might argue that Bush mistakenly believed he'd been asked a question by an adult woman, whom he thought would perceive that his sarcastic remark was directed to his circumstances, not to her.
But, if he knew she was a child, then I think his behavior was rude. A child who has worked up the courage to ask a hard question of the President of the United States should not be discouraged or dismissed.