This is a word cloud — a visual representation of the frequency of certain words in a document or, in this case, speech. The bigger the word in the cloud, the more frequent its use.
As you can see, the two biggest words in the eight-and-a-half hour filibuster speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders, democratic socialist of Vermont, were “tax people.”
Quite.
(h/t FDL).
I don't see "Obama" in the cloud. I checked his speech and he was mentioned 5 times, which was the same number of times "Clinton" was mentioned. Guy talks non-stop on the Senate floor for an entire working day, and that's how much thought he gives the current president?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm surprised "twenty below zero" didn't show up on there, given how often he referenced how Vermont is a terrible place to live. I mean, heating your home is expensive.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you go to the link and then enlarge the graphic you can see "family" and "fact" and "cut" with the naked eye. I'm sure "spending" must be in there somewhere. Right? Hmm.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd like to see a word cloud of President Obama's speeches, just to see how big the "I" is.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThese word clouds are really cool. Can we use them to find out which politicians are plagiarists or to help intelligence services examine credibility of evidence?
It would also be nice (from speeches and writings of the day) to know if the Earl of Oxford actually wrote some or all of 'Shakespeare's' plays.
Even if the answer to these questions is no, the word clouds are still cool. Is there a 'cloud-making' software program around somewhere? I think it would help writers be better writers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, the answer to the last question is yes. One can google them.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf someone did this for any Obama speech, the biggest words would be ME and I.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe site for word clouds is External Link
(though there may be others by now). Wordle can be entertaining for a while until your friends and co-workers ceased to be amused and then become actively bored. As a tool of psychological insight or detecting plagiarism it is extremely limited, however.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEverybody in Vermont knows that Outraged should be the largest word in Sanders word cloud. And many of us are outraged that this embarrassment from Brooklyn is still a U S Senator- a U S Senator, mind you!- from the Green Mtn State!
There is no other VT politician with the anger, vitriol, hate, and just plain unpleasantness that this jerk exhibits whenever he opens his yap. It is behavior that is so un-Vermont I still can't understand how he was ever elected.It must be used to defeat him in 2012.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"...the two biggest words ... by Sen. Bernie Sanders, ..., were “tax people.”
But "people" came first and "tax" was a smaller, subservient size.
That's the way it should be. Taxes are necessary, as long as we have a government. Who pays should be commensurate with the needs of the people, the theme of Sanders' speech.
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