Friday, June 08, 2007

I'm "right," for various re-definitions of the word "right."


It's perpetually entertaining to watch how the wingnut wankerhood can claim victory as long as they have the freedom to totally redefine the English language.

There was, of course, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

PETE WILLIAMS: Can you answer some of the questions that have come up over the weekend? As you know, there was an email that came out Friday night that showed that ten days before the firings there was a meeting in your office, which you attended to discuss the firings. And yet when you talked to us here at the Justice Department two weeks ago, you said you were not involved in any discussions about the firings. Can you explain what seems like a contradiction?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Let me just say, a wise senator recently told me that when you say something that is either being misunderstood or can be misunderstood, you need to try to correct the record and make the record clear. Let me try to be more precise about my involvement. When I said on March 13th that I wasn't involved, what I meant was that I had not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States Attorneys should resign...

I was never focused on specific concerns about United States Attorneys as to whether or not they should be asked to resign. I was more focused on identify-- or making sure that the White House was appropriately advised of the progress of our review. And I was also concerned to ensure that the appropriate Department of Justice officials, people who knew about the performance of United States Attorneys, that they were involved in the process.

In other words, Alberto wasn't "involved," given amusing re-interpretations of the word "involved," if you catch my drift. And, of course, it doesn't end there.

When Peter MacKay promised that CPoC MPs wouldn't be kicked out of caucus for voting against the budget:

We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government.

what he meant was ... oh, hell, let's let "Kitchener Conservative" explain that one:

It may be a little nip [sic] picking but the quote you referred to is from May 15th and relates to the budget vote that took place that night.

Apparently, then, when MacKay used the phrase "budget votes" (plural), he meant only that budget vote (singular), so as long as you have no problem interchanging singular and plural, we're cool and everything's good here, m'kay?

And the latest example of semantic hilarity would, of course, be back here where, when Presidential contender Mitt Romney says that IAEA inspectors weren't allowed into Iraq, what he actually meant was ... take it away, "dom":

I'll repeat, in plain, simple English, that part of my comment that you either could not read or couldn't have read to you: "From December 1998 till November 2002, weapons inspectors were barred from Iraq.". Romney was referring to Hussein's period of brinkmanship, not his eventual concession. Perhaps too subtle for you?

So Romney was, in fact, correct, as long as you get to read his mind and qualify what he said with fictional reasoning that "dom" gets to make up on the spot.

You see how easy this is? It's a fun game, and all it requires is that you have no principles whatsoever. I'm sure "dom" will back me up on that.

3 comments:

Ti-Guy said...

It just never occurs to me to go parsing language and inventing reasons to turn what people say into something else.

What does occur to me is to ask people to clarify or to expand on what they said.

Why are rightwingers like this? Deep down, are they really all pathological liars?

Anonymous said...

Yet again, I end up in a post over here. Dude, you flatter me to no end..

Anonymous said...

Does being that big of a loser come naturally to you? Or do you actually have to work at it?