Politicians never lie, they just "misspeak"...
I remember when getting caught lying got kids punished. Always. Whether you got caught in a lie by your parents or your teachers, you got punished....grounded or whatever. And as adults, whether in personal, business, or legal relationships, we still get into trouble for that.
In some cases it's an actual crime. But even when it is a crime, politicians rarely seem to get "grounded" for doing it.
Pity. Lying is very bad karma. And only the worst people are truly happy and comfortable when they get away with it.
"Misspoke" is the euphemism of the week; I've been reflecting on Senator Clinton's excuse for her fantastic "I'm-so-tough-I-dodged-sniper-fire-in-Bosnia!" story........she says she"misspoke".
Misspoke, huh?
Not that there's anything out of character about that particular bullshit-excuse-for-bullshit from this candidate, who'd previously summoned the nerve to claim that she brought peace to Northern Ireland! (Maybe she's unclear on the difference between "peace" and "tea"?) This campaign has revealed Hilliary Clinton to be a person who "misspeaks" disturbingly casually and smoothly, a crackerjack quality in a human being (don't you just love liars?), but even better in a President!
All this got me wondering about the term "misspoke"- trying to remember when and how it got twisted from it's proper use -"to speak or pronounce incorrectly"- to it's present use- to just flat lie, or at best, to emphatically say something that's 100% wrong...
....Alexander Haig comes to my mind first, who tried to sell "I misspoke" as the simple excuse for his frantic little coup-d'état in the aftermath of President Reagan's shooting. In his case, he really wasn't deliberately lying; he was just flat wrong, but he went to the wall insisting he was absolutely right. Somebody had to bring him a copy of the Constitution to show him the order of succession to the Presidency before he'd back down. But instead of just admitting that he was wrong, he tried to save face by claiming that he "misspoke".
Nobody bought it then and nobody's buying it now. But as a longstanding tradition, when caught in a lie or as huge gaff, some politicians still try to sell the lie as a harmless verbal "accident". Election time seems to be the best time to spot this trend.
Anyway, it looks like Haig's use of "misspoke" actually originated with the Nixon gang, lovely people all.
According to Time Magazine, Monday, Apr. 30, 1973, "Government officials are entitled to make flat statements one day, and the next day reverse field with the simple phrase, "I misspoke myself." White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler enlarged the vocabulary last week, declaring that all of Nixon's previous statements on Watergate were "inoperative." Not incorrect, not misinformed, not untrue—simply inoperative, like batteries gone dead...."
As simple as that. And the more things change, the more they stay the same
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907098,00.html
Pity. Lying is very bad karma. And only the worst people are truly happy and comfortable when they get away with it.
"Misspoke" is the euphemism of the week; I've been reflecting on Senator Clinton's excuse for her fantastic "I'm-so-tough-I-dodged-sniper-fire-in-Bosnia!" story........she says she"misspoke".
Misspoke, huh?
Not that there's anything out of character about that particular bullshit-excuse-for-bullshit from this candidate, who'd previously summoned the nerve to claim that she brought peace to Northern Ireland! (Maybe she's unclear on the difference between "peace" and "tea"?) This campaign has revealed Hilliary Clinton to be a person who "misspeaks" disturbingly casually and smoothly, a crackerjack quality in a human being (don't you just love liars?), but even better in a President!
All this got me wondering about the term "misspoke"- trying to remember when and how it got twisted from it's proper use -"to speak or pronounce incorrectly"- to it's present use- to just flat lie, or at best, to emphatically say something that's 100% wrong...
....Alexander Haig comes to my mind first, who tried to sell "I misspoke" as the simple excuse for his frantic little coup-d'état in the aftermath of President Reagan's shooting. In his case, he really wasn't deliberately lying; he was just flat wrong, but he went to the wall insisting he was absolutely right. Somebody had to bring him a copy of the Constitution to show him the order of succession to the Presidency before he'd back down. But instead of just admitting that he was wrong, he tried to save face by claiming that he "misspoke".
Nobody bought it then and nobody's buying it now. But as a longstanding tradition, when caught in a lie or as huge gaff, some politicians still try to sell the lie as a harmless verbal "accident". Election time seems to be the best time to spot this trend.
Anyway, it looks like Haig's use of "misspoke" actually originated with the Nixon gang, lovely people all.
According to Time Magazine, Monday, Apr. 30, 1973, "Government officials are entitled to make flat statements one day, and the next day reverse field with the simple phrase, "I misspoke myself." White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler enlarged the vocabulary last week, declaring that all of Nixon's previous statements on Watergate were "inoperative." Not incorrect, not misinformed, not untrue—simply inoperative, like batteries gone dead...."
As simple as that. And the more things change, the more they stay the same
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907098,00.html
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