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How We Used to Misspoke

My Lord, we were crude where I grew up!  For example, we did not say things like:  "There are liars, damned liars, and statistics".  We just said someone was a damned liar, or when we wanted to speak poetically or politely-- that he or she was lying through his teeth.  

People like Paul Ryan may or may not have been lying himself when he said, recently, that our military leaders did not support President Obama's Pentagon budget.  "We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice," Ryan had said. "We don't think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget."


When Candy Crowley suggested that the generals were a little bit offended at the suggestion that they were lying, Paul Ryan said he had "misspoke".    He did not suggest that the generals had been misspokeing.  He, Ryan, had misspoke.  


Then Ryan went on explain that what was wrong was that the President had come up with a budget number, and that the generals had tried to stay within that number.  Instead, Ryan said, it should have been the other way around:  The generals should have said, first, what they wanted, and then the President should have fit that into his budget. 


Then, I suppose, everybody else should have said what they wanted, and the President should have adjusted his budget to accommodate everybody with a wish list.  That would put to rest the notion that government should be lean and mean and cost-effective!  What nonsense!

Paul Ryan is not misspeaking.  He is, if not a liar or a damned liar, just being a damned politician who does not really believe what he is saying about fiscal responsibility or, as our Constitution makes clear, that the President is Commander in Chief of our military.  In this country, we want civilian control over our military.  And we want fiscal restraint.   And we are getting damnably tired of war, too!

I have probably not said this right.  I meant to say that Paul Ryan was just playing political games, and I seem to have suggested, instead, that he just didn't get the words right; that he misspoke.  And if I have offended anyone, I am truly sorry that they are offensive.


I do not know why, but it occurs to me, just now, that we used to use the term, "shyster", too.  In the 1981 movie S.O.B. the character Polly Reed calls Dr. Irving Finegarten a shyster. To which Irving replies: "I could sue you for calling me that. A shyster is a disreputable lawyer. I'm a quack."  (Wikipedia)


I am not calling Paul Ryan a shyster.  The term just occurred to me.   You know, thinking about how we used to misspoke.  

Comments

  1. JaneApril 1, 2012 at 6:24 PM

    OK. Then I will. Paul Ryan is a shyster. Thanks for coming up with such a good word for him.

    ReplyDelete

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