First, Let's Kill all the Weasel Words

There isn't a day that goes by where I am not amazed at the stupidity of politicians and the language they use. I am even more mystified by the voters that put these guys into office. I know one thing, a hell of a lot of them are attorneys and that explains a lot. But since this blog is devoted to Plain Talk, I thought I would spend some time on the language that corrupts the meaning of everything we do "weasel words". The usage of weasel words has become so pervasive you are sure to see me ranting more in the future. But for now....

Bock defines "weasel word" as any word or phrase that allows the user to subsequently change its apparent meaning in order to escape the consequences of having used it, or is vague enough to allow for multiple meanings. A "weasel sentence" is one that is sufficiently convoluted or vague to have a current meaning in context, but has potentially multiple meanings in the event of a speaker's retraction; see also, "spin".

A heavily used weasel word is "may". This is a favorite of attorneys. For example if you say; I believe he may be a child molester your are off the hook. You only said "may" which leaves the door open for he "may not" be a child molester. This is good because you can throw the crap out there and have plausible deniability later. People will only remember the crap not the retraction.

Then there are weasel phrases. I like these because they show the creativity of the speaker. Who doesn't remember "it depends on what is is"? Old Slick Willy knew his stuff (attorney of course). He was trying to carve out as much wiggle room as possible so his master spinners could convince the camp followers that he didn't really have sex with Miz Lewinski. Never mind the blue dress. Never mind that 99 percent of people who would say a blow job is having sex (the other one percent are dead people on Chicago's voter roles). Not to be outdone, Bill Clinton's courageous spouse Hillary has one of the best "weasel" phrases on record. It is remarkable for its sheer oilyness and for its cowardice. Perhaps you remember when Hillary was questioning General Petraeus about the USA's military progress in Iraq. She wanted ever so badly to call the general a liar, but that would have been too bold, too harsh and made for a bad sound bite. So what did Ms. Clinton say? She said, "general for me accept what you're saying requires a willful suspension of disbelief". Primo weaselness in a class by itself!

No analysis could be complete without considering our esteemed president Obama. Hmmm...also an attorney. When His Emminence was informed that his VP Joe Biden, speaking plainly unlike most other attorneys, had revealed that the whole administration had been caught by surprise by the depth of the recession. Mr. Obama saw fit to correct him by saying; "I wouldn't have said that, I would have said we didn't have enough facts". Masterful. Taking an outright admission of failure and turning it into a sympathetic scenario whereby the administration was victimized by a lack of information.

There is a little bit of Shakespeare that comes to mind when I hear all this doublespeak, spin and weaseling. It comes from the "Taming of the Shrew". Petruccio has to tame the mean tempered and rebellious Katherine. As a measure of his success he manages to get the willful Katherine to accept that it is the sun she is seeing when really the moon and visa versa. Welcome to the land of politics. Shakespeare also wrote in Henry VI, "first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". Since we can't do that, let's just demand they speak plain English and stand behind what they say.