[Mb-civic] Syntax, Disassembled - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Syntax, Disassembled

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, July 12, 2005; Page A21

The Bush administration's relationship with the English language, I 
confess, just drives me up the wall. How can these people be so 
comically doofus with the language one minute and so brilliantly 
Orwellian the next?

President Bush's misadventures with the dictionary are legendary, and 
they're the gift that keeps on giving. Perhaps my favorite classic came 
while Bush was trying to sell his Social Security program in Upstate New 
York, and he uttered this timeless sentence: "See, in my line of work 
you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the 
truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

The frightening thing is that we all understood what he meant. We even 
understood him when he made his recent assertion about the imprisoned 
evildoers at Guantanamo Bay, that they are "people that had been trained 
in some instances to disassemble." Before you could wonder where they 
were getting their hands on the screwdrivers and wrenches, he added, 
"That means not tell the truth."

<>No, it doesn't, Mr. President. But never mind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101410.html?nav=hcmodule 

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