Friday, August 17, 2007

TPM Falls For Ancient Semantic Trickery

One of my favorite daily reads is Talking Points Memo. So it was with great dismay today that I read TPM and discovered a glaring instance of anti administration hokum and blather...

The issue they covered deals with a supposed administration attempt to have General David Petraeus give his much anticipated report to a closed session of Congress. This desire for the closed session was confirmed by Congressional sources, and the great "controversy" over this story is that a White House spokes person (formerly referred to in this blog as "spokestoady") supposedly lied about it.

Yet a careful examination of the actual quote by the White House spokestoady... erm... spokes-hero shows the utter dishonesty and hatefulness of administration critics. Here is the direct quote in question.
Asked yesterday if the White House had pushed for closed-door-only briefings, Johndroe said, "No, no."
Frankly people who use wordcraft to make a living ought to be smart enough to not misinterpret the meaning of a classic double negative. (Not misinterpret... is that a double negative? Well you know what I mean!!) When Johndroe said "no, no" he was technically affirming that the White House HAD pushed for the closed door session.

Frankly, when administration critics take statements like these and twist the meaning of the words to make it appear the administration somehow lied, the terrorist win. I'm sure THEY know a double negative when they hear it. In fact TPM was probably clued into this entire affair from their direct satellite feed from a cave in Pakistan!

For TPM's unfair and unpatriotic attack on the Bush administration I have only one word. OUTRAGEOUS!

Comments:
Excellent article!

:)
 
Nice. I didn't catch the satire until the last second. It is very early for me, though.
 
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