Leonard Pitts Jr.: Doublespeak as Art Form

via CommonDreams:



Published on Monday, September 8, 2008 by The Sacramento Bee
Doublespeak as Art Form
by Leonard Pitts Jr.


"We need change, all right. Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington. We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington -- throw out the big-government liberals."

- Mitt Romney,

Sept. 3, 2008


And then the gorilla run knee socks paint porno on the Cadillac. But school laughed and didn't we sing hats?

Ahem.

Maybe you wonder what the preceding gobbledygook means. I would ask which gobbledygook you mean: mine or Mitt Romney's? If he's allowed to spew nonsense and people act as if he's spoken intelligently, why can't I? If he gets to behave as if words no longer have objective meaning, why can't I?

I mean, baffle grab on the freak flake. Really.

If you're a regular here, you've heard me rant from time to time about intellectual dishonesty -- to argue that which you know to be untrue and to substitute ideology for intellect to the degree that you'll do violence to language and logic rather than cross the party line.

And no one does it like Republican conservatives. They are to intellectual dishonesty what Michael Jordan was to basketball: the avatar, the exemplar, the paradigm. They have elevated it beyond hypocrisy and political expedience. They have made it ... art.

Which returns us to the astonishing thing Mitt Romney said while addressing the party faithful in St. Paul, Minn. You want to walk around it the way you would Michelangelo's "David," admiring the elegance of the workmanship. You hesitate to touch it, much less pull it apart. To do so seems almost an act of desecration. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-2