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The President of the United States desperately needs synonyms for the word "evil". I propose an unusual humanitarian relief effort: the airdrop of thousands of thesauri on the White House. Each thesaurus would be bookmarked and highlighted, for fast and efficient reference to hundreds of appropriate
substitutions for "evil".
We could wrap each thesaurus in a carefully worded letter to the President himself. The letter would gently make our case, using the storyline of W's favorite book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". ("On Monday, W used one synonym for 'evil'. On Tuesday, he used two. On Wednesday ...")
It's a stretch, but imagine the results:
"Today, my fellow Americans, our forces continued their search for the nefarious villain. We will stop his repugnant iniquity. His vile, putrid, execrable maleficence will not stand."
Be like Tony
http://www.guardian...1361,583568,00.html
Mr Blair speaks at length, without using the word "evil" once. [daruma, Oct 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]
Using words as weapons, etc.
http://www.amazon.c...94815009/halfbakery
The all-time classic. [DrBob, Oct 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]
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Annotation:
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Will people who weren't able to properly vote against him be able to understand him if he endeavored to be more erudite? |
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what exactly would be wrong with gore? (I don't really have the slightest idea about american politics... sorry) |
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I suffer from a persistent fantasy: that we Americans are not as stupid as our representatives believe us to be; that we want to elect people who will challenge us to consider more than one side of an issue; that we recognize the difference between a second-grade-level speech (Bush's recent address before Congress) and one that addresses us as adults. |
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After some reflection, I think that my problem is this: I want to believe that I'm living in the U.K., and Tony Blair is my prime minister. |
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President Bush responds: "Overuse of the word 'evil' is all part of my strategery to install fear in Osama bin Label" |
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"evil" is about the most meaningless word Bush could use in the circumstances. It has pretty powerful associations of being the opposite of good, but what does it actually mean? |
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A word like "hateful", "vindictive", "spiteful", "malevolent" defines a mental attitude. "cruel", "mischevious", "wicked" characterise the actions of a person.
"Anti-American", "anti-capitalist", "antisemitic" define specific aspects of a person's beliefs that might lead them to do bad things. "psychopathic", "psychotic", "sociopathic" are more or less misused terms for specific psychiatric conditions.
"bad" is the opposite of good, but doesn't sound very strong - it's also a Michael Jackson album and a grade under 50%. "wrong" is much like bad - phone numbers are "wrong"; so are answers. |
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"Evil" is just supposed to say "you must be against this man". It says nothing else about him. |
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<note: biased annotator>
We, like History, will judge our presidents by the legacy of their accomplishments. A President's communication to the citizens of the nation and the world forms a portion of that president's achievements, since his words serve to shape the opinions and morale of the populace. There's "talk" as in "No Action, Talk Only (NATO), and there's talk that comprises statesmanship, as we have experienced with FDR and JFK (maybe it's a function of the number of initials in the abbreviation). |
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Peter seems not to require much speechifyin' from the commander-in-chief, looking instead to the marks left by the Big Stick, I assume. |
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As for me, I wish our president possessed a sufficiently high capability for verbal expression that, when speaking at the same event as Tony Blair, I wasn't reminded of the characters from Of Mice And Men. |
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Personally, I am pleased that he is not challenging my intellect with too many words. After watching CNN for 1152 consecutive hours since Sept 11th, I find it refreshing to know that our president can boil down the analysis into one simple, easily digestible word. Now excuse me but I must get back to the news...Wolf Blitzers beard is really starting to grow on me. |
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I had heard about Dubya's problems with the English language before Sept 11th but had never heard it for myself. Then, about a week after, I heard him use the word "misunderestimate" *twice* in a short speech. Has no one told him it's not a real word? |
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and maybe sprinkle some flour in the envelope so he knows it's from Halfbakery . . . |
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My return address? If I did that, W and his people would quickly figure out that a) I am a known pro-choice, anti-death-penalty, liberal female two-time Clinton voter who once chained herself to a nuclear facility fence in the 1980's; b) I was the person who sent him that nasty email on his first day in office; c) I was once a card-carrying member of the ACLU; and d) I've never actually read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", myself. |
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I'd then be deported, because on top of all evidence of the foregoing, I'm an immigrant. |
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I'm sorry. In most situations, I'm an honest person. I just can't run the risk of missing an *entire season* of "Will&Grace" ... |
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About a week after September 11, a woman talking about Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" appeared on an morning show down here. When questioned about American leadership in relation to the book, she acknowledged Dubya as a weak leader who uses simple language and easy to grasp concepts such as the whole "good versus evil" thing. |
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Interestingly, in the same sentence she also acknowledged Colin Powell as being a strong leader. |
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I still don't understand how we're supposed to get the Thesauri out of the White House. |
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I still don't understand how we're
supposed to *fly* over the White
House without getting shot down. |
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+ Still in need of this, may I suggest Ninja-Thesauri? |
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//what exactly would be wrong with gore? // Blooooooooddddd...... |
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