Alberto Gonzales has added softspeak<\/I>, a modification of newspeak<\/I>, to the Here’s how softspeak<\/I> works: Asked by Sen. Pat Leahy whether he believes in holding Newspeak<\/EM>, you may recall, is the official language of Oceania and is commonly Alberto Gonzales has added softspeak, a modification of newspeak, to the Orwellian lexicon, although Sen. Joe Biden had another term for it: “Pure malarkey!” That’s how Biden, fed up with Gonzales’s lack of candor, characterized the Attorney General nominee’s testimony in this morning’s Senate hearing. (A big tip of the hat, too, to Sen. Ted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-fM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nOrwellian lexicon, although Sen. Joe Biden had another term for it: “Pure malarkey!” That’s how
\nBiden, fed up with Gonzales’s lack of candor, characterized the Attorney General nominee’s
\ntestimony in this morning’s Senate
\nhearing<\/B><\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/A>. (A big tip of the hat, too, to Sen. Ted Kennedy for not
\npussyfooting around.)<\/P>
\n
\npolicy makers accountable for their decisions — in this case military and civilian leaders who
\ncondoned torture — Gonzales replied: “If there’s an allegation that we’ve done something wrong,
\nwe investigate it.” He then listed a handful of investigations into the torture at Abu Ghraib,
\nGuantanamo and other military detention camps. What Gonzales failed to say was that, of the
\n“requisite half-dozen investigations, none [were] empowered to touch those who devised the
\npolicies,” as Mark Danner writes this morning in “We Are All Torturers.”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>
\n
\ndefined as ambiguous and contradictory language that deliberately misleads and manipulates the
\npublic. Thus softspeak<\/I> may be defined as direct and unambiguous language that
\nnonetheless deliberately misleads and manipulates the public to draw a false conclusion — in this
\ncase, that he and the Bush regime believe in
\naccountability.<\/P>Postscript:<\/STRONG> Now that I’ve checked the
\n
\nthat both ignore Biden’s great piece of plainspeak<\/I>, which just happened to be the most
\ngalvanizing moment of the morning session. Both reports read like softspeak<\/EM> press
\nreleases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"