Objection, your honor! Non-responsive
Bookworm on Aug 03 2009 at 1:30 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
If you are a young lawyer, struggling to learn what a non-responsive answer really looks like, you can’t do better than this question-and-answer session between Jake Tapper and Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs. If Gibbs were any slicker, he’d just ooze right out of the room:
TAPPER: Robert, in terms of what Geithner and Summers had to say yesterday [stating on the Sunday news shows that there would be middle class tax increases, talk the Gibbs said was "hypothetical"], it really wasn’t too much of a hypothetical back-and- forth. It was about do they think it’s possible to do deficit reduction. But that’s not…
GIBBS: Well, we can quibble about whether the word “possible” or the word “hypothetical”…
TAPPER: Is it possible to do everything the president wants to do without increasing revenues from the middle class?
GIBBS: Right. And I want to just state again clearly here that the president has made a very clear commitment to not raise taxes on middle-class families…
TAPPER: But economists, including the president’s own economists, don’t necessarily think that it’s possible to do so without raising taxes on the middle class. How is that dealing candidly with the American people?
GIBBS: Well, again, there are a series of things that have to be done. I think you’ll actually hear an announcement from Treasury later this afternoon about how much money has to be borrowed versus what they thought was going to have to be borrowed and what will have to be borrowed as a result of financial stabilization in terms of cutting the amount of money that’s needed. Again, I think the president has been clear on this. The first thing that we can do — the most important thing that we can do right now is get our economy growing again. We know that the deficit — part of the reason that the deficit is up right now is that the economy has slowed down so much that tax revenues, because this is what happens in an economic slowdown, have regressed a lot. I think the president — obviously, we’re going to have to make some decisions down the road on some of the president’s legislative priorities and some of the things that Congress wants to do, to evaluate how we move back towards — on a path toward fiscal sustainability.
Most transparent presidency — evah! Yeah, right.
The administration does win the award, however, for the most weasely press secretary, that’s for darn certain. I don’t blame Gibbs, though. He’s tasked with being the messenger whose job description requires him to hide a message so un-palatable and so at odds with prior promises that he can nothing but engage in meaningless prevarication.
As you may recall, I once wrote that liberal Supreme Court justices tend to be incredibly boring, long-winded, obfusctatory writers, while conservative Supreme Court justices tend to be clear, and often charming, or exciting, writers. As a young lawyer, I thought it was just a coincidence that liberals were bad writers and conservative good writers. I’ve since realized, of course, that bad thoughts make for bad writing. It takes a lot of explanation to justify a bad idea, and a lot of smoke to cover just how bad it is.
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6 Responses to “Objection, your honor! Non-responsive”
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Book, you forgot the first rule of academia: obscure, inaccessible writing is the most brilliant. A powerful idea expressed simply is no competition for a lousy idea expressed in four times as many words.
It takes a lot of explanation to justify a bad idea, and a lot of smoke to cover just how bad it is.
That’s where the magic of doublethink and EngSoc comes in, Book. Once you reduce the English language to a vocabulary that you control, you don’t have to worry about obfuscation attempts anymore. You can just say what you mean, and people will only take it in the way you mean it, with no other interpretations open.
Wouldn’t that be very simple, Book?
“As you may recall, I once wrote that liberal Supreme Court justices tend to be incredibly boring, long-winded, obfusctatory writers, while conservative Supreme Court justices tend to be clear, and often charming, or exciting, writers.
We can only imagine what Sotomayor’s written opinions will be like to read…as distinct from Clarence Thomas’s opinions.
I make no claim to exceptional virtue. I can surely lie, just like everyone else. But what sort of character and upbringing brings a person to this point where lies and fudges and obfuscations and elisions spring so easily to his lips?
The sociopath lies just because he can and it suits him. Truth is immaterial. Although Robert Hare, foremost expert in psychopathology, did write a book called “Snakes in Suits” about what I guess you could call psychopaths in sheep’s clothing, Gibbs doesn’t seem like one. But what else can you conclude about someone who is so devoted to obscuring everything?
I wonder what Gibbs will do when this job is over. I guess he’ll work for another politician, for who but one of those would have him?
It’s really not that complicated to understand, Tonestaple.
Robert Gibbs is really Baghdad Bob doing the same old shtick under a new identity http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/.
Just a little bit of surgery and a total make-over and…voila!
I don’t believe that, Danny. Surely Bob has had a sex change by now. Only that would keep him safe from the CIA Eyes of Bush.