Sunday, September 23, 2007

Hillary's Purple Prose

Everyones been parsing Hillay's infamous "willing suspension of disbelief " comment to General Patreus. It's amazing to me the number of misharacterizations that have been flying around as to what she actually meant.

It's pretty simple folks, she attempted to call him a liar without blatantly appearing to do so. It's a common bit of verbal artistry where the speaker weaves extra wordiness into the phrase so that one actual has to think about it to understand it's meaning. ie. "How are you". "I am not unwell". Have to think about it for a sec right? I am well and I am not unwell mean exactly the same thing but yet one has to put a bit of thought into the latter.

So a "willing suspension of disbelief" actually is saying you have to be willing to believe anything in order to believe Patreus. Patreus' lies are so "unbelievable" one is either unimaginably gullible or hopelessly obtuse to fall for them.

It also has a bit of the old "nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more" flavor to it as obviously educated lefties will decipher what she meant but clueless conservatives will just scratch their heads and mutter DUH, HUH?

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