dysphemism

dysphemism n. The substitution of an unpleasant or derogatory word or expression for a pleasant or inoffensive one; also, a word or expression so used; the opposite of euphemism. Hence dysphemistic adj.: of the nature of or containing such an expression.
—The Oxford English Dictionary of The English Language

•

dysphemism versus euphemism

• A euphemism is a mild word chosen so as not to shock or offend someone; its motive is kindness.

• A dysphemism, however, is a strong word chosen because it is intended to be disagreeable, unpleasant, disparaging.—J. N. Hook. The Grand Panjandrum. New York: MacMillan, 1991.
  

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DYSPHEMISM IN USE:

[The term mixed] is also part of a euphemism chosen by pet lovers (the most avid of whom call themselves “companion animal” lovers) to substitute for the word mongrel; that word, from the Old English gemang, “mixed,” has a bad connotation, perhaps influenced by its growling gr. Dog breeders have taken up mixed breed (not to mention designer breed) as a euphemism just as the human population in general has put down half-breed as a dysphemism.—William Safire. The New York Times Magazine. On Language, titled "Varments," April 22, 2007.
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THE IMUS-RUTGERS WOMEN EPIS[H]ODE

It is April 4, 2007, and television and radio talk-show host Don Imus is on the air doing his simultaneous tv-radio program "Imus in the Morning." With his white producer Bernard McGurk, he is bantering in

a faux hip-hop-styled improvisation about what they are watching on a TV video. They are into a free floating one-upping performance, playing the roles--with no little presumption--of two black "dudes" (no other way to say it) rapping on about a team of predominantly young black women from Rutgers University battling against Tennesse U.for the 2007 NCAA women's basketball championship.

Members of Rutgers' Women's Basketball Team
at press conference following the Imus remark.

• IMUS SAYS: “That’s some rough girls from Rutgers, Man, they got tattoos ...
• MCGURK : “Some hardcore hos."
• IMUS: That’s some nappy headed hos there, I’m going to tell you that,” Imus said.
—The Associated Press 2007 and MSNB (http://www.msnbc.msn.
com)
__
With that dysphemism, "nappy headed hos," the Iman, as he is known, soon lost his jobs at NBC television and CBS radio and prompted a nation-wide conversation about acceptable talk. On April 23, 2007, we saw on the cover of Time magazine an image of the Iman, a Post-it note taped across his mouth asking, "WHO CAN SAY WHAT?"

The May 7, 2007, edition demonstrated that the national dialogue on sensitive language was still in strong swing by publishing in its "Inbox" 10 letters from thoughtful readers taking a variety of positions on Who can say what"

This writer—an avid follower of news on TV cable networks,—has noted, not a few times in recent weeks, that politicians, talking heads, and commentators of all sorts are marking the "Imus affair" as a qatershed of awakening about the extent and the hurtful effects of language that disparages and offends.

The headline below the Time logo invites its readers to read, think, and talk about the word-choices they make in public and private discourse. At issue is "What the Imus implosion tells us about boundaries of acceptable talk." _______________________________________________________________
THE OQ:

The offensiveness quotient—OQ—is tool used by dictionary editors at Random House to measure hurtful language in terms of
degrees of offensiveness O
degrees of disparagement D.

Here's how the OQ works. It asks the team of evaluators first to rank the term in question on two scales—the D Scale and the O Scale— each calibrated 0 to 5, with 0 representing a lowest degree of hurtfullness, and 5 the highest degree of hurtfulness.

The D, or Disparagement, Scale aims to determine "degree of intent to offend." If at this moment in the United States, six speakers, each in a different State, disparaged another person with the word "faggot," there would be for each speaker a unique mixture of personal motives and for the immediate speech community some variability in the degree of negativity attached to this particular word, faggot. Despite those variables, a team of "word experts" could reach close if not absolute agreement about the degree of "intent to offend" that is loaded into the word faggot. In point of fact, the word evaluators at Random House came to the agreement that speakers who use the word "intended to offend and hurt" the person spoken to and thus using the Disparagement Chart (below) as their guide accorded the word the degree of 5 on the D Scale.

Here is the D = Disparagement Scale, with descriptive language for each level (0 to 5) of hurtfulness, and sample words for each level. (I suggest reading the word samples thoughfully, asking yourself whether you agree with the ranking each word has received by the folks at Random House.)

D = Disparagement
(degrees of intent to offend)

O Not intended to offend, even though it may
nm(Oriental, welsh (welsh on a deal), lady)

1 Intended to show mild disapproval
mn(egghead, nerd, gind)

2 Rarely intended to offend, but indicates a lack of sensitivity
mn(the little woman, harelip, cripple)

3 Sometimes intended to offend, sometimes not, but there is a more neutral word that is better to use.
mn(haole, Canuck, goy)

4 Intended to offend or show contempt
mn(spaz, honky, pansy)

5 Intended to offend and hurt
mn(faggot, nigger, ofay)

Imus's "nappy headed hos" in my view would correspond to 3: sometimes intended to offend, sometimes not, but there is a more neutral word that is better to use.



On the day of the verbal disaster, Imus was in the bubble of his macho-talk program, trying to mimic black male hip-hop argot, the language of guys who throw the word "ho" around as if it meant something like "chick" or "broad," both being pejorative enough, of course, but not as toxic as "ho." Imus has bought into these rappers' insensitivity and doesn't take the word very seriously. He has even jokingly referred his admirable, white, public-servant, pro-environmentist wife Diedre as "green-headed ho," apparently without public reprisals from Diedre. In short he had an explosive word in his hand, with no inkling that it could explode.

When he uttered the epithet he didn't think ahead to the possibility (duh!) that an audio or video tape of his words could and probably would somehow wend its way to the ears of the women athletes at Rutgers as a proxy, and at the moment of their hearing the words, take them as "offensive and hurtful," the term Random House levels a 5 on the Offensivness Scale, the scale that registers the "degree of offense taken."

Here is the entire Offensiveness Scale, the scale that attempts to measure the degree of offense taken. You will note that a 5 indicates words "taken as offensive and hurtful" and that the sample level 5 epithets given are cunt, Hebe, and gook—to which I would add, "nappy headed hos."

D = Disparagement
(degrees of intent to offend)

So if I were asked to reckon an Offensiveness Quotient on the "nappy headed ho" remark—which extends in time from the utterance of the epithet in the studio to the moments the women heard the words and which includes Imus's insensitivity and addle-pated judgement—I'd render it an OQ of 4.5. Translating that number into words, Imus's remark was less disparaging (3) than it was offensive (5)





THE OFFENSIVENESS QUOTIENT (OQ), A TOOL USED BY DICTIONARY EDITORS AT RANDOM HOUSE FOR MEASURING HURTFUL LANGUAGE, IN TERMS OF

• DEGREES OF OFFENSIVENESS (O) and
  
• DEGREES OF DISPARAGEMENT (D).

—Randomhouse.com, WORDS@RANDOM, "Sensitive Language."}


In dealing with sensitive language they are challenged to employ precise lanuage to describe a given word in terms of what they label "degree of hurtfulness."

Following are their reckonings for the terms cracker, nigger, boy toy, pickaninny
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Term: cracker
How Used: Used to show contempt for a poor white person, especially in the southeastern U.S.
Comment: This term, although also a neutral slang term for a native of Florida or Georgia, is usually meant as offensive and taken as such.
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Term: nigger
How Used: Used with contempt and deliberate intent to hurt and insult.
Comment: Now the most offensive word in English, its use is rooted in a long history of mistreatment of people of African descent.

Extremely Disparaging .MD=5
Extremely Offensivem].MO=5
mmmmmmmmmmn|||OQ=5
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Term: boy toy
How Used: Intended to show contempt.
Comment: This term is used with intent to offend, but it is most often used about a young man rather than being used to his face.

Disparaging D=4
Offenesive||O=2
||||||||||||OQ=3
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Term: pickaninny
How Used: Those who still use this term to refer to a child of African descent usually do not intend it to be insulting. Very broadly speaking, the older the user, the less likely the intent to offend.
Comment: This term is extremely offensive to people of African descent, and is an example of a group of terms, such as "to Jew," that often are not recognized as offensive by the people using them.
Desparaging||||||||n|nD=2
Extremely Offensive NO=5
|||||||||||||||||||||| OQ=3.5
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Term: gyp
How Used:
Intended as an informal word for swindling or cheating.
Comment:
Although this term is not used deliberately as a slur, it is derived from "Gypsy", and is sometimes taken to be offensive to Gypsies.
Sometimes Offensive 0=2
Defensive D=0
OQ=1


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_______________________________________________________________






_______________________________________________________________


Disparaging and Offensive D=4 0=4
OQ=4

it is used to describe) and how disparaging a word is (the degree to which the person who uses the word intends for it to be hurtful)."

We will

The way we decide how to label an offensive word has to do with how offensive a word is (the degree to which a word offends the person it is used to describe) and how disparaging a word is (the degree to which the person who uses the word intends for it to be hurtful).

we call it the O.Q. or Offensiveness Quotation (modeled after the I.Q. Intelligence Quotient)

To decide how to label a word, we go through a process that is something like the chart we give below. We call it the O.Q., or "offensiveness quotient"--modeled after the more familiar I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient). This is only a rough guide, designed to help dictionary users understand what the labels mean.
rywpwpna
Basically, the O.Q. is the average of a term's rank on the scales of Disparagement and Offensiveness. To see how this works on specific words, go to Examples of How the O.Q. Works.

Although using the O.Q. is a rough
=====================\
D = Disparagement
(degree of intent to offend)
---------------------------------------
Not intended to offend, 0
even though it may
(Oriental, welsh [welsh on
a deal], lady)
---------------------------------------
Intended to show mild 1
disapproval
(egghead, nerd, grind
---------------------------------------
Rarely intended to offend, 2
but indicates a lack of
sensitivity
(the little woman, harelip,
cripple)
---------------------------------------
Sometimes intended to 3
offend, sometimes not,
but there is a more neutral
word that is better to use
(haole, Canuck, goy)
---------------------------------------
Intended to offend or 4
show contempt
(spaz, honky, pansy)
---------------------------------------
Intended to offend and 5
hurt
(faggot, nigger, ofay)

\=====================/
mmmmmm•
/=====================\
O = Offensiveness
(degrees of offense taken)
---------------------------------------
Rarely taken as offensive 0
(guys [when used to refer
to women], Moslem
[instead of Muslim], cover
girl)
---------------------------------------
Taken as showing mild 1
disapproval or lack of
respect
(housewife, Miss [instead
of Ms.], old maid)



_________________________________________________________________

Without a thought of what he was saying, Don Imus, in a bout of badniage with his producer Bernard McGurck, Imus tried to one-up Bernard's attempted quip "[Those are] [s]ome hardcore hos" with "That’s some nappy headed hos there." the three-word epithet that was widely perceived as disparaging and offensive on March 3, 2007; by April 12, he had apologized face to face with the young women of the Rutgers basketball team, the young women women had consitently deported themselves under media lights with honesty and grace gaining general admiration; Imus had been fired in disgrace by his radio and television network superiors; and Americans had launched into a collective dialogue on the question of how one person's words can so easily and so profoudly disparage, offend, and hurt other people.
____________________________________________________________________

Cable news people, politicians, and average Americans of all stripes agreed that the meanings or lessons of the episode are unresolved and highly complex. In this post, using some of the categories of linguistic study and classical rhetoric to disambiguate as best we can some the motivations and meanings bound into what may some day come to be called "The Imus Incident."

There are many linguistic and rhetorical categories one can use to try to explain the dynamics and implications of the assertion, "nappy headed hos"--far to many to list here. I have selected six that seem somewhat helpful in understanding the contexts surrounding the years preceeding the remark, the day of the remark, and the time following the remark.

Not intended to offend, even though it may
(Oriental, welsh [welsh on a deal], lady) 0
Rarely taken as offensive
(guys [when used to refer to women], Moslem [instead of Muslim], cover girl) 0


Intended to show mild disapproval
(egghead, nerd, grind) 1
Taken as showing mild disapproval or lack of respect
(housewife, Miss [instead of Ms.], old maid) 1

Rarely intended to offend, but indicates a lack of sensitivity
(the little woman, harelip, cripple) 2
Usually taken as insensitive, rather than as completely offensive
(Eskimo, deaf-and-dumb, dame) 2

Sometimes intended to offend, sometimes not, but there is a more neutral word that is better to use
(haole, Canuck, goy) 3
Easily taken as offensive
(Indian giver, baby [when used to address a woman], redskin) 3

Intended to offend or show contempt
(spaz, honky, pansy) 4
Usually taken as offensive
(dyke, Okie, wetback) 4

Intended to offend and hurt
(faggot, nigger, ofay) 5




________________________________________________________________

dysphemism n. The substitution of an unpleasant or derogatory word or expression for a pleasant or inoffensive one; also, a word or expression so used; the opposite of euphemism.[1] Hence dysphemistic a., of the nature of or containing such an expression.---oed
•
[1] euphemism: “mild, agreeable, or roundabout words used in place of coarse, painful, or offensive ones. The term comes from the Greek eu, meaning "well" or "sounding good," and pheme "speech.—Hugh Rawson.
•
EXAMPLE OF A DYSPHEMISM IN USE:

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/

1. As grammar, an appositive phrase that restates the earlier, "some rough girls from Rutgers . . . they got tattoos"
2. A transposition into slanguage of "tough whores with unkept hair"
3. Example of hip argot
4. Example of hip-hop slang
5. Example of a hip-hop catch phrase;
6. Example of a failed joke
7. Example of an ironic statement
   
8. Example of a disphemism
9. Example of lapsis linguae
   
10. Example of a sobriquet
11. Example of a maledition or slur against African American women
12. Example of an ad hominem attack;
13. Instance of insensitive language--specifically, a desparaging, offensive, hurtful epithet, thoughtlessly spoken April 15, 2007, on a nationally simulcast radio and television program titled "Imus in the Morning," by the 65 year old influential, white, male talk-show host, as an ironic "joke" describing 10 talented, highly successful college women athletes innocent of the description and not present at its pronouncement

"racial epithet," "sexist slur," hip-hop slang," but not once the term "dysphemism."

---------------------------------------

cache • cachet

cache n. [kash]
1 a : a hiding place; especially : one used by settlers, explorers, or campers for concealing and preserving provisions or implements b : a secure place of storage
2 a : something that is hidden or stored in a cache b : a group of artifacts occurring alone or with a burial
3 a : the hibernation place of a group of insects (as a hole in the ground b : the mass of insects hibernating in such a place--"cache."
--Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (6 Apr. 2007).

•

CACHE IN USE--FROM TEDDY ROOSEVELT:

The deer had been hung in a thicket of dwarfed cedars; but when we reached the place we found nothing save scattered pieces of their carcasses, and the soft mud was tramped all over with round, deeply marked footprints, some of them but a few hours old, showing that the plunderers of our cache were a pair of cougars—"mountain lions," as they are called by the Westerners.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail. 1896. (http://www.bartleby.com/54/8.html)
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ETYMOLOGY:

French, hiding place, from cacher to hide, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin coacticare to press together, from Latin coactare to compel, from coactus, past participle of cogere to drive together, compel
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GLOSS:

Sometimes we hear cache (pronounced cash) erroneously exchanged for cachet (pronounced cash-AA). One English usage website, using reporters as a straw man, explains the error this way:

“Cache” comes from the French verb cacher, meaning “to hide,” and in English is pronounced exactly like the word “cash.” But reporters speaking of a cache (hidden hoard) of weapons or drugs often mispronounce it to sound like cachet—“ca-SHAY'” —a word with a very different meaning: originally a seal affixed to a document, now a quality attributed to anything with authority or prestige. Rolex watches have cachet.
--Common Errors in English Usage (http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors)
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THE "COMPETING TERM":

Let's now look at what we might call--in the context of correct word usage--the "competing term," which happens to end with a "t":

cachet n. [cash-AA']
1 a : a seal or stamp that is used especially as a mark of official approval
b : an indication or sign of approval usually carrying with it great prestige
2 a : a characteristic feature or quality conferring prestige or distinction or inspiring respect
b : high status : prestige
--Webster's Third New International Dictionary,Unabridged. Merriam-Webster,
2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (6 Apr. 2007).

•

CACHET IN USE:

"For all its eccentricities, bird-watching is a respectable hobby, practiced by psychiatrists, kings, and forty-six million Americans. But plane-spotting--which also entails tramping around swamps to watch flying objects--somehow lacks the same cachet."
--Andrew Blum, "Up in the Sky Dept. Rare Bird" The New Yorker, April 2, 2007.

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IN SUM:

Cache--with no final "t" and pronounced "cash"--is a hiding place, as in . . . "The power of the bear in breaking up a provision cache is extraordinary."
--1856 KANE Arct. Expl. I. xii. 138 (OED Online)

. . . WHEREAS . . .

cachet--ending with a "t" and pronounced cash-AA'--means prestige, high status; the quality of being respected or admired, as in . . . "The Dorsey levite [dress]..is very stylish; it is difficult to make and still more difficult to wear, and will consequently retain its cachet and not become common."
--1882 Daily Advocate (Newark, Ohio) 27 Apr. 3/1 (OED).

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RHYMING DEVICES FOR REMEMBERING:

"Sally sashays with a classy cachet."

"Mac stashed the cash in the cache."

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ONE MORE MEMORY TO CACHE:

It is highly likely that the computer you are using at this moment contains a cache. You will not be surprised to learn that a computer's cache handles storage, storage of digital information. Webster 3 identifies such a cache, also called cache memory, as "computer memory with a very short access time used for storage of frequently used instructions or data."

•

CASH MEMORY IN USE:

"If the information is held in the cache, which can be thought of as very fast on-chip local memory, then only two clock cycles are required."
--1987 Electronics & Wireless World Jan. 105/1 (OED Online).

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prevaricate

prevaricate v. The verb prevaricate, says Pliny, was first applied to men who ploughed crooked ridges, and afterwards to men who gave crooked answers in the law courts, or deviated from the straight line of truth.--Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894.

•

prevaricate: v. To deviate from the truth; to speak equivocally[1] or evasively; to quibble; loosely, to lie.--Merriam-Webster's International Dictionary, Third Ed.

[1] Not quite sure about the meaning of equivocate? Here's a definition: "to avoid committing oneself in words; to speak evasively; to willfully mislead; to use words with double meanings."--Webster 3. In colloquial terms it means "double talk" or "to talk out of both sides of one's mouth."

___________________________________________________________

Having read definitions of prevaricate from Brewer's Dictionary and Merriam-Webster's 3rd, let's see what the OED has to say:

prevaricate: To behave evasively or indecisively so as to delay action; to procrastinate.--The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition. http://dictionary.oed.com).

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THUS FAR:

We could say that, metaphorically speaking, prevaricate stands like a vending machine stocked with a variety of dictionary synonyms. Each auditor of the word
prevaricate, given his or her personal history with the word, selects accordingly--some judging it to mean indecision; others--delay; some--evasion; others--doubletalk; some--telling a lie, and still others--a specific combination of synonyms. A rare few know the word's full complexity. And the remaining haven't a clue.

To discern which nuances of prevaricate are at play when a particular person uses it, we have to investigate several contexts: the sense of the language surrounding the word, the expectations of the occasion, and the probable motivations of the speaker and of the audience. We have to discern, in other words, the user's rhetorical circumstances.
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NOW: OUR THIRD, AND FINAL, DEFINITION OF PREVARICATE

Before observing prevaricate in play, let's consider one more definition of the word, an openly "slanted" one:

prevaricate: long-winded, soft sounding, Latinized "lie." "Prevaricate" and its related nouns prevarication and prevaricator, derive from the Latin praevaricari, meaning "to walk a crooked course" and, hence, to deviate from the straight path of truth.--Rawson's Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk: Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves and Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language. New York: Crown, 1981, p. 219.
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GLOSS:

("GLOSS"--dear, patient reader--is a new heading term in the blog. It means "text comprising commentary, interpretation, clarification." It replaces the pompous "Bloggin' John Comments.")

With the word "euphemisms" in the title of his book heralding his intentions, the author of our third definition, Hugh Rawson, sees prevaricate--as an example of euphemism.

In case you're uncertain about the meaning of euphemism, here, to supply or refresh your memory, is as good an introduction to the word as I've ever seen, from page one of Rawson's book:

A [polite female] secretary complains that her boss is a pain in the derriere, an undertaker (or mortician) asks delicately where to ship the loved one. These are euphemisms--mild, agreeable, or roundabout words used in place of coarse, painful, or offensive ones. The term comes from the Greek eu, meaning "well" or "sounding good," and pheme "speech.

NOTE: We will return to euphemisms later in the post. For now, let's observe prevaricate in play.
___________________________________________________________

PREVARICATE IN USE:

Recently, Tim Russert, host of NBC News' "Meet the Press," put the following question to Senator Oren Hatch, the chairman of the U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee.

MR. RUSSET: Whether or not you agree or disagree that Mr. Gonzales has not told the truth in this situation, The National Review is saying he no
longer has the ability to lead the Justice Department. Would you be willing
to see him step aside now?

Senator Hatch responded, in part, as follows (with emphasis added in bold text):

SEN. HATCH: He’s appeared before the committee, he’s been a very bright guy, he’s done a very good job. . . . All I can say is this, Alberto Gonzales, you know, he’s the first Hispanic-American ever put in this high position. He is an honest man. My experience with him has been extensive. I have never seen him prevaricate, I have never seen him do anything that was wrong. In this particular case, he misstated, there’s no question about it. He was inaccurate, I don’t think there’s any question
about it. I think he’ll be the first to tell you that. But you can interpret things various ways, and I would wait until he testifies. He’ll have to answer some of these questions. And let’s give the man a fair—at least some fairness, a fair chance to be able to explain why this happened under his watch and he was not totally prepared to, to handle all the problems that came up. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17857501/ )

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GLOSS:

The Senator's rhetorical purpose here is to present himself as an honest, trustworthy person, hoping that by the dint of the [perceived] sincerity and [apparently] sound reasoning of his words, he might dissuade others from rushing to judgment about the competency or culpability of Attorney General (AG) Gonzales' statements and actions. He asks that the beleagured AG be given a fair forum:

And let’s give the man a fair—at least some fairness, a fair chance to be able to explain why this happened under his watch and he was not totally prepared to, to handle all the problems that came up.

Were members of his audience to accept the Senator's sincerity, they might be willing to agree with the positive judgments he is making on the Attorney General's behalf. Senator Hatch believes the AG is "a very bright guy" and "an honest man" whom he has never seen "do anything that was wrong." As he continues, the Senator wants to keep his gentle encomium of Mr. Gonzales untainted by any coarse words that might stick in his listeners' memories, the way a certain stark word--in a much more dramatic circumstance--once became lodged in America's collective memory the day President Richard Nixon tried to defend himself but, in effect, pejoratively branded himself forever with the five-letter word that concluded his forelorn assertion, "I am not a crook!"

But to remain honest, Senator Hatch has to admit that Attorney General General Gonzales does have his faults, that he has "misstated, there’s no question about it. He was inaccurate. . . . "

Misstated can be read two ways--as a mere lapsus linguae, a verbal slip--or as a downright lie. To steer his audience toward "verbal slip," the Senator quickly adds the morally fault-free word inaccurate to his brief delineation the General's faults. At the end of his comments, the Senator adds a passing reference the AG's not being "totally prepared . . . to handle all the problems that came up."

At this point, let's back up a bit. Just prior to using the troublesome word "misstated," Senator Hatch deftly set a generally positive moral frame for his comments by stating with a sweeping fillip, "I have never seen (sic) him prevaricate."

If, at this point, the Senator had been, as Hugh Rawson might put it, more honest, he would have said, "I have never heard the Attorney General tell a lie." And with that word choice he would have polluted the heretofore clear verbal waters with a word that is "coarse, painful, or offensive." Instead, Senator Hatch deftly avoids anything unseemly by reaching for the euphemism prevaricate, a word that we have seen is highly variable in meaning and that Rawson sees as having a cloaking effect to anything morally amiss. (I'm perhaps straining here to make a point, but the worse words the Senator could have chosen (and he's far too fair-minded a man and too sophisticated a wordsmith to have done so) would have been, "Attorney General Gonzales is not a liar.")

In sum, Senator Hatch successfully presents his own ethos as being fair, wise, and non-judgmental and the Attorney General's ethos as being bright and honest, though at times given to misstatements and inaccuracites--but certainly not to prevarication.
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A FINAL GLOSS

For all his skill in making apt word choices--in particular, prevaricate, misstate, and inaccurate--Senator Hatch still has an underlying argument to promote: he wants his audience to believe that because Attorney General Gonzales has never told the Senator a lie in the past, he can't possible be telling lies now amid the kerfuffle about fired government prosecutors.

Some auditors of the Senator's observation may think his remarks are based on misplaced loyalty (to the AG or to the Administration that the AG serves), a loyalty which, in turn, serves up impediments to what logicians call "cogent reasoning." Such impediments might be wishfull thinking, self-deception, rationalization, or denial. Others might intuit that Senator Hatch has fallen under the influence of the informal fallacy of The Appeal to Ignorance, wherein the absence of evidence for a claim is proof that the claim is false. Because Mr. Hatch can not prove the AG has prevaricated with him in the past, he is disinclined to believe the AG is prevaricating with us now.

We will have to wait for a sufficient critical mass of facts to appear before any of us can infer whether, during the years leading up to March of 2007, Senator Orren Hatch had allowed himself to become clouded in denial and wishful thinking about the AG's character and competance; allowed an informal fallacy to skew his deductive powers; or, conversely, been reading all along the political realities before him with apt, fair, precise consistency. We will also have to wait for further testimony before we can determine how Attorney General Gonzales will be perceived by the Congress and the nation--as either an honest yet politically and verbally inept AG or as a public servant who--in blunt, unequivocal, Rawsonian terms--has been guilty of lying on the job.

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