Post-Modern Disassembly

At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush, speaking about detainees who had complained of being abused, said they were "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble – that means not tell the truth." Mr. Bush meant, of course, to say dissemble, which really means to deliberately mislead or conceal. Nevertheless, he knew what he was talking about. The president may have stumbled over the pronunciation, but he's proved time and again that he's a skillful practitioner of the art.

[Bob Herbert, "Truth and Deceit", New York Times, 2 June 2005.]

Posted on June 2, 2005 at 18.34 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Common-Place Book

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