When a politician lies, I'm right there with the tar and feathers. But in this case, JDM, Brewer's not a liar. Read the posts and threads on other blogs. Yes, she could have been clearer grammatically in her latest statement, but she didn't lie. She's talked about her father's wartime service many times. I'm a writer by trade, and my spoken grammar can be very imprecise in conversation, so I see what she was saying.
I don't know Athenawise, when someone makes a statement like this:
"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that..."
and they KNOW that 1) their father never set foot IN GERMANY during the war and 2) that his death years after the war may have been attributed to the working conditions he was exposed to and NOT as a direct effect of being killed by Nazis
then I'd say that while technically those might not be direct lies, like saying : "My father died fighting Nazis", but they are lies in the manner that she KNOWS that 1) her father never was in Germany during WWII and 2) never had contact with Nazis and 3) died years after the war....
Statements like the one she made above are designed to make the listener conclude that her father was a war veteran who died fighting Nazis, and that's not a misstatement it's a lie.
The operative phrase in her statement is "...died fighting the Nazis...." "... died fighting..." very strongly implies that the two actions, dying, and fighting, were simultaneous, and which evokes an understanding in the average listener that her father was a soldier killed in action, when, in fact, he was a civilian who died much later, indirectly, of activities which supported the military effort.
Those two outcomes are quite different, and, equally importantly, she is using her father's death to defend herself against charges of supporting and enabling a practice of requiring internal passports, something the Nazis did, indeed, do, partly for similarly racial reasons.
Logically, what her father did in WWII has absolutely nothing to do with what she is doing now (for all we know, her father, if alive, might be appalled by her actions), but by juxtaposing the two events, and in using the language as she does, Brewer hopes to negate a valid criticism without actually debating the similarities and differences.
To my mind, she's not so much lying outright as she is propagandizing--she's grafting two unrelated events together to stir nationalist sympathies in the listener and thus evade having to explain her actions more directly, and to use emotional affect to persuade the listener of the rectitude of her actions.
Of course, propagandizing was something at which the Nazis excelled, as well.
Rising Hegemon
6 comments:
Goddam fucking liar.
When a politician lies, I'm right there with the tar and feathers. But in this case, JDM, Brewer's not a liar. Read the posts and threads on other blogs. Yes, she could have been clearer grammatically in her latest statement, but she didn't lie. She's talked about her father's wartime service many times. I'm a writer by trade, and my spoken grammar can be very imprecise in conversation, so I see what she was saying.
I don't know Athenawise, when someone makes a statement like this:
"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that..."
and they KNOW that 1) their father never set foot IN GERMANY during the war and 2) that his death years after the war may have been attributed to the working conditions he was exposed to and NOT as a direct effect of being killed by Nazis
then I'd say that while technically those might not be direct lies, like saying : "My father died fighting Nazis", but they are lies in the manner that she KNOWS that 1) her father never was in Germany during WWII and 2) never had contact with Nazis and 3) died years after the war....
Statements like the one she made above are designed to make the listener conclude that her father was a war veteran who died fighting Nazis, and that's not a misstatement it's a lie.
the pen IS mightier than the sword!
her hair lies too.
Goddam fucking liar.
The operative phrase in her statement is "...died fighting the Nazis...." "... died fighting..." very strongly implies that the two actions, dying, and fighting, were simultaneous, and which evokes an understanding in the average listener that her father was a soldier killed in action, when, in fact, he was a civilian who died much later, indirectly, of activities which supported the military effort.
Those two outcomes are quite different, and, equally importantly, she is using her father's death to defend herself against charges of supporting and enabling a practice of requiring internal passports, something the Nazis did, indeed, do, partly for similarly racial reasons.
Logically, what her father did in WWII has absolutely nothing to do with what she is doing now (for all we know, her father, if alive, might be appalled by her actions), but by juxtaposing the two events, and in using the language as she does, Brewer hopes to negate a valid criticism without actually debating the similarities and differences.
To my mind, she's not so much lying outright as she is propagandizing--she's grafting two unrelated events together to stir nationalist sympathies in the listener and thus evade having to explain her actions more directly, and to use emotional affect to persuade the listener of the rectitude of her actions.
Of course, propagandizing was something at which the Nazis excelled, as well.
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