George Is Rolling In His Grave

In a recent post I made mention of Newspeak, a language created by George Orwell in his novel 1984. Newspeak is defined as "the language of bureaucrats and politicians, regarded as deliberately ambiguous and misleading."

Here are two excellent examples.

In an appearance on Sunday night’s 60 Minutes, National Security Advisor Susan Rice was asked about Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's appearance before congress back in March of this year. In that appearance, Clapper flat-out denied that the NSA collects data on hundreds of millions of Americans. That statement, of course, was later revealed to be what you and I would call a lie. Rice, however, who is fluent in Newspeak, said that Clapper and other NSA officials didn't lie about the data gathering, but instead “inadvertently made false representations.”

Clapper himself, when asked at a later date about his statement, characterized it as not a lie, but rather as the “least untruthful”answer he could have provided.

You might also recall that before she became obama's national Security Advisor, Susan Rice was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She was in line to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State until she made a fool of herself by blaming the deaths of four Americans during a terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi on a YouTube video. In the 60 Minutes interview she referred to that as a "false controversy."

We've come a long way from George "I cannot tell a lie" Washington...