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Presidential praise Grading on a CurveBy Rick Horowitz
"You are doing a superb job." President Bush, to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld "You are the Holy Roman Emperor." Rick Horowitz, to the bathroom mirror Somewhere -- on a leafy college campus, or maybe in the basement of some All-U-Can-Eat roadside retreat -- there has to be a room. And in this room, right at this moment, there's a crowd of angry people gathering, and someone pounding a gavel to quiet them down. It's time to start the meeting. An emergency meeting of the Committee Against Rhetorical Excess. "It's a disaster!" cries someone in the back row, and a hundred pairs of eyes quickly turn toward the voice. "I mean," the voice tries again, "it's a very disturbing development." And a hundred pairs of eyes turn back where they came from, satisfied. At the Committee Against Rhetorical Excess, they try to practice what they preach. Too bad they haven't been able to convert the rest of the world. For the Committee Against Rhetorical Excess -- and somewhere, doesn't there have to be a Committee Against Rhetorical Excess? -- it's been a rough couple of decades. When every athlete who can still squeeze into uniform is a "superstar," when every night that offers more than a thimble's worth of chuckles is "must-see TV," are there any superlatives still worthy of the name? And now even Washington, the nation's capital, home to countless cautious bureaucrats -- even Washington seems to have caught the bug. What was he thinking? That's what the committee members are trying to figure out: What was President Bush thinking when he told Donald Rumsfeld that Rumsfeld was doing "a superb job"? Told him in front of witnesses, no less! In front of cameras! "It says here" -- and "here" would be Webster's New World College Dictionary (Fourth Edition), which the woman in the fifth row is waving over her head -- "'noble or majestic; rich or splendid; extremely fine; excellent.' "I'm sorry," she says, "but I don't see how it qualifies -- the guy messed up right from the get-go! Remember when he said we knew exactly where the weapons were?" Call the roomful of laughter rueful. "Well, it says here" -- and in this case, "here" would be Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th Edition), similarly airborne in the seventh row -- "'marked to the highest degree by grandeur, excellence, brilliance, or competence. Synonym: See splendid.' Are you kidding me?! Thinking he could run Iraq on the cheap?" Some of his own military people, the speaker reminds the crowd, had warned Rumsfeld that keeping post-war Iraq calm and secure would require many more troops than it would to defeat Iraq in the first place. But Rumsfeld had discounted the advice, and disdained the advisers -- what's "superb" about that? "Well, it says...it says here" -- and the crash is as loud as it's inevitable; one should never try to wave the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Second Edition, Unabridged) in the air. They dust the gentleman off, restore him to his seat, and listen as he haltingly continues: "'Admirably fine or excellent, extremely good; sumptuous, rich, grand; of a proudly imposing appearance or kind, majestic.' How's it 'admirably' anything to let this whole prisoner-abuse business get so out of hand?" "And to keep the president in the dark about it!" "He's in the dark about everything -- no wonder he thinks Rumsfeld's 'superb'!" "He's too dumb to be president!" And a hundred pairs of eyes quickly turn toward the voice. On the third ballot, they agree to "underinformed." Posted 5/11/04. For
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Rick Horowitz
