President George W. Bush Garners 2003 Doublespeak Award from NCTE
President George W. Bush has been given the dubious honor of
receiving the 2003 Doublespeak Award from the National Council of Teachers
of English (NCTE) Committee on Public Doublespeak. The award is an ironic “tribute”
to American public figures who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive,
evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-contradictory. Bush won for his creative
use of language in public statements regarding the reasons why the United States
needed to pursue war against Iraq—for unsubstantiated statements, for the
lack of evidentiary support, and for the purported manipulation of intelligence
data.
In the award speech, Rudolph Sharpe, speaking of behalf of the NCTE Committee
on Public Doublespeak, referred to quotes from “Missing Weapons Of Mass
Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?”
by John W. Dean (FindLaw.com, June 6, 2003) as evidence that Bush is deserving
of the award.
“The unequivocal statements made by Bush regarding the reasons that the
‘United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can
take—acts of war against another nation,’ remain unsubstantiated.
Weapons inspectors continue to search for ‘thousands of tons of chemical
agents,’ ‘a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles,’
and ‘tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent.’ That ‘Iraq
continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised’
is still a statement of questionable veracity,” said Sharpe. He added,
“As former presidential counsel John Dean has suggested, ‘Presidential
statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation
of the highest standard of truthfulness.’”
The NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak has given the Doublespeak Award annually
since 1974. The word doublespeak is a combination of the concepts of “newspeak”
and “doublethink” found in George Orwell’s novel 1984.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), with 60,000 individual and
institutional members worldwide, is dedicated to improving the teaching and
learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.
Contact: Lyndsey Tate, NCTE
December 4, 2003
Of related interest, see: David Corn, The
Lies of George W. Bush (2003) and the various reviews of it.
From the Introduction:
"George W Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small.
He has lied directly and by omission. He has misstated facts, knowingly or
not. He has misled. He has broken promises, been unfaithful to political vows.
Through his campaign for the presidency and his first years in the White House,
he has mugged the truth -- not merely in honest error, but deliberately, consistently,
and repeatedly to advance his career and his agenda. Lying greased his path
toward the White House; it has been one of the essential tools of his presidency.
To call the 43rd president of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise
of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. This insult is supported
by an all too extensive record of self-serving falsifications. So constant
is his fibbing that a history of his lies offers a close approximation of
the history of his presidential tenure."