Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose—as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and giggles. Joseph Conrad
Yes, it certainly is. Al Gore used a euphemism for playing fast and loose with the truth, and the estimable Dr. Joy Bliss called him on it. To all my Fark friends, I send you back to the dictionary, where you can find all sorts of words for stressing important things, like: reiterate, and stress; accent; accentuate; belabor; dwell on; feature; harp on; headline; italicize; emphasize; play up; point up; repeat; rub in; spotlight; underline; underscore.
Those are words used by people NOT trying to give a false impression to create a panic they can capitalize on politically, and seeking to innoculate themselves from future criticism by making their bona fides in the good intention department to excuse their ambivalence about accuracy and proportion.
The antonym for these words is relax, by the way; sound advice.
Do we at Maggies Farm... ahem... over represent the Environmental Carbon Cavilling Cavalier's love for everpresent looming armageddon and false alarmism, as characterized by Mr. Gore? You tell me:
Greenpeace's fill-in-the-blank public relations meltdown
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?
The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.
"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.
The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.
(From Monday's Philadelphia Enquirer Thanks to a Chequer Board of Nights and Days for the link)
Would it look any different, really, if it said:
FILL IN OVER-REPRESENTATION HERE ?
