Was Dowd’s description of Bush’s comment fair and accurate? If not, was it an understandable error on her part? Or, was she intentionally fooling the reader?
On the one hand, one could interpret Bush’s comment, “They’re not a problem anymore,” to mean “Al Qaeda are not a problem anymore.” Under that interpretation, Dowd’s column was fair and accuate, when it characterized Bush’s position as “Al Qaeda is spent.” Her criticism of the President would be justified: a major al Qaeda attack would have occured right after he told us that al Qaeda was not a problem anymore.
OTOH, in the complete quote, it seems clear that Bush was referring not to all of al Qaeda but to those who are “either jailed or dead.” Furthermore, the thrust of the entire paragraph as well as other comments by the President would be that al Quada is still a problem, although less of a problem than previously.
Furthermore, Dowd’s omission of a key sentence invites a misinterpretation of what Bush said. In Dowd’s version, the antecedant of the pronoun they] (in “They’re not a problem anymore”) seems to be al Qaeda. In the complete quote, it’s clear that the antecedant of of they is the half of all the top al Qaeda operatives [who] are either jailed or dead. It seems that Dowd intentionally omitted a key sentence so as to twist Bush’s meaning in an effort to embarass the President. Or, perhaps her main purpose was to find some sort of catchy point to justify her column. Either way, I think the column showed a disregard for the truth.
What Dowd said seems a reasonable precis of Bush’s comments. The primary thrust of his statement was that the al-Qaida threat was largely nullified, which I suspect is probably true. What Dowd said pretty much says the same thing. The most important part of the comment is “(they) are slowly but surely being decimated,” which Dowd repeated in full.
Dowd, in her special little she-harpy way, misrepresented what GW said. Her interpretation of events has the President saying that Al Queda is no longer a problem, which GW clearly did not say. She, and the entire shrieking host of liberal columnists, want GW to stumble, to give them something to write about.
The '04 elections are looking bleak for Blue America, and the increasingly outlandish diatribes spewed by the usual suspects confirms this.
I wonder if Dowd is among the other NYT staff members now under internal investigation? Will she soon be a ‘columnist’ for the soon-to-be NY Enquirer?
I say the 2004 election looks bleak for the Red Ink Republicans. and their missing 2 million jobs. Um plus healthcare could be better. But what is dubya doing for healthcare? He’s cutting taxes!
It can also be said that social issues will be on the line too. Don’t think Santorum won’t be an issue. W is tying to straddle the fence on the gay issue, and the freepers won’t have that. If Dean makes some waves, it will bring the issue up. It is a can’t loose situation for the democrats and possibly a wedge in the Republican party between the hard-core tom delays and the soccer mom. The prez can’t win that battle. The only thing dubya has for him is defense, which is fading from people’s memory. Take Afghanistan: That faded away after a year, unless he starts a new war, he’ll face dwindling support again. Coupled with the fact that even republicans are getting tired of his strong-armed tactics, this is hardly an enviable position. If I were to choose sides, I’d rather the democrats be in the opposition now.
Also, America’s not buying the tax-cut deal either.
And what’s going to happen in Iraq now? Its going to be such an easy election for the dems, my friend.
I subscribe to the School of Charitable Intepretation, and I think we should apply it across the board.
Bush made an ambiguous comment. Specifically, he may have used a pronoun not to refer to the subject of the paragraph – Al Qaeda – but to the subject of the third (and immediately preceding sentence – “about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives.”
If his pronoun was referring to Al Qaeda, it was clearly a foolish thing to say. If it was referring to “about half of all the top al Qaeda operatives,” it was not a foolish thing to say.
The School of Charitable Interpretation requires that we assume he was not speaking foolishly. Even though we’re talking about the King of Malapropisms here, we must make this charitable assumption.
Ms. Dowd subscribed to the School of Vindictive Interpretation. She elided words from his quote in such a way as to make it seem that the pronoun referred to “Al Qaeda.” We do not know whether she did this deliberately (so as to make him look dumb) or accidentally.
The School of Charitable Interpretation requires us to assume it was an accident.
December brought this matter to our attention. It is unclear whether he did so out of an honest desire for accuracy, or out of a skulking partisan desire to pee in Ms. Dowd’s cornflakes.
The School of Charitable Interpretation requires us to assume it was out of an honest desire for accuracy.
Brutus called Ms. Dowd a she-harpy, presumably to distinguish her from a he-harpy.
Sadly, the School of Charitable Interpretation is all out of charitable interpretations.
Well, old fellow, she used the rethorical technique of fragmentary quoting; she quoted different parts of an original text to imply a coherent argument. Almost as popular as lifting quotes out of context.
Badness here is obviously pretty dependent on how well the implied argument resembles the actual argument in the original text.
In this case I would say it is a pretty mixed affair.
On the one hand:
In the original speach they seem to refer to those Al Qaeda operatives that are either dead or in jail. So in this respect the quoting would somewhat distort the original argument.
On the other hand:
I would suggest that the original speach cleverly uses rethorical means to suggest [to some portion of the listeners] that the meaning of they also include Al Qaeda as a whole.
The particular rethorical technique used to accomplish this is a “triad”.
There some examples. Now let’s apply it to Bush’s speech.
Statement I:Al Qaeda is on the run.
proceding [without any proof of statement I] to
Statement II:Al Qaeda is being decimated.
and then comes
example / proof of statement II:Half of the top al Qaeda operatives are killed or in jail.
At this point note that statements I & II implies similar consequences: That Al Qaeda is less of a threat. Someone that is on the run is not a big threat. Someone that is badly damaged is not a big threat. Two iterations to the same effect. And then
Conclusion drawn from previous example:In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.
Which could quite easily be construed as the third iteration of the same line of thought as Statements I & II.
Statement III:Al Qaeda is not a problem any more.
So in conclusion: Very slick work, mister speech scribbler.
The meaning of the OP as I see it is that Dowd took a remark from the President, edited it - in such a way as to give it a meaning that wasn’t intended by the President - and then used it to take a poke at him.
Note that the rule of grammar is that the antecedent of a pronoun is in most cases the closest possible noun coming before it. In the case of Bush’s comment, that would be the half of all the top al Qaeda operatives who are in prison or dead.
Note also that al Qaeda generally referred to in the singular. E.g., from Time Magazine
That’s another clue that the pronoun “they” referred to “half of all the top al Qaeda operatives,” rather than to “al Qaeda.”
Both. The two theories kind of merge. I want to pee in her cornflakes (good metaphor!), because of her inaccuracy and silliness. She’s a wonderful writer from a stylistic POV, but IMHO this sort of foolishness is typical of her content, and I resent it. Even my wife, who is as liberal as any poster on this board, resents it. She considers Dowd’s columns to be an insult to women. She loves the Times, but wonders why they can’t get a better female political columnist.
The implication in Bush’s speech is clear: al Qaeda is a diminished threat because nearly half of their leadership is dead or in jail.
Dowd’s quotation is misleading, because the conclusion one would most likely draw from her passage is that al Qaeda is not just a diminished threat, but not a threat at all.
Hardly a major transgression. It’s not like she’s Ann Coulter or Ted Rall.
That’s like trying to determine which piece of dog doodie is the most rancid, IMO – it ignores the bigger question of why we’re putting up with this sh*t in the first place…