Doublespeak & Overtalk

I chose not to watch the 2017 Creative Arts Emmy Awards program this past Sunday evening. However, I could not avoid hearing about Sean Spicer showing up, because it headlined the national news and went viral on social media.  I didn’t find Spicer’s performance funny.  Who can forget Spicer’s  performance at the first press conference on the day after the Inauguration?  I can’t.  In that five minute press conference he arrogantly lied (in spite of the photographs) about the size of the inauguration crowd, attacked reporters and the freedom of the press, and trampled the First Amendment.  That wasn’t funny. It was despicable.  And I might add, that Spicer’s press conferences following that first one were far from comical.  Kellyanne Conway, however, thought Spicer brought a sense of humor to the otherwise (in her opinion)—politicized Emmy program—but she did not find Stephen Colbert and others humorous because they were insulting “our leader.”

I did not find it funny that Mr. Trump as the President of the United States of America should re-tweet the video of a fan’s GIF that showed Mr. Trump golfing and the ball striking Hillary Clinton, which has also been aired by the media umpteen times since it was tweeted this past Sunday morning (the same day as the Emmy Award program).  The NY Times reported, “The tweet stoked outrage online, generating more than 11,000 replies, many of which condemned the president’s promotion of violent imagery toward Mrs. Clinton…But it was also celebrated by Trump supporters, who admonished “crooked Hillary” and accused Mr. Trump’s critics of lacking a sense of humor.”

Kellyanne Conway took to the media on Monday to criticize the anti-Trump innuendos made during the Emmy Awards saying, “You are showing the world that you’re so easy with an insult about our leader. I think that’s really unfortunate,” while ignoring “our leader’s” Birther Movement insults about the former president and “our leader’s” continued insults and personal assaults upon others.  

George Orwell coined the word “double-speak” in his book, 1984, using it  in the phrase, “war is peace.”  Doublespeak “is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words—it disguises  the nature of truth.” It seems to me that we are presently getting a lot of “doublespeak” from all quarters.  Sean Spicer is funny; Stephen Colbert is not funny.  A fake video showing the president hitting a former First Lady with a golf ball is humorous, but any jibe directed at the president is not humorous.  I do not find “doublespeak” funny from either side!

Be careful, we are traveling a difficult road.