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Latest post Tue, Jul 8 2003 8:49 PM by Usenet. 1 replies.
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NFrames    593995 Tue, 08 Jul 03 06:12 PM
Greetings,

I'm trying to track down something Alexander Haig is supposed to have said before a Congressional Committee and for which he may have received a "dubious achievement" award. Granted this is probably at least partly apochryphal, but in essence what he said in an astoundingly convoluted way was either "No." or "I don't know". The answer was at least three sentences long, or rather, would have been if he spoke that way, rather than one long rambling sentence, and included words like parameter and "answer-wise". Anyone know the quote, the context, the award or have any suggestions for resources to find it? Thanks!
Ben Zimmer    594102 Tue, 08 Jul 03 08:49 PM
"Greetings, I'm trying to track down something Alexander Haig is supposed to have said before a Congressional Committee and for ... and "answer-wise". Anyone know the quote, the context, the award or have any suggestions for resources to find it? Thanks!"

The National Council of Teachers of English gave Haig their 1981 Doublespeak Award "for a series of statements made to Congressional committees about the murder of three American nuns and a religious lay worker in El Salvador": http://www.ncte.org/council_awards/doublespeak.shtml

William D. Lutz, who chairs the NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak, quotes some of Haig's testimony in this article:

http://students.faulkner.edu/depts/sbs/readings/an1301/double.htm

Famous Haigisms include "epistemologicallywise" and "saddle myself with a statistical fence." I recall Garry Trudeau's cartoon Doonesbury parodied Haigspeak quite a lot in 1981-- perhaps the convoluted quote you're thinking of actually comes from that.
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