Martin Eisenstadt's Double-Reverse Hoax

[tongodeon]

Earlier this week I took parting shots at Palin, mentioning (among other things) that an anonymuous source told Carl Cameron of Fox News that in pre-debate prep, Palin thought Africa was a country. This morning MSNBC reported that McCain policy advisor Martin Eisenstadt claimed credit as the source of the leak.

Except that wasn't true. Richard

Comments

[tongodeon]

Martin Eisenstadt needs a good kick in the balls wareac.

[crisper]

Comic book gossip columnist Rich Johnston, in LYING IN THE GUTTERS, uses a stoplight color system to indicate how certain he is that each rumor is, or is not, bullshit

[mister_borogove]

But her defense implies to me that she thinks there's a country called "Africa" maybe in addition to the continent: "about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there". Like maybe she *still* thinks that.

[crisper]

Maybe. Regardless, I think it's a bad idea to go delving for answers in that swamp, and I honestly don't want to know. I want history to fill that swamp in with sand and concrete.

[mister_borogove]

Agree, and sorry for engaging my "someone is wrong on the internet" circuit and ignoring the actual point you were trying to make :)

one dumb cunt....

[bon_homme_dane]

anyone with half a brain, who could get beyond the "you betchya's," knew that this woman had a brain as thick a brick...

even her...

[loic]

Another language construct that would be useful in this context, but that we lack in English is evidentiality - where a speaker can express as part of the grammar what evidence they have for the statement they're making. Using an example from the podcast where I learned about all this:
In Tariana, now only spoken by about 100 people on the Brazilian side of the border with Colombia, in the depths of Amazonian jungle, I would not be able to just say: 'Madonna fell downstairs'. If I want to speak proper Tariana, I would have to add a little suffix at the end of the verb. If I actually see Madonna falling down a flight of stairs, I would say 'Madonna fell-ka down the stairs'; -ka shows that I saw what happened. If I didn't see it, but heard the clatter of the fall and Madonna shrieking, I'd have to say, 'Madonna fell-mahka down the stairs'; -mahka shows that I heard what happened. If I walk to the bottom of the stairs and see that Madonna is lying all in a heap, this would be enough for me to infer that she had fallen down the stairs. I

[waider]

Re: Catalan, there is something distinctly amusing about quoting something which is itself of uncertain certainty in a discussion of indicators of certainty in speech.

-rahe.

[rimrunner]

...I so need to work that into the paper I'm pretending to write writing on authority evaluation. Ha.