The Administration of Cliches
As time is winding down before the long-rumored harsh critique of the CIA for failing to foresee the disastrous events of September 11, 2001 is released by the commission in charge of investigating the events leading up to that day, it's occurred to me that we haven't heard much from the current administration as of late. I'm not talking about daily speeches, the occasional soundbite, or quote in the news or papers. There's always plenty of those floating around. I'm talking about something that we haven't heard from any member of this current group for weeks and weeks. Let me give you a hint about what I'm talking about. Do you remember the phrase "swatting flies?" Yes, you guessed it I'm referring to the dreaded cliche. We used to get a lot of these, several day at least, but now there's nothing. This is probably due to the fact that since the days when testimony stretched out over the course of a week, we as a country have been distracted by other heinous events that have taken the spotlight off the commission and its report. We've been robbed by them of their semantic twists and turns and phraseology that tries mightily to sound as if it means something important, that it conveys some sense of action, but, in fact, states nothing really. And I miss the feeling of being so grossly insulted.

Yes, there were certainly a bunch of cliches floating around in those days. You had Dr. Condoleezaa Rice making the claim from above that President Bush was "tired of swatting flies". If you recall Sen. Bob Kerrey didn't let this one slide by asking repeatedly for one example when President Bush actually "swatted any flies". She also gave us the important fact that there was never any "silver bullet" that could have prevented the event of September 11. Add to this all her stumbling and stammering over the "historical" nature of the infamous August 6, 2003 PDB, and you have quite a spokesperson for an administration whose own chief has well documented problems with the English language.

Two other memorable cliches used referred to the fact that CIA Director George Tenet's "hair was on fire". This was Richard Clarke's description of Tenet's demeanor after compiling intelligence that indicated that "something is going to happen." Clarke, Rice, and others are connected to the usage of the phrase "shaking trees," which apparently refers to the gathering of intelligence. Whatever any of it means, to the speakers or the listeners, these types of phrases, cliches, or whathaveyou just don't mean anything. They don't convey much of anything and are just ripe for satire. What we're left with now are the occasional creative semantics of Donald Rumsfeld and the mangling of the English language by our commander in chief. I miss the days, though, when it was almost guaranteed that you'd get some sort of new mumbo-jumbo by the White House. Come on, everyone, let's go "shake some trees" after we light our "hair on fire" and try to "swat some flies".