Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Julian, Liam. "Orwell's Instructive Errors." POLICY REVIEW (June/July 2009).

  • Orwell, George. All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays. Ed. George Packer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
  • Orwell, George. Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays. Ed. George Packer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

Yes, Orwell is still relevant. The particular manner in which he pierced worthless theory, faced facts and defended decency (with fluctuating success), and largely ignored the tradition of accumulated wisdom has rendered him a timeless teacher — one whose inadvertent lessons, while infrequently acknowledged, are just as valuable as his intended ones. Those lessons are timeless but also timely, educative on the day’s latest headlines. Subject the current political chieftains of either party to Orwell’s lens and the wispiness of their rhetoric is laid plain. Start at the top. Regardless of one’s political proclivities or whether or not one just happens to like the personable Barack Obama, it’s clear that the president relishes the vague metaphor, adores the illogical argumentative sequence, and luxuriates in making words mean what only yesterday they didn’t. He does not merely redefine words, in fact, but on occasion undefines them, wiping them of their meanings — say, by insisting that words such as conservative and liberal are insignificant. The liberal president surely knows better but, as Orwell wrote, “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” Obama’s language is not clear. It is loopy and lofty and often lubricious, and is precisely the type that Orwell’s famous edict “Good prose is like a window pane” sought to banish. Fortunately, two new collections of Orwell’s essays, Facing Unpleasant Facts and All Art is Propaganda, edited by George Packer, were released late last year, just in time for Election Day; and on page 270 of the latter volume begins the piece “Politics and the English Language,” as effective an inoculation as exists against Obamaspeak’s hardier strains. . . .

Read the rest here: http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/46506232.html.

2 comments:

  1. I beg to differ but I along with majority of people around the world find Obama quite a staright talker. How many presidents have you heard admitting live on TV "I guess I screwed up"? His speech from Cairo is another example of his straight talking & genuineness.

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  2. I don't know what 'majority' Manoj is speaking about. Most people I know see him for what he is -- a slippery, tricky, insincere speaker whom the media is only now beginning to hold to account. Moreover, how straightforward and genuine is he when he fires the Inspector General for investigating one of his cronies for malfeasance, to cite just one example? Obama has been a disaster during the short time he has been in office, not least for pushing the economy into a depression.

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