Not so long ago, I read a Michael Kinsley definition of the word "gaffe"; it boiled down to someone saying something that everyone knew to be true but was a statement that people didn't dare utter in public.
I read an obit of North Carolina's former Senator Jesse Helms that tried to tiptoe around his antipathy towards African-Americans; as an antidote, here's a link to a blog in THE NEW REPUBLIC's online edition that some may take as a "gaffe" in the Kinsley tradition, but displays just what kind of person Helms was:
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/07/04/jesse-helms-is-dead.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment