I continue to be puzzled by Slate‘s Kerryism of the Day feature. The column is largely about editing — about showing how Kerry’s speech is marred by his “caveats and embellishments” and how it could be improved (“translated into plain English”). The column also purports to use these “caveats and embellishments” as evidence of Kerry’s “pomposity and evasiveness”, but that works chiefly to the extent that the proposed edits work. After all, if it turns out that the editing removes necessary provisos (and not “pointless embellishments”), then this suggests that the original is actually not so bad — rightly cautious rather than evasive.
What’s more, Slate, like many magazines, is itself also largely about editing — taking the universe of commentary and cutting away the dross, plus taking a particular article and cutting it down to its readable, clear, focused essence. People who run magazines should want their readers to feel that the magazine is consistently well-edited.
It’s remarkable, then, how bad the editing in the Kerryisms really is. The Kerryisms author strips away necessary material, not just the “pointless embellishments.” In the process, he substantially changes the original author’s meaning; this often leads to the result’s conveying something the original author doesn’t want to convey (something authors rightly hate). At the same time, the Kerryisms author often omits other edits he should be making. And he makes all these mistakes with a smug, self-satisfied tone that leads the errors to just be more annoying.
For evidence, just look at today’s Kerryism. Kerry was asked “Does the Kerry administration care if I want to take a trip to Cuba some time?”
Kerry replied:
Well, since there isn’t a Kerry administration yet — I believe that, I have said this publicly, that I think that — I’m not for lifting the embargo. I think we ought to keep the embargo in place. I think we ought to continue to find ways to push Castro to change. But I am in favor of allowing cultural exchanges and travel.
The supposedly “plain English” version is:
I’m not for lifting the embargo. I think we ought to keep the embargo in place. I think we ought to continue to find ways to push Castro to change.
Kerry’s original is indeed not great, though even articulate people often can’t be as concise in their off-the-cuff oral responses as they can be in edited text.
But Slate‘s “translat[ion]” is awful. First, it strips out Kerry’s entire “there isn’t a Kerry administration yet” line. My guess is that this is not a “pointless embellishment,” but rather a useful little bit of modesty, helpful to keep the response from sounding overconfident (especially since the question was asked in the present tense, as if the Kerry Administration was already in power). Kerry didn’t put this as well as he could have, but that’s no reason to cut out the entire thing.
Second, it changes Kerry’s meaning, and in an important way. Kerry isn’t in favor of a total embargo; he’s in favor of allowing “cultural exchanges and travel.” That (1) helps him win support from voters who support at least some contacts with Cuba; (2) helps him seem generally moderate, even to voters who don’t care much about this issue; and (3) is necessary to adequately answer the question: For all Kerry knows, the questioner might be wanting to go there as a matter of “cultural exchange[] and travel” (or perhaps Kerry thinks that all personal travel should be exempted from the embargo), and just omitting that sentence would thus misrepresent to the questioner what Kerry’s position really is. And yet Slate thinks this should be edited out.
Finally, the most useful edit is one Slate doesn’t even note: The two sentences “I’m not for lifting the embargo. I think we ought to keep the embargo in place.” are pretty much redundant of each other. Sure, sometimes repeating things is helpful for emphasis, but this doesn’t seem to be one of those times. Now perhaps Slate just decided not to mention it because this isn’t a matter of “caveats and embellishments,” but some of Slate‘s other edits (for instance, the deletion of “I think that”) don’t seem limited to caveats and embellishments, either.
So if I had to edit Kerry’s response, I’d suggest this:
Well, there isn’t a Kerry administration yet, though with your help we can change that. I think we ought to keep the embargo in place. I think we ought to continue to find ways to push Castro to change. But I am in favor of allowing cultural exchanges and travel.
It’s crisper, and Kerry’s speech indeed can often be made crisper. (Slate‘s objections to “I believe that, I have said this publicly, that I think that” are sound, though again note that it’s hard to avoid some such stammering in an off-the-cuff oral response.) But it keeps Kerry’s important substantive and rhetorical points, rather than just dismissing them, with no foundation, as “pointless embellishments.”
Or, better yet, I’d suggest that the whole column (and its older companion “Bushisms”) be dumped.
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