Spokesmen are supposed to go before the country and explain and answer questions about politics and policy. Over the years they really became more information hiders that information providers but sometimes maybe they should just shut up and not say anything. Josh Earnest is the White House spokesman. He has a kind of perpetual lemon sucking look on his face like he has to get rid of a bitter taste in his mouth which he probably has. His predecessor had a perpetual smirk. Anyway the spokesman spoke the other day.
“Are we going to light our hair on fire every time that there is a setback in the campaign against ISIL?” Earnest asked reporters rhetorically in Tuesday’s briefing. “Or are we going to take very seriously our responsibility to evaluate those areas where we succeed and evaluate where steps are necessary for us to change our strategy where we sustain setbacks?”
I’m glad the reporter was at least smart enough to recognize a rhetorical question when he heard one.
Does anyone care or understand that when there is a setback against ISIS or ISIL or DASH or whatever the latest word is (at least we call them terrorists), Christians and many innocent Muslims really do get set on fire. There is a lot of talk out there about sensitivity because words really can hurt you I guess in America today. This in my mind seems to be pretty insensitive but I don’t get to define what words mean like some folks so it makes no difference. I don’t get to define who is insensitive and who isn’t so it makes no difference.
There is an interesting idea in the Talmud that the Jews ended up in slavery in Egypt because of words – insensitive words. Joseph bad mouthed his brothers and they got huffy and sold him into slavery and the rest, as they say, is history. I wonder where the insensitive words that we hear scattered over the airwaves will take us?
