Help with Haig Quotation
NFrames
I'm trying to track down something Alexander Haig is supposed to have
said before a Congressional Committee and for which he may have
received a "dubious achievement" award. Granted this is probably at
least partly apochryphal, but in essence what he said in an
astoundingly convoluted way was either "No." or "I don't know". The
answer was at least three sentences long, or rather, would have been
if he spoke that way, rather than one long rambling sentence, and
included words like parameter and "answer-wise". Anyone know the
quote, the context, the award or have any suggestions for resources to
find it? Thanks!
Ben Zimmer
The National Council of Teachers of English gave Haig their 1981
Doublespeak Award "for a series of statements made to Congressional
committees about the murder of three American nuns and a religious lay
worker in El Salvador":
http://www.ncte.org/council_awards/doublespeak.shtml
William D. Lutz, who chairs the NCTE's Committee on Public Doublespeak,
quotes some of Haig's testimony in this article:
http://students.faulkner.edu/depts/sbs/readings/an1301/double.htm
Famous Haigisms include "epistemologicallywise" and "saddle myself with
a statistical fence." I recall Garry Trudeau's cartoon Doonesbury
parodied Haigspeak quite a lot in 1981-- perhaps the convoluted quote
you're thinking of actually comes from that.