BeldarBlog

Political foods

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom lists "9 names for Ben & Jerry's Ted Kennedy tribute ice cream."  My favorite — I'd buy a pint of this myself! — is No. 2, "Scotch Almond Neat, and no, I don’t want any goddamn water with it."  (Hattip: VodkaPundit.)

Meantime, InstaPundit does a comparative taste test of Heinz Ketchup and W Ketchup.  I reject Prof. Reyolds' political premise, though, that a preference for Heinz Ketchup correlates in any way to a preference for the Kedwards ticket.  Remember, the brand name is from the ancestors of a deceased Republican senator from Pennsylvania; Teh-RAY-sah is just an immigrant-come-lately to the name (and fortune).  Thus do I justify and reconcile my political and gustatory tastes, anyway.

Why didn't Bill tell John about Sandy's pants?

The Denver Post apparently aspires to emulate the New York Times in pumping out pro-Democratic Party spin — even if it means burying its own genuine international scoops.  Today's article entitled "Clinton defends aid during Denver book stop; former president also takes a swipe at Bush" has already been dropped into the "more local news headlines" category on the Post's website. 

The article leads with the standard spin questioning the timing of the disclosure of the ongoing investigation of former Clinton NSA Sandy Berger; then detours into a few paragraphs about nasty Dubya letting the multinational corporations lay waste to national forests; and only then reveals this genuinely astonishing and eminently newsworthy fact (italics mine):

Clinton said he has known about the federal probe of Berger's actions for several months, calling this week's news a "nonstory."

Even if one accepts at face value the claims by Berger and the Kerry campaign that Kerry only learned of the investigation this week — immediately prior to Berger's resignation as a Kerry senior foreign policy advisor — even though the investigation began last October, one has to wonder:

      Why didn't Bill Clinton give John Kerry a heads-up on this affair?

I suspect the answer can be given in one word, and one date:  Hillary 2008.

As part of the aforementioned spin, the Post also reports (ellipsis in original):

We were all laughing about it on the way over here," the former president said of the investigation into Samuel "Sandy" Berger on classified terrorism documents missing from the National Archives. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe. But ... all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."

One wonders if Slick Willie and his droogs were only laughing about Sloppy Sandy's socks and pants — or if they were also giggling about the spectacle of Sen. Treebeard with egg on his face.

Finally, I just now got around to reading The New Yorker's July 25-issue article on Kerry's foreign policy philosophy — ironically entitled "Damage Control" — which masterfully attempts to make into a virtue the fact that, other than calling in the UN and the international community for help, Kerry hasn't got a plan for how to do the Iraq reconstruction differently or better than Dubya.  The nearly-concealed admission includes this delicious and timely paragraph (italics mine):

Throughout the spring and early summer—with exposés of Bush’s rush to war stacking the best-seller lists, while the September 11th commission hearings filled television screens, alongside reports of rampant insurrection in Iraq and the irreparable disgrace of Americans torturing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison—Kerry seemed to be measuring out his comments on the war with deliberate reserve. “A few months ago,” Richard Holbrooke said to me, “I couldn’t go down the street in New York or Washington without people stopping me and asking, ‘Why isn’t he speaking out more clearly on Iraq?’” But Holbrooke, who is considered a leading contender for the post of Secretary of State in a Kerry Administration, thought that Kerry had just the right strategy. “We are in the throes of the greatest crisis since Vietnam and maybe even worse. Kerry has to allow events to unfold. But he should not be expected to lay out a plan significantly more detailed than he has, because it’s not necessary at this point. Everyone knows he would do it differently.”  Sandy Berger, who was Bill Clinton’s national-security adviser and who is now advising Kerry, agreed, and he went further. “There are no silver bullets on Iraq,” he said. “So if people are waiting for John Kerry to say, ‘The answer is Rosebud,’ there is no Rosebud.”

Of course, if you've seen the end of Citizen Kane, you know what happened to "Rosebud."  One wonders — why did that particular imagery pop into former NSA Berger's head?  What has been crackling on the fires of the Berger Family furnace?  And did it come from the National Archives via his socks?

"Yuh-huh"/"Uh-huh" versus "Nuh-uh"/"Uh-uh"

Linguist and guest blogger Neal Whitman, writing on The Volokh Conspiracy this week, wonders whether there's a generational correlation to explain those who say "yuh-huh" — instead of "uh-huh" — to mean "yes."  He may be right.  Although I'm a Buffy fan, I'm old (and perhaps tragically unhip) enough myself to be a consistent "uh-huh"-er — as (if I recall correctly) was my ex-wife (on those unfortunately-all-too-rare occasions when she was agreeing with me about something).  I'll have to listen to my own kids to see which they tend to use.

Actually, this is something to which I've given considerable thought and study — professionally, although as a lawyer rather than as a linguist!

There are at least two variations on the negative version, too:  "nuh-uh" and "uh-uh."  In my experience, some people use both variations — with "nuh-uh" (often with the second syllable stressed) the more emphatic, and "uh-uh" (usually with both syllables equally stressed) the more casual.

With either set of variations, court reporters sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between the affirmative version and the negative version.  Even if the court reporter hears and understands it correctly, there's sometimes ambiguity created in the way the court reporter transcribes what he or she has heard into the written transcript.  "Mmm-hmmm" and its almost untranscribeable negative counterpart ("mph-mmm"?) are even harder to handle — although I suspect they have a whole section devoted to these sorts of "in- or semi-audible responses" in the court reporter school curriculum.  (It is the rare but splendidly self-confident court reporter who will include in the transcript something like, "[Witness grunts affirmatively.]")

And even if the court reporter gets it absolutely right and transcribes accurately the noise the witness made, it's fairly plausible, and hence not uncommon, for a witness who wants to avoid being caught in a contradiction later to claim that the court reporter just got it wrong:

Naw, I actually said 'uh-huh,' but that court reporter girl, she just wrote down 'nuh-uh,' but I always meant 'yes,' no matter what it says there in that booklet you're reading from."

For these reasons, whether it's during pretrial examinations (depositions) or trial examinations, experienced trial lawyers often include among their "initial understandings" with the witness an explanation that the witness needs to try to avoid saying "uh-huh" or "huh-uh" or variations on those phrases.  Even the most hostile witness has to agree with this request.  But of course, it's asking a lot of any witness that he or she self-police his or her language to completely avoid these expressions.

Thus, especially during cross-examination of a hostile witness, when one is allowed (and usually ought) to ask "leading" questions (which try to elicit the witness' agreement with a pre-suggested answer), REALLY experienced trial lawyers have trained and conditioned themselves to ask — instantly, reflexively, automatically — "You're agreeing with me, is that correct?" — whenever they hear a witness answer a yes/no question with "uh-huh" (or "yuh-huh").

Especially when it's asked instantly, without even a beat's pause, even sloppy and inarticulate witnesses, and often very hostile ones as well, will almost always immediately answer this followup question with a single word — "Correct."  And then not only has the lawyer ensured that the transcript will be unambiguous if any question should later arise about the witness' answer, but he or she has driven home again the concession or agreement just extracted — and subtly reinforced the subliminal message that "I, the righteous master advocate in this courtroom, have forced my adversary to acknowledge that I am correct yet again, because I already know what all the evidence is going to be, and I'm rarely if ever going to be surprised by it."  Nor will one likely be met with an objection — "Asked and answered already!" or "Cumulative!" — since the questioner is not, technically, belaboring the point, but simply complying with all advocates' duty to try to promote a clear, clean record of the proceedings.  To put it bluntly, "uh-huh" or "yuh-huh" — when properly exploited — can be the trial lawyer's friend!

If, by contrast, one gets a "nuh-uh" or an "uh-uh" from a hostile witness when one was expecting and hoping for a "yes" (or an "uh-huh" or a "yuh-huh"), it may sometimes be to the lawyer's (and his/her client's) advantage to leave that answer somewhat vague and unclear in the transcript.

There are other ways to make the clarification, and one sometimes has to use them when one is not allowed to lead (as when one is examining a friendly witness with a judge or opposing counsel who's being a stickler for evidentiary rules) — for example, the simple "Was that a 'yes' answer or a 'no' answer?"  This lacks the element of witness control and the subliminal message to the jury, but does suffice to make sure the transcript is clear (when and if that's one's goal). 

Sadly, however, I see lawyers every day who attempt to clear up these points in the record but who, through their own inarticulateness, end up only making things worse — usually by re-asking a variation of the question, oftentimes inserting a double-negative to boot:

Is it not the case that just now, when you answered "nuh-uh," you were saying that the traffic light had not turned green for the traffic headed north before you drove into the intersection?

Yes, this lawyer just sounded like the erudite and learned Rumpole of the Bailey.  But whether the witness answers this question "yes," "no," "huh-uh," or "yuh-huh," no one can possibly be sure that the witness has correctly understood the question or that the listening audiance has correctly understood the witness' intended meaning.  (Did that "yes" mean, "Yes, that is not the case"? or "Yes, the light had not turned green"?  It could have been either!)  Double-negatives are hard to avoid — but the phrase "is it not the case?" should simply be taken out and shot, repeatedly.