The use of language to cover up the unwanted or to influence public opinion is nothing new! Remember Shakespeare and his friends, Romans and countrymen? Do you also remember the American President who had a defence capability while his adversary, Sadam, was a dictator who had weapons of mass destruction? Suppose the newsreader had made a mistake and read: the American dictator has weapons of mass destruction while Mr Hussein has a defence capability!
I was reminded of this rhetoric recently while reading Hugh Hefner's obituary. He was compared to fictional characters like Jay Gatsby and Citizen Kane. His life sounds like a romantic film with Hefner as the hero in silk pajamas and smoking jacket greeting famous people or hosting his parties. Here he is in the pic below.
A 1950s editorial in Playboy magazine apparently read: "We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.”
That, of course, is one point of view. Another writer, perhaps a writer who disliked Hefner, might easily have written: "They had parties - got completely blotto and then brought in the dancing girls. Nobody asked how old they were and where they had come from. They were simply asked to dress like rabbits, put little white bobbles on their bottoms, and forced to accept whatever it was the men demanded of them."
Saint or sinner? You choose.
Nicely put. Two sides to everything.
Posted by: Christopher Goddard | 09/30/2017 at 06:24 AM
Thanks, Chris. You are the only one who posts! Come on people.... Don't you have opinions?
Posted by: Robert John Goddard | 09/30/2017 at 08:19 AM