[Newspoetry] Meaning Threatened

[John Wason]

At 11:12 AM 12/07/2001 -0600, William Gillespie wrote:

>The New York Times Quote of the Day:
>
>"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,
>my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists."
>
>John Ashcroft is concerned about freedom. You see, the terrorists hate
>our freedom, and, in order to protect our freedom, we need to abolish
>it, so that it can't be used as a weapon against it. Objecting to this
>reasoning is a "tactic." "Liberty" is a scary ghost.
>
>Not the New York Times Quote of the Day:
>
>Mr. Kennedy later said that it appeared that the attorney general was
>"putting the interests of the gun lobby above above the nation's public
>safety in the battle against terrorism."

You should teach at the School for Designing a Society if you don't already,
WillGill.  I understand they teach 'em over there to deconstruct language
and to be, in Mark Enslin's words, "allergic to cliches".  I heard
Ashcroft's little speech on C-span last night and of course was repelled by
it, but couldn't have deconstructed it as eloquently as you just did.

John