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0006 Weasel Words

It’s such fun spotting them –
this should be built into the syllabus
of every English class: to con the cons;
sharpens the mind, too –

those words that cloak deceit,
prevarication, ignorance,
evade the point of a discussion,
evade answering the vital question and questioner,
simplify the complex,
complicate the simple…

‘the real point is..’
say they, switching the agenda
to the home ground of their local thought,
‘more to the point is…’
‘more importantly…’ (that’s smart..)

said quickly (that's the trick
of weasel words - make them seem
more like an um or er or hello or throat-clear
or, just some punctuation mark) ..

and anyone who says
‘it’s absolutely clear…’
should be frogmarched off
to the Absolute, his, her, itself
to answer in person for their arrogance..
the rest of us left, of course, to guess that
if they say that… it just ain’t…

and now, there are ‘mission statements’ –
confronted with some cruel inhumanity
perpetrated on the innocent individual or group
by some institution, public, private -
a ‘spokesman’ solemnly reels off
the high ideals they stand by to deliver,
which just happen to be totally
at odds with the (often unmentioned)
suffering caused to some (better unmentioned...) human being..

pop goes a good old weasel in the football press
today: “We take this area of regulation
very seriously. When we find evidence
of breaches of rules and regulations,
we investigate thoroughly” – you bet they do;
but how about that ‘when we find’?
try ‘when we seek to find’…
I rest my case. And so would they too, if they could..

poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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