From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!uwvax!doug
Newsgroups: net.jokes
Title: Al Haig vs. English
Article-I.D.: uwvax.456
Posted: Wed Jun 30 19:52:41 1982
Received: Thu Jul  1 06:26:49 1982

from NEWSWEEK July 5, 1982 p.24 "Why Haig Quit: Contexting It"

	Early on, Alexander Haig's persistent verbification of
nouns, expropriation of compound military-bureaucratic voguisms
and caveating of almost everything back-burnered the rest of his
style.  Such obfuscatory phrase-turns as "posthostage-return-attitude,"
or "nuance-al differences" and the still elusive "epistemologicallywise"
eyebrow raised U.S. and allied officials alike who could not figure
out what the Secretary was elocuting. Pundits mercilessly characterized
Haigspeak as "Haigledygook" and "Haigravation."  Informationed Haigally
that a question could not be answered "the way you contexed it," Sen.
John Glenn of Ohio gamely comebacked, "Will you burden share?"  And even
the normally support-providing Wall Street Journal bluntly derisioned,
"What language is the Secretary speaking?"

	Soon, diplomatic nuanceniks premised that Haig was on-purposely
phrasing his pronouncements camouflagedly, to confound Soviet
translators, or perhaps having masterminded a brilliant new anti-leak
speak.  But Haig himself cold-watered that notion when, asked to clarify
a statement, he press conferenced, "That was consciously ambiguous
in the sense that any terrorist government..., I think, knows clearly
what we are speaking of."  But last year Haig's semantic sabotage mysteriously
plateaued out. Perhaps he was fed up with all the linguistic pot-shot
taking, or perhaps he conceptualized that his personal verbification
program had downscended into the hopeless-cause mode.