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Hitchens
Slimes Cindy Sheehan
Sheehan
is Not the One Uttering Piffley Bunk
By
ELISA SALASIN
08/16/05
"Counterpunch" -- -- I learned a new word today!
Piffle!
I suppose it is not completely
new, as I've probably come across it at various points in my life.
However, today I read it in Christopher Hitchens' rather nonsensical
gabbling as he added to the right-wing attempt to slander
Cindy Sheehan (he referred to her work as "sinister
piffle"), and was actually driven to seek a definition.
Here's what I found:
Noun 1. piffle - trivial
nonsense, balderdash, fiddle-faddle, hokum, meaninglessness,
nonsense, nonsensicality, bunk - a message that seems to convey
no meaning
Verb 1. piffle - speak (about
unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly blabber, palaver,
prate, prattle, tattle, tittle-tattle, twaddle, gabble, gibber,
blab, clack, maunder, chatter, mouth, speak, talk, verbalise,
verbalize, utter - express in speech; "She talks a lot of
nonsense"; "This depressed patient does not
verbalize," blather, blether, blither, smatter, babble - to
talk foolishly; "The two women babbled and crooned at the
baby"
My first reaction was that I
don't think that I have ever before come across such truly
excellent synonyms for a word.
So, Hitchens is saying that
Cindy Sheehan's effort and message is balderdash and hokem. That
holding Bush, our government, and ourselves accountable for the
deaths of nearly 2000 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis
is prattle, blither, smatter and babble.
This, I would say, is the
fiddle-faddle of those among us who have somehow been brainwashed
by the blathering and blethering of our so-called mission to
spread freedom and democracy throughout the world. Too bad that
Hitchens is not able to recognize that piffle becomes sinister
when people die horrible and needless deaths as a result of our
imperialistic endeavors, not when Cindy Sheehan acts from a place
of moral clarity. Anything outside of that place, be it twaddling
or action, is just bunk. Extremely sinister bunk.
Elisa Salasin lives in
Berkeley, California, and can be contacted at elisasalasin@gmail.com.
Many of her writings can be
found on her blog, Two Feet In (http://twofeetin.typepad.com/elisa/).
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