Language on Trial

In 1657, English dramatist Thomas Middleton lamented, “How many honest words have suffered corruption since Chaucer’s days!” Imagine Middleton’s woe had he experienced the torture visited on the language since Americans were first told of President Clinton’s “inappropriate relationship” with Monica S. Lewinsky. We have been parsed, tensed and legalesed from there to the closing days of an impeachment trial.

We can be grateful that the House managers spared us “contact issues” as they presented their case to the Senate, thus avoiding further graphic descriptions of who touched whom and where. In Watergate, it was simple: “What did he know and when did he know it?”

Clinton and his lawyers have been the masters of legal hairsplitting, from the critical “sexual relations” to the definition of the words “is” and “alone.” When a congressman demanded to know if the president lied to Americans, a Clinton lawyer replied, “He misled them and did not tell the truth at that moment.” Is this why Washington lawyers earn as much as $400 an hour?

Members of Congress and the media also have stretched and mauled words and phrases. Thus “triers of fact and law” rather than jurors, and “naked acquittal” as an alternative to censure. Thankfully, naked acquittal has nothing to do with sex. To Republicans, the Paula Jones action was more than just a sexual harassment lawsuit; it was a civil rights sexual harassment case.

At least William Safire could luxuriate in the fodder the affair supplied for his weekly column on language in the New York Times Magazine. Safire was delighted to see “someone demonstrating the glories of terminological exactitude.” Meanwhile, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) was concerned about incipient Democratic “triumphalism.”

No one needed to be an expert grammarian to follow the taped conversations between Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. The meaning of “creep” and “schmucko” were simple and exact.

Now the endgame is here. Please, no more perjurious testimony or pious preachings about the constitutional process. Let’s vote for acquittal, censure the nation’s top law enforcement official and, yes, dare we say it, move on.