Mistakes Were Made, but There is no Mistaker

[marmar]

from CommonDreams:


Published on Monday, January 15, 2007 by the Times Herald-Record (Middletown, New York)
Mistakes Were Made, but There Is No Mistaker
by Beth Quinn

My, my. Such a great big mess, such a small little space in which to write about it.

I speak of George Bush's new Iraq plan, of course, and his speech last Wednesday night. My mouth was so long agape as he proclaimed one bizarre thing after the next that I fear I began drooling on myself.

And here I find myself struggling to wrestle it all into one coherent bit of commentary. A column should be about only one thing, and I've had to go through a painful process of elimination to zero in on just one thing to write about.

It is for that reason that I'm not going to write about the president's absolute contempt for the American people. Never mind that we made it clear in November that we want our troops out of Iraq. And never mind that the Iraq Study Group recommended that we fold up our tents and come home.

Never mind that. Not only did Bush announce that he'd be staying in Iraq against our wishes and against all common sense, but he's going to send more troops over — 21,500 more.

But I'm not going to write about that. Or about how this escalation of his is not actually a new plan at all but just the same old disaster, only bigger. Nope. I'm not going to write about any of that.

Instead, I've decided to write about grammar.

That's right. I am zeroing in only one sentence from his speech. And that sentence is:

Mistakes have been made.

For those who have forgotten their high school English, this is called "passive" voice. It places the emphasis on the object of the sentence, not the subject. There is no telling who did what — only that something somehow happened.

Saying Mistakes have been made is like saying The house caught fire. It's as though the house is somehow to blame for burning up. See? And the mistakes in Bush's Iraq policy are somehow at fault for having occurred.

Common sense would dictate that someone made those mistakes, but the person who did so is missing from the sentence. Obviously, then, that person is not to blame. ........(more)

The complete column is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0115-30.htm