"YOU MISSPEAK!"

Apparently the U.S. House of Representatives is poised to pass a Resolution expressing its "disapproval" of Representative Joe Wilson's behaviour during President Obama's speech to Congress last week. (UPDATE: IT HAS BEEN PASSED). As you will recall, Joe Wilson called the President of the United States, dare I write this word, "a liar".

Washington has been in quite a tizzy over this shocking breach of decorum. At times, the media seems far more concerned about it then the contents of the President's speech itself and the whole Health Care Reform, yet unseen, bill. And for good reason. After all, Representative Wilson called the President, if you can believe it, a "liar".

I was wondering whether there would have been such an outpouring of shock and dismay if Representative Wilson had used another word - you know, not the "l" word, but something else. A fashionable term these days is for people to say that they "misspoke", when something that they said is simply not true. For example, the President's Press Secretary, when confronted with the President's false statement that the AARP endorsed his Health Care bill, simply conceded that the President "misspoke". You hear the word a lot these days, when people are confronted with not having told the truth. So what if Joe Wilson simply yelled out "YOU MISSPEAK"?

Somehow "misspeaking" does not have the same pazzazz as "lying". If one were an academic studying this, one may say that lying is an "intentional" act of dishonesty, whereas "misspeaking" is only negligently or maybe even accidentally not telling the truth. The problem with this approach, however, is that the difference between an intentional untruth, a negligent untruth, or an accidental untruth, can be somewhat fuzzy. Moreover, how can one know for sure whether the untruth was intentional or not? Do we just take the liar/misspeaker's word for it? Way too complicated for me.

No, saying that someone "misspoke" rather than "lied" just doesn't do it. How does this sound, for example -

"You dirty, filthy misspeaker!"
"Don't you misspeak to me!".
"Misspeaker, misspeaker, pants on fire".

Doesn't work at all.

The incident drew contrasts with the Canadian Parliamentary system, where M.P.'s are hooting, shouting, laughing, and mocking each other all the time during debate. Congress, on the other hand, was a morgue during the President's speech, other than Joe Wilson's little outburst. Don't get me wrong, the Democrats were hooting it up, for sure, but the poor Republicans had to just sit there and take it. Never mind that the President was doing a pretty good job demeaning and insulting them for much of his address.

But even in Parliament, despite the general circus like environment, there are certain things Parliamentarians simply cannot say about each other. They certainly cannot call someone a "liar". But other forbidden insults have been "a trained seal", "a bag of wind", a "pig", a "sleaze bag", a "scuzzball", or a "pompous ass". It's not that these things can't be true characterizations - they just cannot be said.

So there you have it. While the United States is agonizing over health care reform, an incredibly gigantic debt, the war in Afghanistan, and is becoming an increasingly and disturbingly polarized country, Congress is worried about the President being called a "liar" and passing resolutions about it. Go figure.