Bush on former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in the NYT today:
In Waco, President Bush said he had accepted the resignation reluctantly. He praised his old friend as "a man of integrity, decency and principle" and complained of the "months of unfair treatment" that preceded the resignation.
We can break this down quickly into a few paragraphs below the fold.
INTEGRITY n 1. a being complete; wholeness 2. unimpaired condition; soundness 3. uprightness (honest and just), honesty (truthful, trustworthy, straightforwardness) and sincerity (without deceit or pretense).
I appreciate the misunderestimated Pretzlenut and his communications handlers (or should I say his propoganda production crew) have struggled to achieve passable syntax/grammar and diction on just about every occasion the Dimbulb-in-Charge has been forced to open his smirking cake hole over the last 6 1/2 years. Nevertheless, in describing Abu G's character attributes, Barney might have more accurately described him by simply pissing on his shoe during his resignation press conference.
Honest/just/truthful/straightforward/without deceit or pretense? Uhm, not so much. At least not according to Webster's and YouTube. Of course according to the GOP's Bizarro World Abridged Thesaurus appropriate synonyms for integrity are: artifice, cheating, deceit, deception, dishonesty, duplicity, falsehood, and fraudulent. In which case integrity would be descriptive of Abu's character although it omits dissembling, prevaricating, equivocating, lying gasbag ass clown yes man.
DECENCY n 1. a being decent; propriety (aligning with accepted standards of behavior) or fitness.
Being decent, fit, or aligning with acceptable behavior? Uhm not really. But to be fair Bizarro Thesaurus lists the following synonyms: immodesty, immorality, impropriety, indecency, obsceneness which do seem to be more apt than inapposite descriptions--so who knew.
PRINCIPLE n 4. rules of conduct and adherence to them.
This last one was a real linguistic homerun and credit should be given. It perfectly describes Abu's character although I'm not sure "it means what I think they think it means" at least not in the praiseworthy sense. That is unless of course adherence to incompetence, deceit, undermining the integrity of the highest law enforcement office in the land, and engaging in repeated criminal conspiracies against humanity is something to be praised in which case it means exactly what was intended.
If you are ever thinking of being elected as a member of the GOP or thinking of becoming a toady enabler of one, the Bizarro Thesaurus is a must have. Slaughtering the English language is hard work made infinitely easier by having such a valuable and cost effective linguistic resource at your pudgy sweaty chicken grease (or blood) dripping fingertips--right next to the photos of you and all your recently resigned heroes.
Disclaimer: I'm not a librarian, grammarian, or linguist but I'm guessing that without spell checking this post I shot and hit a little closer to the mark than our fearless leader and his Pravda pals did in describing the former AG. The only thing sweeter than saying "former AG" would have been watching Barney yellow the yellowest of the yellow's wingtips. As further disclaimer, I may be afflicted by a type of politically induced mental illness as I dream nightly of seeing the former AG in pinstripes, not of the NY Yankee variety, pounding big rocks into little rocks sweating like his father must have every day of his life to help put little Abu through law school. His father must have been so proud on graduation day. Little did he know what his son would do with his historic opportunity to represent such noble concepts as truth, justice, and the rule of law. Just goes to show that a day of honest labor is more morally palatable than any day in GOP politics. Maybe Abu just didn't get enough love because pops was too busy trying to put food on the table. In any event, good riddance.