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Sunday, September 30, 2001

Is stopping-while-you’re-ahead a lost art?

"Top Bush advisers have become image profiteers, spinning tall tales in a greedy quest to transform the president they had fretted was coming across as too small before the crisis into a larger-than-life figure now. 'They're trying so hard to make him look Churchillian and it's entirely unnecessary,' says one Republican who advises the administration. 'They're overselling a product that's selling itself.'"

New York Times. From here in New York City, the product that sells so well elsewhere appears to have the substance of air. "The hyperventilated spin began the morning after the attacks. To deflect criticism that the administration had been without any commanding and reassuring Giuliani-like voice for 10 hours, as the president and other high-level officials scrambled around, Karl Rove and Mr. Fleischer pushed the spurious and elaborately embroidered stories that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets."'

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This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...

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