Loose Talk

Blah, blah, blah, as it were, or, if you will

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Welcome everyone. I'm Mona Pillsbury, my guests today are: City Council President, Burk Breslin; District-12 Council Person, Liddy Peachum; and County Treasurer, Kirk Anders. Our topic: the Proposed Levy to fund additional street lighting for District-12. There's been a lot of confusion on the subject. We'll do our best to sort it all out in today's round table. I'll go to Council President Breslin first.

Burk: "Just call me, Burk. informality will make it easier for all of us to speak frankly about this Proposition - which has been, not only confused, but contentious as well ".

Mona: Well, thank you, Burk. Frankly speaking, what should voters know about the Proposition?

Liddy: Let me say first that endemic racial discrimination has left the people in District 12 in the dark for too long.

Mona: Well, Burk, is Liddy right? Is racial discrimination at the heart of the problem?

Burk: Racial discrimination, historically speaking - if you will - has been a blight on our city, and on city government, everywhere. That said, extra funding for anything, has been problematic due to our diminishing tax base.

Kirk: I can attest to that, revenue, or rather lack thereof - as it were - makes additional fiduciary determinations challenging.

Liddy: I hear a lot of perambulating permutations, all of which leaves District 12 in the dark.

Burk: I assure Libby, and her District 12 constituents, that all will be done, that can be done to ensure that the proposed Street Light Levy will be on the ballot in time for the next election, pending still unknown results for federal grant 501-E-2.

Kirk: let me add, the request for federal grant 501-E-2 remains on-track for future approval. Furthermore . .

And, and, and, and so on - until Mona closed the half-hour WVIZ show by thanking her guests for their insights into the thorny particularities of the Proposition. She reminded her TV audience to tune-in next week for an equally informative discussion of State-House Bill VII.

I turned off the TV as uninformed as I was at the beginning of the show.

Worse, Mona, Burk, Liddy, and Kirk, apparently seemed to believe they'd actually said something.

Inflated blather is the preferred way to speak for anybody who doesn't have anything to say, or, who would rather not say. Most blathering is done by people who do it deliberately, but an alarming amount is done by people who don't realize they've said nothing at all.

I understand professional blather. Many public figures, politicians, and pundits would be undone by clarity. Fog is their friend. Sadly, many others who blather don't know they're blathering - which is why they don't know when they're listening to blather. They've don't recognize blather because they've rarely heard clear, concise ideas expressed in simple, direct speech.

They've been acculturated to the mistaken notion that simple, direct statements must surely be simplistic. It simply won't do to say anything simply.

Those who wish to be taken seriously have learned to speak in "Professional Speak". Professional Speak is created through interminable sentences that muse abstractedly toward indeterminate destinations, each buffered, for safety's sake, with parenthetical qualifiers, specious references to sources, and space fillers like, as it were, or, if you will. Saying something definite is not only not required, it's regarded suspiciously.

Can nothing become something by saying nothing?

The blathering class certainly hopes so. Those who listen to blather are uncertain what to believe. "It sounded like they said something". If pressed to explain what they heard, listeners to blather wouldn't be able to explain. Even so, "It certainly sounded like they said something".

In WWII, loose talk, as in, "Loose talk sinks ships", meant accidentally saying something that might reveal to Axis powers information that could be used against the Allied powers.

That's less of a threat these days.

The overheard communiques of the current professional class would probably defy interpretation by even the most skillful foreign interpreter. It's loose talk of a different kind; word salads impossible to digest.

Blah, blah, blah, as it were, or, if you will.

Huh . . . what?

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com