Blumenthal: "I served in Vietnam"/NYT to Blumenthal: You lie!

[ilikeverin]

Put it this way. If Blumenthal had never actually been spit on, just heard tales of that from his war buddies; then that would be exactly the same as Hillary's lie.

Lewis can has cognitive science!  *hughughug*

[ilikeverin]

Yeah.  Replace "we" with "veterans" (or even "us veterans") in any of those quotes and they become pretty much prosaic.  In any case, I think it's about time for a massive psycholinguistic uprising right about now saying that a preposition or first-person-plural here or there doesn't make a lie; prepositions are such fickle things that, for all we know, all the quotes written down were actually misheard and mistranscribed.  This entire "controversy" is getting just a little bit ridiculous.

[ilikeverin]

The latest drip, drip in the ongoing Blumenthal saga can be found  here. There these quotes to savor, and Blumenthal was  moved to apology for it all again.

" 'I wore the uniform in Vietnam,” he said, 'and many came back to all kinds of disrespect. Whatever we think of war, we owe the men and women of the armed forces our unconditional support.' ”

" 'We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.' ”

Does anyone still think that Blumenthal was not deliberately lying, and just accidentally "misspoke?"

Yes.