16 February 2017

Salads Don't Deserve This

The word "salad" in the phrase "word salad" has always conveyed to me freshness and innocence.

Word salads are usually the handiwork of students struggling with time or flailing through difficult material. There is a certain mercy to the stark reality of a word salad. It can't be graded at all, much less assigned a value. The word salad tries to stave of failure but in doing creates failure so spectacular it requires acknowledgment and redress.

The word salad gets offered up in the desperate hope that the consumer of it will give it meaning--not even aspiring to truth.

The creator of a true word salad doesn't have enough command of words to lie.

Let's not call today's press conference a "word salad." It was a meretricious and long-simmering stew that could only be created by someone whose power is anchored in the ability to sublimate the structural integrity of ingredients to a few strong flavors, repellent to many but savored by aficionados. It was a stew to be slurped and savored by those hungry for its peculiar pleasures. But none were on hand, so it got flung.

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