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December 03, 2003

Media Bias?

Surely by now you have seen the news that Donald Rumsfeld won the "Foot in Mouth" Award from Britain's Plain English Campaign. I'm not sure why, as this quote:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know."

...while a mouthful, certainly isn't very hard to decipher - at least for me, and I didn't even major in English. The concept of "known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns" are used in multiple disciplines, even in my area of process improvement. That the citizens of a country that gave us such delightfully named dishes as "spotted dick" and "toad in the hole" would mock another's word choice is rather ironic in itself.

All of that aside, I find it more interesting that the media - at least the US media (the Washington Times excluded) - hasn't made mention that Rumsfeld just got another award:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday won the prestigious "non-EU citizen of the year" award at a black-tie gala event in Brussels.

I guess reporting on that award wouldn't be amusing or insulting to the Bush administration, so why bother, eh?

Update: A feeble-minded twit left an anonymous comment to the effect that it was some anonymous award from a right-wing neo-nazi group. From what I can see, European Voice magazine, part of the Economist Group (publishers of the cleverly named "The Economist") have never struck me as anonymous neo-nazis. But then I'm not as smart as the twit apparently. Oh well.

P.S. They also nominated Kofi Annan for the award - oh yeah, lots of right-wing thinking going on there. Some people.

And Full Disclosure: My beloved wife is a toad-in-the-hole-eatin' limey, so that part was tongue in cheek. Any offended Brits should lighten up - and probably see an orthodontist for god's sake. OK, British humor, ceasing now.