December 17
2005
Plain Stupid Campaign

If you haven't already read it, do have a look at Oliver Kamm's latest Times piece, on good and bad English.

Writing of the Plain English Campaign, he says:


Every year undeserved attention is paid to a group that might more accurately be called the Obscurantism Organisation. Its gobbledegook award is not about English usage so much as a populist suspicion of ideas. Past winners include Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, for a long analysis involving “known knowns”, “known unknowns”, and “unknown unknowns”. The campaigners described it as “truly baffling”, but the joke was on them. Rumsfeld’s statement was intricate but pellucid. The intricacy was intended to be funny, and succeeded.

Quite right. Their 'award' is an annual celebration of stupidity, with its mocking of perfectly formed sentences and ideas. Oliver puts these idiots in their place.


MessageSpace