by David Safier
Jan Brewer is shocked and hurt anyone would misinterpret her words about her father. It's funny how she turns into a fragile, hothouse flower when it suits her purpose.
Dr. Word would like to look at phrase at the center of the debate, carefully and judiciously analyzing it to see what it says objectively and what it implies.
Here is the central phrase:
". . . my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany . . ."
"My father died fighting." Does that mean "My father died while fighting" or "My father died as a result of fighting"? The language strongly points to the first interpretation. To say her father "died fighting" gives the strong impression that he was in the act of fighting when he died, not that he died 11 years later because he inhaled noxious chemicals in a munitions factory.
It's like a baseball player who "went down swinging." It doesn't mean he swung on the first pitch but went down on a called third strike. It means he was in the act of swinging when he "went down."
"Fighting the Nazi regime in Germany." In Germany? The Nazi regime in Germany? Were there Nazi regimes elsewhere, meaning you have to specify which Nazi regime? No, when anyone says "Nazi regime," the audience needs no further clarification to assume the reference is to Hitler's regime, which was in Germany.
If you say "fighting the dictatorship," it makes sense to specify which dictatorship you're fighting, because there are so many choices. If you're fighting the Nazi regime, "in Germany" is redundant.
Actually, it's more than redundant. It's misleading. If it's not necessary to modify "Nazi regime," then "in Germany" tends to refer back to fighting and dying. So when I read that phrase, my first interpretation of the words is that the man fought and died in Germany. At least he should have been in Europe, not working as a civilian in a munitions plant in Nevada.
I know, I know. Parents often regale their children with stories about how they won the war. And the Accidental Guv most likely heard those stories as a child, which is absolutely fine by me. But Jan Brewer has been an adult for 44 years, and adults don't tell other adults, "my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany" when he died 11 years later because he inhaled toxic chemicals at a state-side munitions plant.
I don't want to take the Accidental Guv's phrase out of its context, so here's the quote as it appeared in the Republic.
"The Nazi comments . . . they are awful," she said, her voice dropping.
"Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I
lost him when I was 11 because of that . . . and then to have them call
me Hitler's daughter. It hurts. It's ugliness beyond anything I've ever
experienced."
No change. Anyone like me, hearing the story for the first time will assume Brewer's father died during World War II while he was fighting against the Nazis in some capacity. Any other interpretation strains the words to the breaking point.
Brewer's words are misleading — purposely misleading for effect, I'm reasonably certain.
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Of course it was scripted! It was coherent, so nothing idiot girl Jan could have come up with on her own. It was a complete LIE, but she was speaking in full sentences that made some sense, so it was obviously scripted.
When I read about this, I thought that nothing could cut through the spin like some good old-fashioned sentence diagramming. Although that’s not exactly what you’re doing here, your emphasis upon whether or not the phrases in question are adverbial or adjectival is just what the doctor ordered: language definitely matters! Thank you Dr. Word.
I suspect she went for the rhetorical jugular with her comment, hoping it would intensify the impact of her claimed emotional connection to the issue and just momentarily forgot that in the big time you don’t get to hyperbolize freely for effect. By the time she realized she had just shoved her foot in her mouth, it was really too late to say, “sorry, I got caught up in the heat of the argument and overstated my father’s role in the war for effect.” Now all she can do is torture the language to make her words fit reality. A real rookie move…
Considering she uttered those words in an interview with the Arizona Republic I’m fairly convinced they were scripted.