Willing Suspension of Disbelief?
When Senator Clinton fist made this comment I thought that it sounded strange. The phrase “Suspension of disbelief” is an art term. When you go to a movie, for example and you say "That a car would not blow up like that." you suspend your bias against believing what you are seeing and you still enjoy the movie, giving the artists some dramatic license.
The word “disbelief” lead me to think she was saying that she had a bias against believing the testimony. I dismissed this thought for some time thinking that surely a woman as intelligent as Senator Clinton would have done her homework on a predesigned, sound byte quote like this. She had obviously thought long and hard about this particular phrase, the one she knew would be quoted everywhere, and she wanted to be clever, catchy and stop right at the line of outright insult to one of out nation’s foremost generals.
However, in her desire to set just the right tone with her words she actually may give us some real insight into her thoughts. Let's look at the word disbelief.
Disbelieve- to refuse to believe in something. Webster's dictionary 1999.
So, using Webster's definition, Senator Clinton said that to accept General Petraeus' report required a “willing suspension of my refusal to believe in the report.” Doesn’t she need to stop refusing to believe it, and keep an open mind?
Why hold hearings in the Senate if the Senators will not keep an open mind? If they already know ALL, why waste time, money and energy with the hearings? Perhaps Senator Clinton should give her report on how things are going in Iraq to General Petraeus, since she claims to know more about it than he does, she must willingly suspend her knowledge (disbelief) to accept his report.
Read more about it.
Think for yourself.
Make up your own mind.
The word “disbelief” lead me to think she was saying that she had a bias against believing the testimony. I dismissed this thought for some time thinking that surely a woman as intelligent as Senator Clinton would have done her homework on a predesigned, sound byte quote like this. She had obviously thought long and hard about this particular phrase, the one she knew would be quoted everywhere, and she wanted to be clever, catchy and stop right at the line of outright insult to one of out nation’s foremost generals.
However, in her desire to set just the right tone with her words she actually may give us some real insight into her thoughts. Let's look at the word disbelief.
Disbelieve- to refuse to believe in something. Webster's dictionary 1999.
So, using Webster's definition, Senator Clinton said that to accept General Petraeus' report required a “willing suspension of my refusal to believe in the report.” Doesn’t she need to stop refusing to believe it, and keep an open mind?
Why hold hearings in the Senate if the Senators will not keep an open mind? If they already know ALL, why waste time, money and energy with the hearings? Perhaps Senator Clinton should give her report on how things are going in Iraq to General Petraeus, since she claims to know more about it than he does, she must willingly suspend her knowledge (disbelief) to accept his report.
Read more about it.
Think for yourself.
Make up your own mind.
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