'Core and non-core promise' is a perfectly legitimate distinction

Dr Don Watson has a formidable reputation in the literary world. Among his many achievements have been awards for his books Death Sentence (on writing) and Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, a biography of former Prime Minister Paul Keating. He was in a good position to write about Paul Keating; he was his speechwriter. Now there is an awesome verbal duo. It would be a fruitful task for the historian and the political scientist to examine the nature and significance of the collusion between those two verbal powers.

Anyone who reads my scribblings would understand that I think I can smell political correctness a mile away. My chance contacts with Watson's verbal products left a stench in my sensitive nostrils. That is not to say that I was without appreciation of the refinement of that odour. Don Watson is author of one of the best put-downs that the ingenuity of the PC mind is capable of generating.

Much has been written about the failings of the 'nanny state' - about the generous social security monies that have been distributed in utter futility to those who have no other intention than to take the money and run. To counter the detailed argument and massive empirical evidence to support criticism of the welfare state, Don Watson ingeniously came up with the charge that critics were guilty of 'downward-envy'. There you have it: a whole conversation shut-down with a two-word phrase. Beautiful. That's the talent of the best of PC thinkers: shutting down debate when the argument is going against them, and giving a bigot word-weapon to those of his class who cannot or will not confront substantial criticism of their body of dogma or their most cherished fantasies.

Watson followed up the success of Death Sentence with the self-awarding Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Cliches, Cant and Management Jargon. The title says enough about the author and the book's aims without my having to go into that. On the first page of the introduction chapter Watson gives examples of weasel words, that is, 'the words of the powerful, the treacherous and the unfaithful, spies, assassins and thieves.' (I must congratulate Watson for compressing so much PC sanctimony into so few words.) The reader should not be surprised to find foremost among those examples (Conservative) Prime Minister John Howard's distinction between 'core promises and non-core promises'.

Now having only flicked through Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words etc I am ready to believe that he comes up with many legitimate examples of the way people murder the English language for their particular purposes - whatever they are. But I suspect there are not many examples from the mind-numbing PC rhetoric creating stinking stagnant pools across the intellectual life of Western society. I didn't see any, anyhow. Whatever the case there, that's not my concern here.

I am not willing to accept that John Howard's distinction falls into the category of 'weasel words'. Indeed, I have no hesitation in claiming that such a distinction is a common feature of the thinking of responsible people.

Anyone not prepared to vegetate in the arms of the welfare state has a hierarchy of promises or undertakings to oneself and to others. This is true of the parent, the office manager, the coach. The list is endless. It is even true of an academic like Dr Don Watson who must prepare courses, lecture schedules, meetings with students and so on. Once his schedule of courses and lecture times enter officially into the university handbook, he and the university have given a serious undertaking (a promise) to come good.

Say Dr Watson is confronted halfway through the academic year with an unforeseeable change of circumstances that force him regardless of his serious undertakings to reduce the number of courses. It could be because of funding problems in the department, administrative changes, personal problems with family, an illness, it may even be that he did such a good job for Keating that Kevin Ruud asks him to lend his services as a speech writer, something surely too good to pass up. In brief, Dr Watson finds he has to choose between those courses that are essential (core) to his teaching program and those that are less important (non-core) and can and must be dropped.

In this case I am sure Watson would be put out if a bunch of students or lecturers from other departments started parading around the university loudly claiming that he was a liar and not to be trusted.

I could multiply the examples whether it concerned a high school principal, a parent, a police commissioner or anyone else in a position where an imprudent decision between priorities could materially affect people dependent upon them.

It is simply non-controversial that people have to go back on serious undertakings because of circumstances that place an obstacle in the way or because something more important crops up. It would be criminally negligent of a Prime Minister, for example, to doggedly keep to a promise whose realisation would cause great harm, because of changed circumstances, to a country's economy. Indeed, it seems to me that few actual economic undertakings, through their nature, can be classified as irreversible promises. If I am right, then one can only talk about a priority of undertakings all of which, depending on the circumstances, may have to be reviewed. This is the reality.

But, really, let's not kid ourselves. The issue is political. The 'core non-core promise' distinction has been a means to carry forward the long term policy of the PC class to smear, blacken and vilify John Howard. Wheedling Wayne and Jazzing Julia are the first to seize for political purposes the opportunity of distorting or misrepresenting what John Howard says or does. And Don Watson's attempt to show in his book that 'non-core promise' is a contradiction is not disingenuous. It is plain deceptive. He before anyone else would know that although words have meaning they do not function as mathematical entities. They are malleable in context, and usage sometimes defies logic. Don Watson's attack on language abuse has its political assumptions and political aims.

Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com