“We / take the form / of our uncertainty,” Gil Ott wrote in a 1984 poem. I take that as a motto of a poetics we shared, Gil and me, born the same year smack in the middle of the last century. Uncertainty remains now, as it was thirty years ago, as it was in 1950, a poetic vice for many. Gil expressed his searching uncertainty with an unflappable and genial defiance, living his fifty-four years with grace, courage, outrage, and élan.
In a conversation with reporter Mary Louise Kelly and NPR’s senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, NPR News makes clear that its policy is not to use the word “lies” when referring to blatant lying by Popular-Vote-Loser Trump and his aides. There has been much commentary on how the mediocracy contributed to the Trump election coup and this admission confirms that NPR is using a conscious strategy of doublespeak.
