Pomp and Circumstance

If senators are right when they describe themselves as plain and simple sons of the people, the people are a frighteningly pompous lot. During the current hearings of the Mundt (nee McCarthy) Sub-Committee, Senators have wrapped themselves in shrouds of verbiage, valiantly shunning simple phrases.

For one thing, there seems to be a convention forbidding the use of the words "yes" and "no." When a witness or Senator does answer questions in an affirmative or negative spirit, it is always with some elaboration of the simple one syllable answer. Several phrases serve for "yes." One witness might reply with a string of "that is correct"s, sprinkling a few "that is right"s in as conservational spice. Mr. Wclch once raised himself above the Senatorial herd by making it "that is precisely right."

Another form of the affirmative, combining no great improvement in accuracy with a definite tediousness, is the repetition of the interrogatory part of a question. This has the advantage of consuming a cross examiner's ten minutes with just a few answers. For example, the question comes: "Do you mean--" here follows a statement at length. The answer: "That's what I mean, that--" and a restatement of the original statement.

At the first session, Senator Mundt set a properly pompous keynote by asking the spectators to "refrain from any demonstrations of approval or disapprobation." his colleagues rapidly followed suit, allowing nothing, including rules of syntax, to interfere with their selections of elegant variations and high-blown pariphrases. One Senator asked, to find out who had begun some action, "Would you state that that was motivated from the Senator's (McCarthy) end of the line."

Although one of the worst offenders against simplicity, Counsel Ray Jenkins shows the most consistent desire to save time. This zeal has led him to coin several interesting contractions that, thanks to the witnesses' equally devious minds, have so far caused no confusion. Jenkins likes to say "Did or not in happen that..." in lieu of the more unwieldy, if equally ungainly, "Did it or did it not happen that..." Extending the principle to derive other equally ugly shortcut, Jenkins frequently uses "Was or not it..." and "Will or not you say that..."

If the hearings to nothing else, they will give Mr. Fowler's remains a measure of morbid exercise, gyrating in the grave with the pomp that the gentle linguist always deplored.