Misremembering My Misspeak

Doesn't anybody just lie anymore?

Back in the 70s, the term Ms. was coined for women, so that they had a formal title not based on their marital status. Since "Ms." now appears in so many legal contexts, it may come as a surprise to learn it was quite controversial in its time. Of course some people complained about the feminist implications, but there also were concerns about removing the letter “I” from the title "Miss," because after all how do you have a word without a vowel? People had to be taught to say “Mizz” as opposed to “Miss.” (The common abbreviation “Mrs.” also does not contain a vowel, but no matter.) Some people didn’t like the sound of “Ms.,” claiming it seemed impersonal—which I imagine was part of the intent.

But sentimentalists of the 70s did not have to bemoan for long the loss of the word “Miss,” because parts of it began popping up in other ways. Watergate found us dealing with people who did not lie but who “misspoke,” which word provided fodder aplenty for comics, pundits, and anti-Nixonites. What was the world coming to if people could not admit that they lied but rather claimed they misspoke? It symbolized everything bureaucratic and over-legalized in our society, not to mention it sounded flakey.

In truth, the word “misspoke” goes back centuries, according to the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary—or as those of us in the know like to say, the OED. Shakespeare used it, which is good enough for me. But the word rarely was/is used until the U.S. got hold of it, where its range of meaning was narrowed to: “to speak incorrectly, unclearly, or misleadingly.”  

Time heals, many people today don’t even know what Watergate was, and all sorts of folks find good reason to claim they misspoke. Today the word is used without irony or satire. Yet, going back to the OED definition, usage of the word can confound much more than it clarifies—which can please the utterer just fine. Was I simply incorrect in what I said, was I not as clear as I could have been, or was I intentionally misleading you? Saying I misspoke means that I am pleading innocent. You may think I’m guilty, but we’ll never know because I misspoke. My you-know-what is covered. No, I didn’t lie, because that would mean I did something wrong.

Kissing cousin to the word “misspoke” is the word “misremember.” This word, too, has a long pedigree according to the OED. But in a contemporary context, one sees it cropping up as a psychological state of being. If you don’t believe me, Google “Brian Williams memory," and see all the postings in which it is claimed or at least considered that he honestly does not remember what happened in his helicopter in 2003. Gee, I thought I got shot at, but I guess I misremembered. (It also has been questioned if he even actually saw another helicopter get shot at, given where he would have been positioned at the time.)

As many of us already know, memory is by necessity selective. We could not function if we remembered everything that happens to us even in a single day. So in order to guide us along, our brains throw much of what occurs into the trash bin for deletion. We also tend to remember things in ways that make us seem good or in the right, and memory often gets foggy or even blank when one experiences trauma. It is not uncommon for two people to recall the same event differently, or to argue over what year something happened.  “Bad” memories often are ones in which we cannot justify why we did what we did, or why someone did what they did to us.

As a grad student, I heard about a study in which people were asked to tell the story of Bambi. Many children are traumatized when Bambi’s mother gets killed, and their young minds embellish upon what actually happens—which is that her shooting occurs off-screen. (I remembered it as her running for her life, and a friend recalls that she died in a terrible fire.)

So yeah, I get that Brian Williams or anyone else may not remember how he spent Thanksgiving eleven years ago, or may recall a dispute in a manner that presents himself as the correct party and/or the unfairly blamed one. As we know from TV and movies—or may tragically know from our lived experience—it can be hard to remember important details about getting robbed, raped, or being the target of an attempted murder. People who survive serious car accidents often cannot recall what happened.

But you know? I think that someone alert enough to make an estimated $10 million per year can recall whether or not his helicopter got shot at. To the best of my offhand knowledge, Williams was never in a position from which he might have developed PTSD. And perhaps most important of all, the accuracy of his coverage of Hurricane Katrina had already been questioned years before the current controversy. In the case of Katrina, he claimed to have seen things or suffered in ways that others state never happened.

Maybe you have heard of Munchausen Syndrome, in which people claim to have suffered trauma or illness that they did not actually experience, in order to get sympathy and attention from others. I am not a psychologist, and even if I were I do not meet people like Brian Williams. I have no idea what his psychological state of being is or is not. But I do know that in the news ratings game, it never hurts if a broadcast journalist becomes a news story himself. Or let me qualify that—it does hurt when the public questions your credibility, but not when it believes you are a hero.

People like to think that the news stories they hear or read are true. But a great deal of selectivity may be involved in how the story gets presented—what is emphasized or omitted, and what possible connections are presented as fact. Recently I stumbled upon a so-called news item in which it was claimed that singer Carrie Underwood single-handedly destroyed the pro-choice perspective on abortion. But, reading further, I learned that the pregnant Ms. (a/k/a Miss) Underwood simply feels like she is singing to her yet to be born baby, and that the baby can hear her. A lovely little story about mother-child bonding, but quite afield from what the headline promised.

But even as such, many people do not know that TV reporters are not necessarily trained in how to be journalists. They are trained in how to project into the camera, how to ask questions, or how to edit the copy someone else wrote for them. They also should know how to ad lib when necessary. But they do not always know how to write journalism or how to interview without a list of questions prepared for them.

Brian Williams dropped out of college to intern with the Carter administration. He then began reporting news on TV, working his way to from local to national news coverage. I do not know how much actual training he has in journalism, I only know that he, like any news anchor, must present himself on camera as seeming to be a good journalist.

As other sources have pointed out, many people no longer turn to major TV networks to find out what is happening. They may prefer cable or online news sources. Not to mention that more than a few people choose to ignore the news. So perhaps the national network news anchor is becoming a dinosaur anyway.

Yet even though what we consider to be factual news sometimes may be less than that, and even though no one has a perfect memory, in my humble opinion Brian Williams knows when he is lying to self-promote. Not misspeak his misremembrance, but purposefully present himself as a kind of Indiana Jones of news anchors.  

Give me his $10 million a year, and I promise to tell the truth.