… the more pretentious you are, the more words you’ll misuse.
Take the very pretentious Washington guy, Lanny Davis. He’s trying to say that he thinks it’s wrong to impute anti-semitic motives to people who disagree with you on Israel. This is what he says.
Impugning motives of people at the Center [for American Progress] and impugning [that] those motives are driven by anti-Semitism is, in my opinion, wrong.
The first use of impugning is okay, if mushy; impugning the motives would help a little. Imputing anti-semitic motives to people… would be much better.
The second use of impugning is incorrect. Implying would be correct. Implying that these motives are driven…
Pretentious people never speak or write clearly, being too grand for clarity.
December 13th, 2011 at 10:37AM
I agree that the second “impugning” is incorrect, but I suspect it was a slip – that he actually meant to say “implying.” I think the larger source of confusion here is the repetition of “motives.” Are people impugning motives as anti-semitic, or impugning positions and implying that they’re anti-semitic, or what?