Actual British People Not Confused About What “Fixed” Means
Actual British People Not Confused About What “Fixed” Means
All sorts of Americans are suddenly experts on the “British meaning” of the word “fixed.” Last night, Hardball’s Downing Street Minutes special dwelled on the subject at length.
Former CIA director James Woolsey:
I think that`s not what fixing means in these circumstances. I think people are not listening to British usage. I don`t think they`re talking about cooking the books.
Former weapons inspector David Kay:
Now, in the normal American sense of the word, to me, that`s books are cooked….There is another English meaning for that, so it`s unclear as to what it does mean.
But what does the British journalist who broke the story have to say about the so-called controversy?:
Michael Smith: There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it…fixed means the same here as it does there…
This isn’t too surpising. We do speak the same language after all.
UPDATE: For more, check out Media Matters.
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Maybe if we said it this way to the Right, they would understand: “Fixed”, as in the elections were “fixed”..got it!
June 21st, 2005 at 2:32 pmConservative talking heads claim a liberal bias in the media, yet this sort of semantic hocuspocus flies without nearly the ridicule of “I didn’t inhale.”
June 21st, 2005 at 2:34 pmUnbelievable… who’s the genius @MSNBC that thought up Kay and Woolsey as appropriate guests!
June 21st, 2005 at 2:40 pmAs a Brit… I took it to mean Fixed, as in rigged, altered, manipulated. Not Fixed as in spayed or neutered. Nor did I think they meant fixed as in firmly attached to one spot, not moving.
Are we clear now? They took the “broken” data and “fixed” it so that it showed what they wanted it to.
Z.
June 21st, 2005 at 2:40 pmEven if the memo had said, “Bush iis taking the intelligence and making it fit the situation – ya see, he has a boner to go to war, and he will let no one – I repeat – no one stop him.” there would be spin coming from the right.
June 21st, 2005 at 2:43 pmWell in the US, the word “boner” is often used in meaning as… but in the UK…
June 21st, 2005 at 2:49 pmWho ya gonna believe? Wingnuts? Or your lying interpretation of the English language?
Not so smooth, that…sorry.
June 21st, 2005 at 2:55 pmRuss and Skid it was an error in transcription by the secretary. It should have read “You see, he has got Bono to go to war, and he will let no one – I repeat – no one stop him.”
The famous pop-star Bono was adamant that he personally was going to go to war and take down Saddam.
Glad I could help clarify that.
Z.
June 21st, 2005 at 2:55 pmI’d REALLY like to see that, Z. Ha!
June 21st, 2005 at 2:56 pmHmmm Zookeeper. I guess put that way I would have to believe Wingnuts who obviously speak British English better than I do. After all I was tainted by having been born in Britain and lived there for most of my life. I guess I picked up all those wierd idioms that the British (like me) don’t use.
Z.
June 21st, 2005 at 2:57 pmEven if “fixed” meant “set” rather than “fabricated”, it’s still an indictment, when you consider that the actual phrase from the DSM is “fixed around”.
Either way, under any interpretation, the memo’s import is that policy dictated the “facts”, and not (as it should be) the reverse.
June 21st, 2005 at 3:27 pmAnd the grammar shall set you free.
June 21st, 2005 at 3:27 pmMichael Smith was even on earlier in that very show, and said exactly what the word fixed meant. Then he was off and the others were on saying all of the things posted here. If they were only watching the show backstage, they would have known their answers were total nonsense.
June 21st, 2005 at 3:39 pmMaybe it was ‘fixed’ as in Texas ‘fixed’?
You know, those Texans are always ‘fixin’ stuff that ain’t broken’?
June 21st, 2005 at 3:40 pmOf course, Woolsey has wanted to go into Iraq since 1990, so he’s always been willing to “fix” anything. It is curious that David Kay, the man responsible for finding all those WMDs and centrifuge tubes, and yellowcake, and bilogical weapons based upon the very same “fixed” intelligence, could have ANY doubt as to the meaning of the word.
June 21st, 2005 at 3:42 pmAm I hearing correctly? “It all depends on what the meaning of is, I mean fixed, is”.
June 21st, 2005 at 4:13 pmThe “fixed around” = “bolted on” (or other such) interpretation(s) have been discussed by Juan Cole and others and shown to be bunk. See here:
June 21st, 2005 at 4:24 pmhttp://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004610.php
So, “fixed” means “not fixed” to the wingnuts. And when Bush says soc sec needs to be fixed, he means to leave it as it is and not fix it. I get it now. I think we need an official White House translation list: Today, June 21, Fixed will mean “not fixed.” And today, June 22, Fixed will mean Fixed, unless stated otherwise.
June 21st, 2005 at 4:32 pmI think the Repugs are scared s****less that “fixed” is what they do to animals at the vets, and that the British somehow figured out how this applied to BushCo. :-)
June 21st, 2005 at 5:19 pmJC God of War
June 21st, 2005 at 5:38 pmThe Repugs are members of the Yellow Elephant Group – their mottos is Ranting is safer than enlisting
LeCar, mon Dieu! you are right.
Et voila! You have revealed the true source of all that white foamy stuff the Repugs issue forth everytime they open their stupid ill-informed self serving Empire is Might Godless gaping maws they call mouths. Yellow Elephant Group indeed.
I say, “fix” all Repugs! Prevent this disease from spreading. Make sure they can’t breed! Wait. Hold on a moment. What I meant to say is let’s make sure all Repugs know, learn, understand,and feel the true meaning of “fixed”. That way maybe they’ll shut up and go back to whatever it was they were doing before the DSM exposed them to be the sheeple that they are…
June 21st, 2005 at 6:07 pmYou know, I’m not a registered Democrat, and the reason for that is, young as I am, I remember when the Democratic Party was the Part In Power, and they didn’t behave much more honestly than the Republicans are now. Is there a way we can collectively agree to done down the party rhetoric? It’s kind of hard to point moderate friends and coworkers at a website whose comment fields are filled with (even starred-out) obscenities and unclever epithets like “Repugs.”
I really don’t see how releasing that kind of hostility in some sort of incestuous back-patting in any way “helps the cause.”
June 21st, 2005 at 6:29 pmGo ahead DataShade, try it. See what happens.
June 21st, 2005 at 6:51 pmClinton was very bipartisan, and set a more friendly tone than this administration. There was much anger and hate from the right, but the left was convinced that we are all in this together. Bod Dole’s “Where’s the outrage?!” campaign got him nowhere in that climate. Now, of course, the attitude of the left has hardened to meet present circumstances.
Bush’s strategic philosophy seems to be one of short term gain, long term cost. His party made huge gains when they were being cutthroat and vicious, while we were still under the Clinton philosophy of bipartisan cooperation. Well, they cut our legs off. But now we’re back on our feet, and they are finding that it’s not the same when both sides play rough. And if/when we prevail, it will be a long time before we feel conciliatory again. They will find themselves in the unenviable position of having to earn trust after squandering it.
June 21st, 2005 at 7:29 pmWhat about the people like Snowe of Maine and Voinovich of Ohio? They’re not all part automatons. All I’m saying is, hostile generalizations and crude name-calling doesn’t do anything to sway mindsets. It makes it easier for people to do exactly what the Bush administration likes to do – marginalize anyone who offers up a dissenting point of view.
June 21st, 2005 at 7:59 pmI lived in London for 10 years. There are many instances of “British usage” that differ from American English. Believe me when I tell you that “fixed” has no such alternate meaning or usage, not even among “Oxford dons” as one liar/apologist claimed (as reported on Media Matters). Ludicrous. Their pathetic lie is utterly, desperately untrue.
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:48 amCan’t help but agree with DataShade. There goes that darn liberal in me again. It is very difficult to NOT take pot-shots at the people who have reviled your party and its leaders, who have accused you of hating America and God. But taking the shots is not truly productive. The Democratic Party needs to take real aim, define our vision for our country, and for me, part of that vision is exposing the truth, about Osama, about America’s role in the Middle East, about the Iraqi occupation, and then there’s all those troubling issues on our soil that are being swept under the rug.
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:47 amIn case anyone needs further proof of the differences between English and American forms of English, all you need to do is go right here for some worthwhile examples.
No doubt many of you will be surprised….
June 22nd, 2005 at 9:33 amRemember when these wingnuts were in lather about what the meaning of “is” is? Same thing. We all speak and understand Englsih to a point,(even dumb ass Texans understand SOME English.)ô
June 22nd, 2005 at 9:38 amI’m English and I have not heard anyone here claim there is a different meaning to the word ‘fixed’ than meaning ‘cooked the books’ or similar. We often read of football matches (soccer- sorry !) being ‘fixed’ . The only other meaning (as just as damning) would mean that they were ‘centered’ around the policy of regime change, which would require that this policy had been decided on in advance anyway. This is just typical wingnut solopsism.
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:14 amI would love to have an honest political debate without the name-calling and may the best ideas win, but that’s impossible in this climate. Republicans have demonstrated that the only thing that gets their attention is to publicly humiliate them. And they have further demonstrated their willingness to do the same to anyone who gets in their way.
If you have a solution to that, I’m all for it.
June 22nd, 2005 at 11:34 amYou know, when I was in third grade and my peers had just started learning cuss-words, and it was becoming “cool” to try to trash-talk people, I felt the same way. So I became really good at it. Possibly the best. In the long run, it didn’t help. I got mean enough to alienate people who might have been my friends otherwise, developed a reputation for being an asshole, and the “bullies” just either moved to physical violence when they could no longer handle the verbal assault, or they just started ignoring me. There was no greater understanding. There was no “getting through to them.”
What needs to happen is we need to actually prove our ideas are better. If a few third-grade-level epithets is enough to destroy your composure then you really aren’t fit to be in a legislative or executive body. If a few slightly-more-sophisticated straw-man and ad hominen attacks are enough to derail your line of argument, then you just need to be a little more focused. The phrase “With all due respect, that is not the question I asked you,” can be a lot more humiliating than some sputtering, outraged tirade about misleading the people.
Besides, as Jon Stewart said in the infamous Crossfire interview, people respond well to civilized discourse. Unless you want to contribute to the trend of election campaigns and political debate as “bread and circuses,” then please stop engaging in that kind of crude behavior. Or maybe you have some stories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. calling his opponents buck-toothed crackers, or an unearthed copy of the Federalist papers where Madison calls his opponents King-sniffing liberty-haters.
June 22nd, 2005 at 12:27 pmDataShade,
Often the debates between “opposing lefties” on this site are civilized discourse. People obviously get upset though, and “bad words” are used, often with the help of some goading from others trying to hyjack the debate. Its unfortunate, but not the issue, and not worth crying over in several posts. Sorry.
June 22nd, 2005 at 2:38 pmI’ve been reading the posts – and the comments – on this site since day one, and the only reason I’m moved to comment is that I’ve noticed this isn’t just an occasional “spirit of the moment” sort of thing. There’s a consistent disdain towards opposing viewpoints complete with a vernacular of demeaning turns of phrase.
I just think that if we’re going to claim to be better than they are, we ought to act like it.
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