Unilateral / Embedded -- Globe and Mail

[vida morkunas]

the complete article is on the Globe and Mails web site now:

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030322/FCCOVB/


Vida.
vidamorkunas at telus.net



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
Of Beverly Flanigan
Sent: March 23, 2003 11:56 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Shock and Awe"


That was it--unilateral.  Nice connotation there too, as if they're
one-sided, but presumably on the wrong side.

At 02:24 PM 3/23/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>Most outrageous indeed.  Another term that should be nominated in some
>>category or other is "embedded," especially by us linguist types.  And
just
>>today I heard that there are some independent journalists (unembedded, or
>>not embeds) in Iraq, but I've forgotten the term for them--isolates?
>
>I just read an article on this, by one of the "isolates", Geoffrey
>York of the Toronto Globe and Mail. His brother is a friend of mine
>and posted the article to a private mailing list we're both on. The
>term he used is "unilateral" and says that it's on his credentials. I
>can't find the article that Ian posted on the Globe and Mail's web
>site, so here are the opening paragraphs:
>
>>KUWAIT CITY -- In bright red letters, my U.S. military accreditation badge
>>announces that I am a "unilateral."
>>
>>It's a reminder of my lowly status, designed to make certain that no
>>gatekeeper accidentally allows me any privileged access to the American
>>forces. Unilateral is the Pentagon's bureaucratic term for the distrusted
>>rabble of independent-minded journalists in Kuwait, those who are unable
>>or unwilling to "embed" with American military units. We are outsiders,
>>powerless and marginal, lacking any propaganda value in Washington's media
>>strategy.
>
>Ian says this is in today's paper, so perhaps the site hasn't been updated
>yet.
>--
>===========================================================================
===
>Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
>Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203) 865-6163
x258
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865-8963