Is "Disaffirm" a Euphemism?

[Mark Mandel]

Or because, if you don't know the technical lingo, it looks like a weasely
way of saying "I lied"? Substitute "retract" or "deny" or "disown" in the
Sjoblom quote to see what I mean. Journalists and commentators should be
held to a higher standard, but ISTM that this is an easy first take on the
line.

Mark Mandel


On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:

>        Charles H. Green, writing in The Huffington Post, has nominated
> "disaffirm" as "the new leader in the "Mistakes Were Made" category at
> the forthcoming Creative Language awards ceremony," see
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-h-green/mini-madoff-scandal-scale_
> b_168486.html<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-h-green/mini-madoff-scandal-scale_%0Ab_168486.html>.
>  My question is, why does he think that?
>
>        To give a bit of background:  In the midst of an SEC
> investigation into Stanford International Bank and its affiliates, the
> bank's lawyer, Thomas Sjoblom, withdrew from representation and sent a
> letter to the SEC in which he said, "I disaffirm all prior oral and
> written representations made by me and my associates to the SEC staff
> regarding Stanford Financial Group and its affiliates."  The SEC
> subsequently filed a high-profile civil complaint against those persons,
> alleging an $8 billion fraud.  It's been suggested that the withdrawal
> and the letter were the trigger for the complaint, implying that the
> SEC, at least, considered the letter's meaning to be entirely clear.
>
>        This is the usage that Green thinks is "excusing $8 billion of
> malfeasance."  But was it really?  It isn't hard to tell what Sjoblom
> meant; he meant that he no longer had confidence in the veracity of his
> former clients, and because anything he and his associates had said
> about Stanford to the SEC in the past was based on information provided
> by them, he could not vouch for its truthfulness.  He could have said
> "You should not rely on any past oral or written representations . . .,"
> not that this would have been likely to have made Green any happier.
>
>        "Disaffirm" seems to me to be a good a word as exists for
> conveying something that needs to be stated in as few words as possible.
> Why, then, single it out for criticism?  Is it because it is an
> unfamiliar term, and therefore automatically assumed to be euphemistic
> bureaucratese?  Or is it simply that, in a large fraud, everyone in the
> room looks bad, even those who apparently were themselves deceived and
> played a large role in bringing the truth to light?
>
>
> John Baker
>
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