Hornswaggler | The culture, the humor, a bit of the sports, not so much the politics, and the workplace distraction
Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of
hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my
pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" --
"I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers,
bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits,
vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers,
buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train
robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!"
Oops. When I went off on Ed Epstein's article in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday on Rumsfeld's testimony regarding the abuses in Abu Ghraib, I made an error.
I quaked with rage when I read the story last Thursday/Friday, but went away for the weekend before posting about it. When I did finally write something, I didn't reread the piece, figuring I'd already read it, but it turns out in my initial reading I missed one sentence in which he said precisely what I excoriated him for not saying: "Later disclosures said there were 20 practices on the approved list of techniques, but the Abu Ghraib abuse went well beyond what was permitted."
My apologies to Mr. Epstein, though I doubt any of you out there actually took me up on my suggestion to email him and call him a toady.
In which case, I wasn't saying they should call you a "toady," Ed. I was urging them to raise their glasses in a "toasty" to your journalistic acumen.
