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9
Jun
2019
Robert Mueller produced a 448-page report. U.S, Attorney General William Barr cut it down to four pages, of which only two actually dealt with the content of Mueller’s report.
When Congress insisted on seeing more than Barr’s brief summary, Barr produced a “redacted” report, with large portions of Mueller’s text blacked out. Some pages had not one readable word remaining.
A friend asked me, “What does ‘redact’ mean?”
I gave her a dictionary definition -- to edit, to prepare a manuscript for publication.
That definition illustrates how definitions themselves can and must change. Because what Barr did to Mueller’s report is an utter contradiction of editing. Any definition is -- by definition, if I dare use that term -- the way a word has been used up to that time. It is a snapshot, an understanding frozen and preserved. It cannot define how a word will be used in future.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: editing, redacting, William Barr, Robert Mueller