{"id":346,"date":"2003-11-23T11:44:51","date_gmt":"2003-11-23T11:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/?p=346"},"modified":"2003-11-23T11:44:51","modified_gmt":"2003-11-23T11:44:51","slug":"careful-what-you-refuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/11\/careful-what-you-refuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Careful what you &#8216;refuse&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A8091-2003Nov23.html\">From a story about the tumult in the former Soviet republic of Georgia:<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For Shevardnadze, the silver-haired 75-year-old president who served as Soviet foreign minister in the waning days of the Soviet Union and has led his troubled country of 5 million since 1992, the day was a steady drumbeat of bad news. Trusted advisers decamped to the opposition, the defense minister <i>refused publicly<\/i> to use force against his fellow citizens and hundreds of police and soldiers still in their uniforms joined the protesters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>See, this is why we avoid using &#8220;refuse&#8221; when less loaded verbiage is available.  I can&#8217;t help thinking this really means, &#8220;the defense minister balked at his obligation to use force against his fellow citizens.&#8221;   The point here is that Shevardnadze knew he couldn&#8217;t rely on his defense minister to put down the revolt, because the minister had had a public promise not to use force. A simple fix is to say the minister &#8220;vowed publicly not to use force.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time the &#8220;refuse rule&#8221; applies to sources who won&#8217;t talk to reporters. Our J-school professors told us &#8220;refuse&#8221; implies an unmet obligation &#8212;  but people have no obligation to speak to the press, the thinking goes, so let&#8217;s not have them &#8220;refuse&#8221; to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a story about the tumult in the former Soviet republic of Georgia: For Shevardnadze, the silver-haired 75-year-old president who served as Soviet foreign minister in the waning days of the Soviet Union and has led his troubled country of&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2003\/11\/careful-what-you-refuse\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}