Gahan Doublespeak Blues (Husqvarna Mix): Say goodbye to your trees, Mt. Tabor Road residents, because it's time again to "improve the tree canopy" by flattening a few hundred of them.

Develop New Albany welcomes Summit Springs
to the donor list.

Team Gahan has developed its own peculiar localized variant of Newspeak, with inflections borne of hunker-down-low bunker origins.

 ... George Orwell explains that Newspeak usage follows most of the English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning.

In Orwell's novel 1984, the term "doublethink" is introduced; when paired with Newspeak, the result is "doublespeak," defined here by political economist Edward S. Herman.

What is really important in the world of doublespeak is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.

The drill has become familiar by now.

For instance, to "improve housing conditions and supportive services" means earmarking half of public housing units for demolition without a coherent plan for rehousing.

Tireless "efforts to improve the tree canopy" means flashing a nice stock photo like this ...

... as scrubbed-clean Disneyesque cover for lubing up the chainsaws to facilitate tree removal, clearcutting and deforestation. Perhaps the finest example of Gahan's skills at doublespeak occurred in 2016, when hundreds of trees were cleared to build a "greenway" safe for speeding motorists.

Residents of Mt. Tabor Road were informed yesterday (December 7) that lumbering begins on Monday, December 11.

Oddly, the fliers were stuck in mailboxes sans stamps, which I'd been told was strictly illegal during my run for mayor in 2016. The Board of Works already had picked and grinned its way through approval for the latest round of destroying the tree canopy to save it.

ASK THE BORED: It's Mt. Tabor Road's turn to be pillaged as our lumberjack fetishist mayor readies another round of clear-cutting -- for the sake of the cars, of course.

It's been four months since the mayor triumphantly announced what amounts to a survey of previously sawed stumps; having felled hundreds and perhaps thousands of trees during the course of his Ceausescu-esque TIF and Green(!)way projects, he'd now prove there was the beginning of the precursor to an embryonic "master" plan to reforest the city by 2065 or so ...

It can't be denied that Jeff Gahan is remaking the city in his own image. What could possibly go wrong when mendacity, narcissism and mediocrity are chief characteristics of the model?

Looking Glass found at 922 Culbertson, so the Gahan administration walks through it.

Last week the city of New Albany somewhat confusingly mimicked Vietnam War-era Pentagon memorandums by announcing that (a) it would be proceeding with the demolition process of the historic tavern building at 922 Culbertson, while at the same time (b) not demolishing the structure pending a largely unexplained "new" plan to save it.

Habitat for Humanity lashes back at Gonder as city's 922 Culbertson position becomes even more muddled.

In a newspaper report, the building commissioner -- until now among the straight shooters --  labored mightily to reconstruct a pig from sausage by reassuring critics that a building being demolished wasn't really being demolished.

Brewer said the city has secured the windows and the doors of the structure to make sure nothing gets removed.

“We did proceed with the asbestos abatement,” Brewer said. “We are still moving forward with the demolition pending the outcome of this recent request for more time to see if they can get the funding.”

Did those items NOT removed during the week of June 23 include the following elements, as revealed to the Green Mouse by an observant neighbor?

"You should see the huge vintage back bar and finish carpentry the city allowed someone to strip from the building yesterday."

Thus, we see that buildings be demolished are not being demolished.

A multi-million dollar street improvement, the ultimate success of which is predicated on diverting heavy trucks, is not really intended to divert them.

The Riverfront Amphitheater is unworthy, except for the one day each year when we draw 8,000 people to it. Lewis Carroll had it right.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”

The Publican on megaswill and doublespeak, at LouisvilleBeer.com

When they talk smack, they need to be smacked down. It helps them learn.

Tom Long is Full of Something,
and it Ain’t Craft Beer

Years before most of us were born, there was an Englishman named Eric Blair, who is better known by his pen name, George Orwell.

During a lifetime cut regrettably short, Orwell spent much of his writing career pondering abuses and misuses of the English language. Orwell decried the mutability of language and words, particularly when these bastardized word meanings were deployed unnaturally, to become instruments of bad intent, or sometimes even de factoweapons against freedom itself.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. (Orwell)

In our day and age, we remember Orwell primarily for his anti-totalitarian novels, including “Animal Farm” and “1984,” the latter of which introduced the seminal concepts of “doublethink” and “newspeak.” Subsequently, another word was coined to meld these ideas into one enduringly disturbing tool for the use of dictators and advertising directors: Doublespeak.