ABSTRACT
The Air Force theoreticians countered the Navy’s position by making a valuable distinction between “real” and “virtual” presence. The Air Force general, a clever wordsmith named Ronald Fogleman, was quick to provide an example of how with several billion dollars more he and his fliers could provide both real and virtual presence. It appears that releasing, say, the Air Force’s satellite photographs of Iraqi troop movements might affect Saddam Hussein’s behavior more than flying Navy aircraft over Iraqi territory. The Air Force was only trying to provide a “cheaper alternative service.” In the nineteenth century, popular French novelists who had their tales serialized in the Paris newspapers were paid by the line. The journal Language published a widely used notation system oddly entitled “A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking in Conversation.” Presidents of the United States—and they are in this not alone in the corridors of power—are manglers of their own language.
