PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

Those of you who know me understand that I believe words matter.

More than pictures or charts.

Using the best words and the right ones is a good challenge, one I don’t always meet, but one that lays forever before me.

So it was that, this morning, I enjoyed a column by Lee Pollock, a Chicago-based writer who is an expert on quotes attributed to Winston Churchill.

He suggested that many of the quotes attributed to the great British leader were not actually said by him.

“More than 50 years after his death,” Pollock wrote, “Winston Churchill is everywhere. John Lithgow’s performance as the great prime minister enlivened the first season of ‘The Crown’ on Netflix. Gary Oldman is earning praise for his portrayal in “Darkest Hour.’ A Google alert for Churchill’s name returns at least 50 citations daily, many beginning with ‘Winston Churchill once said . . .’

“Churchill produced more than 15 million words during his lifetime, making him a fertile source for commentators of all stripes. Buried in that mountain of copy is something for everyone. But with these repeated citations has come what one scholar describes as ‘Churchillian drift’—the never-ending circulation of Churchillisms that sound right but are, in fact, wrong.”

In one case, Churchill was reported to have said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else.” But Churchill never said that, however true it may appear to be. Other oft-repeated quotes also turn out, upon review, to be inaccurate:

• “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
• “If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”
• “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
• “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”

Now, it should be said that Pollock knows more about Churchill than I do. But he also admits that the difficulty in trying to stop the fake Churchill sayings is that they often reflect his character and echo the distinctive rhythm and cadence of his speeches. It’s easy to imagine Churchill uttering these words.

Pollock continues: “As another fake Churchill chestnut has it: ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has time to put its pants on.’ The internet aggravates Churchillian drift—and also, presumably, the comparable drift for quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and others. The accuracy of almost any line or anecdote is easily verifiable online, but erroneous words have such a head start and travel so fast that the truth indeed is still putting on its pants.

And Pollock says “a savvy spotter of fake quotes, though, can also use his intuition. Churchill would have said ‘trousers,’ not ‘pants,’ which provides a clue that the story is faulty.

So, words do matter. As another ace linguist Yogi Berra, once remarked (perhaps accurately), “I really didn’t say everything I said.”

Well said!