Lies Of Omission

Lies Of Omission

So, I was reading someone's blog recently. Within the body of the blog, this person had reposted a speech. Proper credit was given to the author, and title, and date of the speech. It was a very compelling, moving speech. While reading it, I realized I had read it a few years before (as the author, title, and date were the same). I also realized that parts of the speech had been left out. I asked the blogger about this, and he said that he left out a section due to personal feelings.

I immediately found this idea immensely intriguing...taking someone else's work and presenting only the parts with which you were comfortable. Fascinating. I decided to exaggerate the idea to show how reposting only portions of someone else's work is an injustice to that person (and readers/listeners).

So here, without further flourish, is the Gettysburg address...Krëg-style:

For as our fathers bought up this content nation, Dilbert and Ed ate the prostate crate.

Now we are engaged in a rat war, testing her tattooed and dead gendur (sp).We met a great field of tar.We have come to dedicate pot in it, as anal sting for those who did her native.This way, I do.But in lager, we cannot die, we cannot rate anal sound.The raven landed, hot rugged rave allowed Rover poop to react.Thor Longmember hates her; he can never forget he did her.

Its hero shelving, where bedded the great ass – the honed dead wet crease gave me a surf devotion – that high old shaved vain, that I shat off reed people not from earth.

And here’s the original (with the parts I chose to use in blue):

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Not quite the same, huh?