Robert Gibbs' Transparent Hedge: "Death Panels... Not in the Bill"

I am watching the White House press conference, now, and Robert Gibbs. His performance is strikingly revealing, to a careful observer of rhetoric and human behavior.

Pardon my paraphrasing, but Gibbs just said the following.

I am quite offended by those who speak of "death panels," because it is simply "not in the bill." [And then in the following statement] "...it is not in the bill."

For a professional political communicator, this is glaringly telling. It shows he does full well know that death panels are in the plan for the use of this bill, by the assignments and Trojan horse provisions in it (and that the potential energy of an overarching death panel has already been established in the Marxist wrought "Stimulus Act"). ^{1, 2}

By the principles of rhetoric, if this were not an established fact for him, he would not have said death panels are "not in the bill," then searched for further words to underscore this assertion, only to weakly resort to repeating this talking point, "not in the bill."

The use of this morbid propogandistic device is a verbal act of "sleight of hand."

big half-truth, cum big lie