And now, the Donald Rumsfeld award for...

I had earlier "conferred" upon Law Minister K. Shanmugam the Wordmeister award for his well-thought out choice of the word "timbre", to refer to distinctive character traits he felt an Elected President should have. A bouquet for him.

Now, the Donald Rumsfeld award (saying something without saying anything) may be bestowed on Dr Tony Tan, a candidate for the Elected Presidency.

To give this award's context, Mr Rumsfeld -- a former US defence secretary in the Bush the Younger administration -- famously said these words:

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Now, along comes Dr Tan who, when asked to comment on remarks by Mr Shanmugam and other participants at last Friday's forum on the role of the EP, said yesterday (Sunday): "I would prefer to think  about the points they made because I think that these are serious considerations which anybody who aspires to the position of president will have to give very serious thought to. It's so serious that I don't think it's good to give a quick off-the-cuff answer to these issues because they go to the very heart of what the presidency is about."

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Meanwhile, I have been seeing some novel (read: strange) ways in which certain words and idioms have been used in ST (and Sunday Times) and TODAY.

For example, a Sunday Times columnist on 7 August said: "Still, the pros of marriage have outweighed the cons."

No, you can't split this idiom up. Careful writers always keep the unity of the phrase "pros and cons". In the example above, simply replace "pros" with "advantages" and "cons" with "disadvantages". Otherwise, imagine the following hilarious example: "The cons outweigh the pros in the coming presidential election."

Then, there's this headline in today's ST: "S'poreans should save for rainy days: Khaw".

Huh? That makes it literal, that Singaporeans need to save up (money?) so as to (what? buy a bunch of umbrellas??) when there are actual rainy days?

The headline is all the more unforgiveable since the minister, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, had used the idiom correctly: "Sometimes you get fine weather, sometimes rainy. But if you have always saved for the rainy day, you'll be pretty steady and safe."

TODAY too had its blooper. Last Friday (5 August) it carried a story about China's military build-up with this headline and introduction:

"Japan exaggerating military threat: China"

Beijing -- China accused Japan yesterday of deliberately exaggerating Beijing's military threat...

Huh again! Which country would admit that it is a military threat to another?

ST's version of the same story was correctly contexted:

"China slams Japan for 'irresponsible' report... Paper 'deliberately exaggerates' China's military build-up"

Beijing: China has hit out at Japan after a defence paper approved by Tokyo criticised the country's military build-up...

Note: The TODAY blooper may be likened to the linguistic device known as the "leading question". The classic example  here is the lawyer asking the defendant: "Have you stopped beating your wife?" A "no" makes him guilty while a "yes" is an admission he has been beating his wife!