Thus the main theme of the tale is the growing up of the family beyond the image of the '
prevaricator' to whom they so closely resemble as they scrounge large sums of money from the kindly, conscience-stricken new heiress, who has been left the life-interest of a fortune they had expected to come to themselves.
"Hillary the Habitual
Prevaricator." New York Times, p.A15.
Yet, this same man has also been described as a "
prevaricator" (Lee, 1980.
The testimony of the black witnesses is especially interesting because it portrays a Samuel Mudd unknown to modern history: that of slavemaster, slave capturer, Confederate agent, and
prevaricator. Often portrayed as a kindly country doctor who was persecuted by a vengeful government, the real character of Samuel Mudd has remained as invisible as those former slaves whose story has been ignored for 135 years.
The material in the early chapters is shocking, and I speak as one who thought he had seen it all: the visiting sociologist from Hebrew University who adorned his office at my university with a PLO recruiting poster; the Tel-Aviv University philosophy professor who supplied Noam Chomsky's supporters with a letter of kashrut certifying the "lifelong dedication to Israel" of their (Israel-hating) idol; the Haifa University sociologist active in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League (a PLO front group); the contingent of Israeli professors taking up arms on behalf of the great
prevaricator Edward Said.
And while that leads some to call him a fibber, a
prevaricator, or worse, he may just be a "chronic lawyer."
His petitions and testimony in London disclosed that he could also be a
prevaricator and a perjurer.
Perhaps the most contumacious
prevaricator was Keith Tucci.(160) In addition to giving false testimony about the blockades, Tucci even lied about whether he had spent several years working as a used car dealer.(161) Tucci was impeached by sworn testimony he had given in another case.(162)
Challenge the mistaken, the misinformed and the outright
prevaricator while acknowledging honest criticism.
But from another perspective, Blowsnake violates and defies that truthfulness even as he creates it, for by characterizing himself as an inveterate
prevaricator, he turns Radin's logic of authentication against itself, producing a self-defeating paradox that the anthropologist-editor, whether inadvertently or purposefully, never acknowledges.
Beckwourth confirmed Beckwourth's legend as a champion
prevaricator.
Nixon was peacemaker and
prevaricator. Bill Gates was "charming one minute, rude the next." As Manes and Andrews describe him, "Gates was hard to sum up in a sound bite, a Binary Bill of polar contradictions beginning with public shyness and private aggressiveness...that even longtime associates found difficult to reconcile." Whether Nietzsche would find people like Nixon and Gates "noble" would be predicated on the degree to which they had integrated their various impulses.