For Valerie Plame Wilson Pronouns Are a Minor Problem

Valerie Plame Wilson, the ill-fated CIA operative outed by Vice President Cheney, Carl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Robert Novak, in a most ill-mannered way, not to mention an allegedly illegal way, recently responded to an interviewer who asked her the importance of writing a book to explain her side in the matter:

"It's important to tell for we as citizens." Plame should have used the objective case pronoun us, as in "...for us citizens."

Again, it is difficult to edit yourself in the act of speaking, and most of us will think one thing without expressing it in its entirety. We might refer to such errors as an elliptical trap. Elliptical expressions indicate only a part of a thought, the remainder assumed to be understood in context.

Valerie Plame might have been thinking: "It's important to tell for we as citizens need to know all that occurs in the executive branch that might breach certain laws, and that certainly might do harm to a legitimate CIA agent performing her country's work in good faith."

It that is what agent Plame was thinking, we'd have to say she's probably right.

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