unSpun by Brooks Jackson Page A

own a real machine gun since 1934 (except with an expensive and hard-to-obtain federal permit). In fact, all that the assault weapon law “banned” was the manufacture and import of certain
semiautomatic
weapons, which can’t be fired any faster than an ordinary pistol or rifle despite their military-style looks. The very term “assault weapon ban” gave a misleading impression.
    When Congress let the law expire in the midst of the 2004 presidential campaign, the misleading name was exploited for political benefit in a TV ad by the liberal political action committee MoveOn PAC. “This is an assault weapon. It can fire up to three hundred rounds a minute,” the narrator said, while a fully automatic AK-47 appeared on screen. “In the hands of terrorists it could kill hundreds.” Those words were punctuated by the sound of a rapid burst of machine-gun fire. “John Kerry, a sportsman and a hunter, would keep them illegal.”
    Technically, those words were true: Kerry wasn’t proposing to repeal the 1934 law banning machine guns. But neither was Bush. Nevertheless, MoveOn PAC’s ad continued: “George Bush will let the assault weapon ban expire. George Bush says he’s making America safer. Who does he think he’s kidding?” The totality of MoveOn’s ad conveyed the utterly false message that Bush was about to approve the sale of real, fully automatic assault weapons that could “kill hundreds” in the hands of terrorists.
    Much of the public was taken in by the ad. Language does our thinking for us, and people had been fooled in the first place by the statute’s misleading name. After the election, the National Annenberg Election Survey asked respondents to evaluate the truthfulness of this statement: “The assault weapons ban outlawed automatic and semiautomatic weapons.” The result: 57 percent found the statement to be either “very truthful” or “somewhat truthful,” while only 28 percent said it was either “not too truthful” or “not truthful at all.” By a margin of two to one, those who expressed an opinion had the wrong idea.
    Even a simple term like “large” becomes misleading in the hands of the California Olive Industry. “California Ripe Olives grow in a variety of sizes: small, medium, large, extra large, jumbo, colossal and super colossal,” the industry website informs us. Of the seven sizes, “large” is actually the third smallest. This sort of silliness seems to be escalating. The Starbucks Corporation doesn’t even use the term “large.” The smallest size on the menu is a “Tall” coffee (twelve ounces); the next size up is a “Grande” (sixteen ounces) and the largest size Starbucks calls “Venti” (twenty ounces).
    Such puffery is so common that much of the time we aren’t fooled, and can even make fun of it. When Seattle’s Best coffee shops came up with a new name for their largest coffee, the humorist Dave Barry advised: “Listen, people: You should never, ever have to utter the words ‘Grande Supremo’ unless you are addressing a tribal warlord who is holding you captive and threatening to burn you at the stake. JUST SAY YOU WANT A LARGE COFFEE, PEOPLE.” We think that’s good advice.
    Some names really can deceive, however, unless we keep our guard up. The makers of Smoke Away, a dietary supplement that purportedly helps people stop smoking in a week or less, paid $1.3 million in 2005 to settle a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission, which said there was no reasonable basis for the product’s claim. Also in 2005 the FTC announced more than $1 million in settlements against marketers of dietary or herbal supplements misleadingly named Lung Support Formula (which supposedly cured asthma and emphysema), Antibetic Pancreas Tonic (claimed to cure diabetes), and Testerex (supposedly