I just finished Jeffrey Toobin's article on Rudy Giuliani (Sept. 10).
Why doesn't Toobin call a lie a lie instead of a bloody falsehood?
Have we already forgotten Giuliani's dictum, "Truth is not Truth"?
Lie and falsehood are not synonymous. One implies intent to deceive; the other means making a false statement, but doesn't imply intent.
Sure, we can all assume that Giuliani knows he is lying. But one guess of why Toobin wrote it that way is that accusing someone of lying is on thinner legal ice, inviting a potential LIEbel suit.
And/or, "lie" is a hot-button word, subtly charged with accusation and outrage. Falsehood is a more neutral term. And when he uses it to describe a guy with decades of legal and political experience who is also a close friend of Donald Trump's and who frequently says things that are provably untrue and sometimes inadvertently contradict even Trump's statements, Toobin probably figures he can trust
New Yorker readers to understand what that means. He doesn't want or need to convey potentially partisan outrage; he wants to convey the straight facts and let readers muster their own partisan outrage.