i tried to remember
if i remembered her
and i didn't:
i didn't remember remembering her;
i remembered not remembering her.
i didn't remember her.
i didn't try to remember remembering her;
i didn't try to remember her.
i didn't try.
i tried to remember
if i recognized her
and i didn't:
i didn't recognize her.
i didn't remember if i recognized her.
i didn't try.
i may have recognized her, once,
but i didn't remember recognizing her when i tried,
and i neither remember recognizing her, nor recognize her, now.
but i remember i tried.
i didn't try.
i remembered that i didn't recognize her,
(but, now, i have forgotten
and she looks kind of familiar)
i tried to remember not recognizing her and i didn't:
i didn't recognize her;
i didn't remember not recognizing her;
i recognized her, but didn't remember it;
i recognized her, but didn't try to remember it;
i recognized her, but didn't remember why;
i didn't try to remember her -
i didn't try to recognize her -
i tried not to remember her and
i tried not to recognize her,
but i did. i do.
i recognize her now, from the tv.
and now i remember
i thought i recognized her (but i didn't)
because she reminded me
of some other ladies i tried
and tried not to remember when i didn't.
i didn't try: i remember
we reached confidential settlements.
1. these statements are no denial. in fact, they are semantically worthless.
2. assuming that they are intended as a denial (which is probably a little naive in a contemporary presidential campaign), they seem to suggest the dual statements "I do not remember that woman; I do not recognize that woman," which are, themselves, a shade redundant insofar as recognition is an activity already involving the activity of memory (although scenarios in which something is remembered-but-not-recognized, or recognized-but-not-remembered, can easily be imagined).
3. acquiescing to the assertion that he neither remembers nor recognizes that woman, the candidate has undermined his ability to deny the act of which he is accused: if his memory is so poor, how can he be relied upon to report on what he did or did not do in the past?
4. i view it in a somewhat more sinister light: it is not a denial but a lateral move, leaving open the possibility: if you habitually made clumsy passes at as many women for as many years as i have, you might not remember each of them, either. i may have groped this one, but i can say with certainty that i neither remember nor recognize her.
5. of course, many widely-respected politicians and statesmen have asserted no memory of things that they had in fact suggested, designed, cultivated, enacted and/or recorded themselves doing (and, in many cases, things for having done and denied which we now officially celebrate their adroit realpolitik) when it was politically expedient for them to not recall. (naturally, dear reader, despite his recent, record, lack of recall, we do not include that stooge gonzales among such statesmen . . . yet. grrrr.) so this gratuitous exhibit of his keen ability to not recognize or remember events others found to be significant, at the time and some years later, of his ability to seem to deny without doing so (his deniability), at this early stage in his run, may work to the candidate's political credit.
6. it is the talking heads who construe these non-statements as a denial (and then report as a news item the fabricated "he said/she said" debate story, when in fact he has said nothing coherent), instead of calling him on his statements' mealy, meaningless obfuscation, who are failing, ever and again, to do it right.