One would think someone with such a self-generated sense of gravitas as CNN's Aaron Brown would have a better grasp of the English language. Unfortunately, he can be quite amateurish. On a 23 August 2005 broadcast of CNN Newsnight, in reference to the Pentagon's mistaken report of Pat Tillman's death, in which they stated he was killed by Taliban insurgents, Brown said that the Army was "gilding the lily". Brown's style of news delivery is defined by its grandiloquence and dramatic pauses, redolent of an undergraduate reading an essay in a university tutorial. However, someone at the dizzying heights of CNN journalism should have a grasp of English colloquialisms.
The CNN transcript refers to "guilding the lily". The phrase is "gilding the lily" as in layering gold on a lily. The expression is a condensation of Shakespeare's metaphor in King John: "To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ... is wasteful and ridiculous excess." It means, to adorn unnecessarily something already beautiful--i.e., you wouldn't need to add gold to a beautiful lily.
It was an inappropriate use of the phrase, as the US Army did not gild the lily : Pat Tillman's death was not a lily, not a beautiful thing. It was not an already beautiful thing which had been adorned. If Brown were trying to say the Army hid an awful fact or glossed over the truth, he should just say so. His pretentious narration at CNN is not something one would expect at the national level.
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BROWN: Since it was learned that former pro football star Pat Tillman died not from enemy guns in Afghanistan but friendly fire, the Army has denied it ever tried to mislead anyone, the country or Mr. Tillman's family. And from where we sit, no matter the circumstances of his death, the fact that Mr. Tillman gave up millions to join the Army after 9/11 made him a hero by any measure. There was no reason to guild the lily, which is exactly what the Army is suspected of doing by Mr. Tillman's family. They just want the truth. And they want anyone who tried to hide the truth punished. So another investigation has been launched. Here's CNN's David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
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