Walk It Back?


Each year the Lake Superior State University puts out a tongue-in- cheek list of “banished words,” words that are so over used or abused that they should disappear from our daily speech. Sometimes they are those annoying “buzzwords” that find their way into speech like “selfie.” These words can also be those quirky, made up words that refer to the latest hot item in pop culture. Among the 2016 list of words and phrases that we don’t need is the phrase “walk it back.” It seems like every discussion about politics or public policy now comes with the caveat that someone needs to “walk it back,”- to change or qualify something that he or she has said.

Now it’s a fad (or maybe a new way to talk)- you can say anything that is less than true, something that has no facts to back it up, or something that is said only for its shock value- if you get caught or challenged all you have to do is “walk it back,”- qualify it, add a nuance, or just say “that’s what I said but it’s not what I meant. “Walking it back” is the new eraser- say it but if you get it wrong just walk it back and try to get it right the second time. This is not the way to improve communication- it is the way to lie or misinform but have a back-up plan if needed. The University is right- we don’t need the phrase in 2016, but we need the phenomenon even less. In a perfect world none of us would ever need to “walk back” anything we say- publicly or in private.

A Jewish spin- Avot D’Rebbe Natan says in the name of Ben Azzai: Choose your words carefully so you will not cause people to stumble, make a fence for your words.” To me that fence would be built of wisdom and truth. If you use those criteria you never need to “walk it back.” Sometimes silence is better than saying the wrong thing. It is now a trite sounding truth that words do matter. Once something is said you can’t really take it back. Today, in the age of the internet, that is truer than ever- once something is out there in cyberspace, it is there forever. The net has created “immortality” of a new kind. Whether true or false, right or wrong our words now flash across the globe in seconds and what we have said takes on a life of its own.
In 2016 try not to say anything that you will want to walk back. Choose your words carefully. If, as individuals, we adopt that policy just maybe we can banish “walk it back” from our vocabulary. How much better for us and for public discourse!

Reprinted from my article in the Los Angeles Jewish News