Definition:
Direct exposure of an adversary's faults.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "accusation"Examples:
- "I accuse General Billot of having held in his hands absolute proof of Dreyfus’s innocence and covering it up, and making himself guilty of this crime against mankind and justice, as a political expedient and a way for the compromised General Staff to save face. . . .
(Emile Zola, "J'Accuse," January 13, 1898) - "The average American judge, as everyone knows, is a mere rabbinical automation, with no more give and take in his mind than you will find in the mind of a terrier watching a rathole."
(H. L. Mencken, "Mr. Justice Holmes") - "You people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. . . . Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome, god-damned force in the whole godless world . . . We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds--we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!"
(Peter Finch as Howard Beale in Network, 1976)
Also Known As: accusatio
