Alex, the African grey parrot whose intelligence and communication skills were considered by his trainer, animal psychologist and Brandeis University adjunct associate professor Irene Pepperberg, to be on a par with that of a 5-year-old child, did not suffer fools. When his parrot colleagues failed to measure up to his language standards, Alex would admonish them, “Say better.” In celebration of the do-it-right spirit of Alex, who died in 2007 at the age of 31, here are some suggestions on remarks that could have been expressed more clearly: -Regarding the Affordable Care Act, President Obama said on Nov. 14, “We chose a path that was the least disruptive to try to finally make sure that health care is treated in this country like it is in every other advanced country, that it’s not some privilege that just a certain portion of people can have.” The phrase at issue here is “least disruptive.” Obamacare has been anything but.

-For years, seven-time Tour de France title-winning cyclist Lance Armstrong denied rumors that he was using performance-enhancing drugs. Then, after being stripped of his titles and banned from racing professionally in late 2012, he admitted in January 2013 that the doping rumors were true. Armstrong’s admission caused great personal suffering, he announced, a message that was not well received by an unsympathetic public and his once-loyal supporters, who were suffering as well -from being treated like chumps.

Here’s what Armstrong told the BBC in November: “It’s been real tough. I’ve paid a high price in terms of my standing within the sport, my reputation, [and] certainly financially because the lawsuits have continued to pile up. I have experienced massive personal loss [and] massive loss of wealth, while others have truly capitalized on this story.”

-In the case of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, it’s not only his words, but his body language, that’s sending the wrong message. Rodriguez continues to insist he’s innocent of Major League Baseball’s allegations he used performance-enhancing drugs from 2010 to 2012, which got him a 211-game suspension in August. Body language expert Susan Constantine, who watched a video of Rodriguez’s interview with WFAN radio host Mike Francesa on Nov. 20, isn’t buying his denials. “The real important part in all this is that, with a high level of certainty, he was lying,” said Constantine, author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Body Language and a cable news contributor. “He is covering up at least some of the things that he’s being accused of.”

-The National Security Agency isn’t doing very well at expressing itself, and neither are those who allegedly came to its defense in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the NSA surveillance program that includes bulk collection of all American telephone records. The agency “takes significant care to prevent any abuses and that there is a substantial oversight system in place,” according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Aug. 23. Maybe so, but that doesn’t explain why Snowden knows as much as he knows about the agency. And besides, the horse is already out of the barn, so it’s a bit late to slam the barn door shut.

-Here’s an earlier NSA say-better example, a head-scratching exchange between Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and James Clapper, director of national intelligence, during a March 12 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing:

Wyden: “So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper: “No, sir.”

Wyden: “It does not ?”

Clapper: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”

-U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) claimed a marathon personal best finish time of “under three (hours), high twos. I had a two hour and 50-something … I was fast when I was younger, yeah.” His actual time for completing the 26.2-mile run, verified by Runners World, was four hours, one minute and 25 seconds. “I literally thought that was my time,” he told Toledo News Now. “It was 22 years ago. You forget sorta these things.” So it seems.

-When is an advertised sale not a sale? When the advertiser has nothing to sell. The U.S. Department of Transportation fined Southwest Airlines $200,000 in July for violating the Department’s full-fare advertising rules and ordered the carrier to cease and desist from further violations. DOT’s Aviation Enforcement Office found that Southwest advertised one-way nonstop fares “for $100 or less” for travel on Feb. 14, but didn’t include a reasonable number of seats available in a significant number of city-pair markets in the fare sale. In addition,on Jan. 30, Southwest advertised $66 one-way fares from Dallas Love Field to Branson, Mo., between March 1 and March 21. However, there were no seats available at the sale fare on any day during the sale period.

-Who can forget celebrity chef Paula Deen’s “jokes” that got her fired from the Food Network? She didn’t do herself any favors in defending herself to the Today Show’s Matt Lauer on June 26: “Most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks … I didn’t make up the joke, I don’t know …They usually target, though, a group. Gays or straights, black, redneck … I can’t myself determine what offends another person.”

-Opposing forces often use percentages to make a point. But who’s got the right number? Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) stood on the floor of theU.S. Senate on April 8 and said, “If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” But, according to Planned Parenthood’s website, about three percent of Planned Parenthood’s work is related to abortion, performing roughly one out of every four American abortions yearly. You could look it up.

-Some statements are too clear for their own good. Denise Reynolds, budget officer for the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Advancement Division, sent an email on Feb. 6 to two administrators of the university’s deficit-plagued fundraising unit. It opened with “please delete after reading.” Reynolds said that the email had nothing to do with a disputed January meeting at which UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart was accused of directing officials to destroy and stop creating budget documents. One of the recipients of Reynolds’ email was John Diamond, former chief university spokesman. The other recipient was former associate vice chancellor Bruce Pontious.

Then there’s this classic, probably the most-repeated say-better statement of the year: “What difference, at this point, does it make?” said then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) at a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing on May 8 regarding the identity of those responsible for the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.

Back to Alex, whose admonitions to improve clarity in communication seem aimed at all the above. The parrot, according to his trainer, had a vocabulary of around 150 words and usually meant what he said (“I’m sorry,” “you wanna grape?”). But Alex occasionally used phrases without meaning them. And like many humans, he probably wasn’t all that sincere in his use of “I’m sorry” - he just understood an apology is sometimes the best route to getting what you want.

In an 2003 interview on the website Edge (edge.org), Pepperberg said, “I never claim that Alex has full-blown language; I never would. I’m not going to be able to put Alex on a T stand and have you interview him the way you interview me. But Alex has basic building blocks that are language-like behaviors-and also elements of phenomena like consciousness and awareness. Is Alex conscious? Personally, I believe so. Can I prove it? No. Does he have perceptual awareness? That I can definitely prove.”

We can only hope that the same can be said for Alex’s human counterparts-at least when it comes to expressing themselves.

Perspective, Pages 75 on 12/15/2013