It depends on what the meaning of "isn't" is.

I didn't have the patience to slog through that long article at Vox purporting to answer the question whether Tony Soprano died in the final episode of "The Sopranos," which ends with a cut to black as Tony and his wife and son are sitting around a restaurant table listening to "Don't Stop Believin'" as mysterious doings have been making us feel that we're about to see some carnage.

I blogged the end of the series at the time, in 2007, and I never got sucked into the confusion:

Soooo... I assumed they were all killed and the blackout was just to spare us from seeing it. But over on Television Without Pity, everyone's all confused, saying what happened, curse you David Chase, and I thought my cable went out.

Then, considering the "Don't Stop Believin'" lyric "It goes on and on and on and on," I added: "maybe they do go on and on and on. Or maybe there's going to be a 'Sopranos' movie."

And certainly — I'm adding this now — people would go on and on talking about it, even after James Gandofini died (in 2013), and there's not going to be a movie or some more episodes. It's not like we want more without Tony (though the show did find a way to get on without Livia, when the actress Nancy Marchand died after Season 1).

But I'm catching up on the Vox article this morning by reading Dave Itzkoff's short piece in The New York Times: "David Chase Says Remarks About ‘Sopranos’ Finale Were Misconstrued."

Speaking of cuts and Chase, Itzkoff cuts to the chase: The author of the Vox piece, "Martha P. Nochimson, an author, journalist and professor... when... she directly asked Mr. Chase if Tony was dead." Chase's answer was, in it's entirety, "No he isn’t."
Chase has responded to the Vox article, saying: "To simply quote David as saying, ‘Tony Soprano is not dead,' is inaccurate.... There is a much larger context for that statement and as such, it is not true." So.... Chase would like us to keep thinking about the great old show, keep talking about it, which is fine and an always-easily-understood explanation for the ending.

But here's the reason for my Bill-Clinton-invoking post title. Itzkoff paraphrases the question to which Chase answers "No he isn't." But the question wasn't "was" Tony dead at the end of "The Sopranos." It was (as quoted in Vox): "is Tony dead." Nochimson makes much of the brevity of Chase's answer, but that's why a precise quotation of the question is so important.

On a very simple, literal level, we've all always known that at the end of the Sopranos, Tony isn't dead. The last time we see him he is alive. The question we mean to ask is: What happened right after that? And, to be thuddingly concrete, nothing happened.

Nothing?! You mean the nothingness that is The Nothing?! Death?

Oh, you can do that if you want, and Chase still wants you to do that, but all I'm saying is: It depends on what the meaning of "isn't" is.

Let's remember what Bill Clinton said to justify (under oath) his statement that "there's nothing going on between" him and Monica Lewinsky:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

Short answers can be cagey, and if you don't follow up with more questions, you need to pay close attention to the question that got the brusque reply. Sometimes a questioner is too satisfied with the answer she got and runs with it. To follow up is to lose the energy that made you feel you got your answer, but there might have been something in your question that wrecked the significance of the answer.

That doesn't mean people will give the questioner-answerer the leeway he cagily preserved for himself in his own mind.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" sounds ludicrous to most people, despite its technical accuracy. Most of us think: This was a man who sought to deceive us and now seems to be pleased with his own powers of deception.

But David Chase is not the President of the United States. He's an artist and he trades in ambiguities and endless permutations of meaning. If he can tantalize us once again about a TV show that ended 7 years ago, good for him.