It’s pretty scary when I find myself channeling the 1963 George Wallace, the pre-Arthur Bremer George Wallace, if only in terms of meter. But obfuscation is today’s word and it is more ubiquitous than peanut butter.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary to obfuscate is to make something obscure, or to confuse. And we are obfuscating to beat the band these days. Take death. That’s a pretty simple concept. It’s binomial. Either you’re alive or you’re dead. You can have a near death experience, go toward the light and all of that but if the rest of us get to hear about it then you weren’t dead. Not yet anyway.
Ever notice how few people can bring themselves to say, Aunt Millie died last night?” You might hear, “we lost Aunt Millie last night.” To which I always want to respond, “did you find her this morning?” I don’t do that but I am tempted and the funny thing about me and temptation is that I rarely resist it indefinitely.
Another way we often put it is to say “Aunt Millie passed away last night.” If Aunt Millie was 93 and died in her sleep that’s probably appropriate but if Millie was 31 and was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan then we’re not being very honest with ourselves if we say she “passed away” or sometimes simply “passed.” But death is a tough thing to have to deal with and for all my moaning about it I can understand why people want to pad the edges of it either for themselves or for someone else. But we’ve taken this way too far.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum was on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” a while ago and coined the term, “National Euphemism Offensive” which he of course attributed to the Obama Administration. I blame the attribution on frustration borne of years of trying to craft intelligent, precisely worded speeches and having to turn them over to President Bush. It must be like leaving your beautiful children in the care of your loopy vegan sister in law who still has the John Kerry bumper sticker on her Geo Prism.
Frum is right of course in the concept, just late to the party blaming it on Obama’s people. I noticed it several years ago when people stopped having “problems.” Ever notice that? Nobody has a “problem” anymore, they have an “issue.” To me they’re different. A problem is something that ought to be dealt with, and one would hope, solved. An issue is just something you probably ought to be aware of. I’m told that in Corporate America they don’t even have “issues” they have “challenges,” which I’m sure they deal with “aggressively and in a forthright manner.”
Driving along route 495 near Lowell recently I saw a sign for the “Gallagher Intermodal Transit Terminal.” How’s that for a mouthful to say parking lot, bus stop and train station? Well at least it has appropriate signage. Instead of simply accurate signs.
When I worked at WNBP, which was then a daytime radio station in Newburyport, Massachusetts, we had three full-time, on air employees. The Program Director, the Operations Manager and the News Director. There could have been some pretty ugly turf wars there let me tell you. Talk about a cat fight in the English Department - a situation where the lesser the stakes the more bitter the feud.
How about “Healthcare System?” Do you see a system anywhere? Me neither. I don’t see much healthcare either. I might be able to make a case that we have an insurance system designed to systematically exclude anyone who costs the insurance companies money but that’s another “issue” entirely.
It’s not just the governmental bureaucratese or the psychobabble leaching into the groundwater of our speech, this stuff is everywhere.
From the man who “utilizes” something he could just “use,” to the weather forecaster I saw on WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., referring to “tornadic activity” when he meant there were tornadoes. From the overhyped “very special television event” that’s just the latest installment in a series that produces, what is it these days, 20 shows a year to the next time the Red Sox play the Yankees and it’s hyped as “The Greatest Rivalry in Sports.” Well, I’m thinking that when India plays Pakistan in, say, cricket that may be the greatest rivalry in sports. I mean those people hate the sight of each other AND (unlike most Yankee and Red Sox fans) they have nuclear weapons!
We need to be clear, we need to be accurate and we need to be calm. There are exceptions to every rule. Which is why I’m semi-retired, doing a bit of free-lancing and some consulting instead of simply middle aged and mostly out of work.
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