Redefine and conquer

Earlier this week, the newspaper ran a story on the Georgia-Florida game. According to the story the networks, CBS and ESPN, have forbidden their commentators to use the term “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” during the broadcast. The reason being, that the two university presidents “want to do away with the game’s reputation as a drunkfest for tailgaters”.

Let me get this straight, if we abstain from referring to the game as a cocktail party, then suddenly no one will drink? Yeah, that makes sense. While we’re at it, why don’t we just refer to colleges as “convents”, then we can stop the drinking on campus as well.

What makes this dangerous is that it is the climate in the country. The university president’s didn’t come up with this out of the blue; they take it from the leadership of the nation, the Bush administration.

They are the masters of “new-speak”; re-defining an issue to lessen the impact on the public. That’s why the media refers to the civil war in Iraq as “sectarian-violence”.

The problem with re-defining an issue is that regardless of what you call something, it doesn’t affect the reality of it. Giving euphemistic titles to tough issues is just a way to avoid dealing with them, which is quickly becoming Americas’ favorite pastime.

In the financial vernacular “re-stating earnings” is a way to gloss over a loss. In housing prices don’t drop, they “correct.” In the economy, negative growth becomes a “rough-patch”.

Maybe if melanomas were called age spots, they wouldn’t be cancer. Anybody can see the idiocy of such a notion. Pretending that cancer isn’t cancer only guarantees that it will become worse. It’s the same with everything else.