OUTRIGHT BARBAROUS: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy
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(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
– George Orwell: “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
“Violent language as a manner of speech amongst right-wing pundits reached a crescendo in the days leading up to the 2006 midterm elections. I remember flipping through TV channels one day, attempting to avoid pundits’ violent rhetoric. But such language was everywhere. Anne Coulter joked about ‘nuking’ Iran, Bill O’Reilly talked about the ‘war on Christmas,’ Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs spoke of the ‘invasion’ and ‘conquest’ of America by immigrants. I even came across a discussion of the ‘war against the war,’ in which an anti-war protest was discussed as if it was a war.”
–Jeffrey Feldman, author of Outright Barbarous
NEW YEARS DAY 2004
The word we get now is Wow!
Orwell was only off by twenty years,
Twin towers was only off by a nine
and two ones. Happy New Year to you,
lucky duck, literate survivor and imbiber
of print. Plato, please! O say can’t you see
democracy for what it used to be?
Unjustified, dawn hangs around the corner.
What can dawn mean?
– Al Young
