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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
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Wednesday, July 14, 2004The War on TerraThe New York Times ran an article in the Week in Review section of its Sunday edition on the 11th by Stanford linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, regarding the words "terrorism" and "terror." This is the kind of semantic investigation that those of you who read this blog regularly know that I'm fully in favor of. The piece itself is relatively insightful but stays away from the political implications of the fact that the "war on terror" has largely replaced the "war on terrorism" in the mainstream media. In other words, it's milquetoast, which I guess shouldn't be too surprising, considering Nunberg is, according to his blurb, a regular contributor to NPR's "Fresh Air," the Let's-not-offend-those-whom-we're-causing-to-fall-sleep program. Here's the one statement I really take issue with: "And the shift from 'terrorism' to 'terror' has been equally dramatic in major newspapers, according to a search of several databases. Broad linguistic shifts like those usually owe less to conscious decisions by editors or speechwriters than to often unnoticed changes in the way people perceive their world." Rather than investigate why this particular "terrorism">"terror" linguistic shift has occurred, Nunberg let's that generalization stand. And it's just Wrong. This shift, as Nunberg himself notes, has occurred since Sept. 11th but mostly in the past year or so. I'm supposed to believe that, in that year, there has been a broad and recognizable shift -- in our huge nation of 290 million and innumerable sub-cultures --in how people view the world that the media and politicians are merely picking up on? This is another example of the Heisenberg Media Principle, for one thing. If there's been a shift in how people feel about the world, i.e. people are feeling more terrified, don't you think it might have something to do with Tom Ridge and his terror alerts, just to cite one example? But there's no need to speculate here, because it's very clear what has happened. The shift started within the Bush administration and it was, in fact, very much a "conscious decision" to start calling the campaign against terrorism "the war on terror," a decision that I don't really need to spell out here, but has to do with the political advantages of a frightened population and the president's own predilection to see things in terms of black and white, good and evil, freedom and terror. The shift was picked up by the right-wing media, from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal, who are of course distributed the White House's talking points on all issues, domestic and international. That much is easy. The rest of it is a little snakier. Clearly, I grant you that it is easier to say "the war on terror" than it is to say "the war on terrorism." It's shorter, pithier, simpler to say and write. And for those who are lazy or unconcerned about these kinds of semantic distinctions, it may have been an unconscious decision to make this shift. I'm thinking about outlets like CNN and Newsweek and USA Today that cater more than anything to the American consumer, as opposed to the American reader, the American thinker, the political junkie, etc. Now everyone is using the "war on terror," including the New York Times and Salon. I think that one factor you cannot overlook here is the Fox-ization of American news. You cannot separate a shift like this from the perception of the liberal media bias. Papers like the Times are constantly challenged to appear just as objective (patriotic) as their right-wing counterparts. The biggest failing has been by the Democrats, however, who are constantly snowed into adopting the linguistic framework that the right wing sets up. If I were a Democratic leader, I would make a point of sticking with the "war on terrorism" in order to make that distinction between how the GOP wants America to see the world and how I want America to view the world. When you adopt the opposition's terms of debate, you have already lost the battle, whether it's "partial-birth abortion" or "climate change." Like usual, I would say the Democrats owe their failing in this regard to the usual culprits: Stupidity, Cowardice and Laziness. In conclusion, this linguistic shift may have been driven by relatively unconscious decisions by editors and their ilk once the tipping point was reached, but there can be no doubt how the movement started or why it started or where it started -- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. .: posted by hornswaggler 1:35 PM| |
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