Pop goes the weasel words

May 27, 9:43 AMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

Previous Next

14 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Dallas Libertarian Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

(AP Photo)

---

Weasel word: "Interpret" 

"President Barack Obama named
federal appeals judge Sonia
Sotomayor as the nation's first
Hispanic Supreme Court justice on
Tuesday, praising her as 'an inspiring    
woman' with both the intellect and
compassion to interpret the
Constitution wisely." – aol.news 

Only modern "Living Document"
liberal Democrats and their kindred
Neocon Republican power hounds
would "interpret" rather than "apply"  
the Constitution.

If a politician uses a weasel word, are journalists required to use it blindly in their articles? If they’re directly quoting the weasel the answer is yes. But if they’re taking their ideologically correct cues from the weasel and using the spurious speechifying themselves, they become the weasel. 

Here are a few waffling weasel words that need popping. 

1. “Invested” 

“The Obama administration announced Thursday that it has invested $7.5 billion in GMAC, aiming to prop up the troubled lender and boost its ability to make loans to Chrysler dealers and customers.” – CNN 

Investment? Politicians don't "invest." Investors invest. Politicians politick. Political operatives pay off their principle providers of pelf from the public purse, thereby laundering the money through “legitimate” activities where it’s run through the rinse cycle before being folded and packed away in the politico’s campaign coffers. 

In this particular case, the “investment” is money stolen from citizens in the form of taxes and turned over to the bankers at GMAC (“the main source of financing for General Motors” – CNN) so people can buy cars which will keep GM afloat which will keep union workers working and paying dues to their union bosses who will keep funneling union money into the pockets of hard left liberal Democrats. 

It’s an investment for the Obamanables, not for us. In this money-laundering scheme the taxpayers get hung out to dry. 

2. “Abuse” 

“Drug czar Gil Kerlikowske says one of his top priorities is curtailing abuse of prescription drugs such as the addictive painkiller OxyContin.” – Tennessean 

No power-addicted drug warrior large or small can ever use the “drug” word minus the “abuse” word. There is no such thing in their intolerant, proscriptive worldview as “drug use” or “substance ingestion” or “prescription taking” or “alcohol consumption.” It’s always drug abuse, substance abuse, prescription abuse, alcohol abuse. In time we'll surely be hearing about Aspirin abuse and Pepto-Bismol abuse and tic tac abuse. 

This is word abuse. 

And put this in your crack pipe and smoke it. A Department of Health and Human Services survey in 2007 discovered that 75.3% of drug users (they actually said "users," not abusers) aged 18 and over were employed either full or part time. So why do we keep throwing perfectly employable people into prisons where we have to support them with our taxbucks? 

3. "We Report, You Decide" 

"For a network whose slogan is 'We Report, You Decide,' it would not make any sense if we didn't have an open forum for our fans." – foxnews.com

Fox news Channel will fairly and accurately report the full panoply of opinions of neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives, moderate conservatives, Christian Evangelical conservatives, compassionate conservatives, liberal conservatives, Republican Party conservatives and minimum government libertarian-leaning conservatives and you can decide which one is right. 

4. "Make sense of it all" 

"Our job is to let folks know what's going on and to make sense of it all." - Brian Williams, NBC Nightly News promo

Once upon a time, whether it ever actually happened or not, the journalistic ideal was to report the facts, period. The self-consciously pious mandarins of the Fourth Estate prided themselves on their objectivity and neutrality and moral detachment. So it's almost refreshing to hear a mainstream media outlet openly admitting that its goal is not only to tell us what they think we should be told but what they think we should think about what we're being told. 

Their tagline might as well be, "We Report and We Decide." 

5. "Dwindling energy reserves" 

"Russia raised the prospect of war in the Arctic yesterday as nations struggle for control of the world’s dwindling energy reserves." – Times Online

In this case the weasel words are used to crowd out the honest word. If allowed by media regurgitators, the correct phrase would be, "the world's dwindling access to energy reserves." 

A National Petroleum Council working document, "Global Access to Oil and Gas," spelled it out for us just two years ago. Note how the non-weasel word "access" keeps popping up: 

"For many reasons including the preservation of wildlife habitat or fragile ecosystems and public policies to further domestic economic and energy security goals, governments around the globe, including the United States, have reduced access to oil and natural gas resources." 

"Up to 97% of oil (20 BBbls) and 87% of natural gas (162 Tcf) resources beneath federal lands onshore in the United States have significant access restrictions." 

"Over 30 BBbls of oil and 134 Tcf of natural gas resources in offshore waters of North America (U.S. and Canada) are in moratoria areas inaccessible for leasing and development." 

So why are we being told there's a shortage problem rather than an access problem? Think political control. Think ideological control. Think cultural control and social control and mind control. 

Then ask yourself why big government power hounds lie to us about anything? And everything. And why they love weasel words so much? 

It's long past time to pop the weasely worldcrats.