Particularly Irritating
When writing my piece yesterday on “The Liberal Mystery” I was reminded of a modern phenomenon that I find particularly irritating. I am referring to instances where a value laden adjective is co-opted as a proper name. The example at hand is, of course, the term “progressive” by which liberals now announce their fealty. How clever! Why wouldn’t everyone want to be (or vote for) a progressive? Would you rather be “retrogressive?”, “backward?”, “primitive?” OF COURSE NOT! You want to be “PROGRESSIVE”, don’t you? SURE you do! How clever, disingenuous, and very irritating!
And it’s not just political types and activists that are culpable. Another example is in the domain of insurance. A few years ago, a major insurance provider issued a policy that they called, slyly, “Smart Choice.” They did this, presumably, expecting that American insurance consumers would look at the policies available to them and exclaim: “Wow! This is easy! I better go with ‘Smart Choice’!” This, of course, is in contra-distinction to the implied, STUPID CHOICE, which NOBODY wants to make!
And this phenomenon is pervasive: there are smart cars, smart foods, smart phones. There’s even smart WATER! ” Only an oafish lout would choose otherwise!
And, there are more subtle cases as well. The Onion Magazine hit the nail on the head a number of years ago with a very funny satirical headline referring to a snack food called “Fun Yums”. The fictitious headline read as follows: “‘Fun Yums’ Outselling ‘Responsibility Yums'”! There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: they’re not just Yums – they’re FUN, which, of course, is what you are GUARANTEED TO HAVE when you eat them!
Enough, all ready! Corporate America and political activists everywhere, please listen up: just promote and sell your product or ideas honestly and leave the value judgements to us!