It’s easy, if you know how to play with words, to say something in such a way that you tell your reader what to think. I tried to explain how this works in this reply to GenX on my page about my atheism. Authors aren’t the only ones who do this. Bloggers make an international sport out of using flame words to make it look as if something is burning when it’s not. Consider, for instance: “In schools, children will be indoctrinated by the homosexual agenda in a blatant attack on family values” to “Children will be required to attend lessons on tolerance of homosexuality with the aim of addressing the bullying problem in schools”.
Something that irritates the living daylights out of me is when journalists use mocking language to belittle other people just because they’re famous. It’s the same principle, but its sole aim is to cut others down, more often than not for no reason at all. A particular peeve for me is when they combine a couple’s names to refer to them together. They first did it with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Remember Bennifer?
The next target was Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Come to think of it, I haven’t read the Frankensteinian monster-word ‘Brangelina’ recently, but that may just be because I try to avoid reading trash.
To me, doing something like that is so demeaning. What are you trying to say? Do you hate the couple for loving each other? Do you feel the fact that they date diminishes all their individual accomplishments and justifies you throwing all respect for them out the window?
The Brad and Angelina thing especially vexes me. I’ve read a lot of jokes about the fact that they’ve adopted children. I’ve read nothing about how two very rich people took three children who would otherwise likely have lived their lives in poverty, and gave them a life many others can only dream of. Yes, an argument can be made against the fashion among celebrities to adopt babies from poor countries, but surely you can also make space in your mind for the possibility that this woman sat down and thought: I have so much. How can I give back?
And even if they adopt the child and leave it to a nanny once the spotlight has moved to the next story, is that not still better than the child growing up malnourished and uneducated?
People who sink to the depths of getting cheap laughs from squashing couples’ names together like that are journalasses. I really wanted to strike out the ‘es’ and put ‘holes’ in there instead, but I’m trying to stop swearing.
Someone give me a lollipop.
