(de)lovely

For some reason, I have become obsessed with comparing the rhetoric of the various media outlets. I’ve cut back on my diet of junk movies, cut back on my deep navel gazing, and sit glued like a zombie at the visual and verbal barrage.

One of the latest verbal catastrophes today was hearing about “weaponizing” chemical agents. You see, it’s okay if you have a vat of noxious stuff—it’s only when you pour the cocktail into something you can throw that it becomes weaponized. I’m glad the reporter acted as a translator—I don’t understand military speak. And then there’s the matter of inert bombs.

An inert bomb? The commentator explained that it was a bomb casing filled with concrete that could be dropped on a building causing less collateral damage. My excellent girlfriend commented—“so, we’re throwing rocks at them huh?” I had visions of big defense contracts being doled out for high tech, laser guided, rocks. We’ve come a long way, baby.

But, this just doesn’t begin to compare with the (de) re mi of it all.

I heard yesterday that we were desaddamizing Iraq. That sounds dirty if you ask me.

But the real winner of the (de)struction of language was a coinage I’ve heard repeatedly from one general—We’re deconflicting the Iraqi people. So that’s what you use all those expensive munitions for, eh? This seems even more insidious than the Vietnam era policy of pacification— I suppose if you’re dead, you get pretty passive.

My media obsession has reminded me of Maxine Hong Kingston’s writing regarding the Chinese take on revenge:

The idioms for revenge are “report a crime” and “report to five families.” The reporting is the vengeance— not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words.