We are living in a time of softened language. This is called “euphemism,” but let us not get hung up on technical details.
People don’t die any more. They “pass.” Even mass murderers no longer “sin.” They just “made a mistake” and wish they hadn’t, since they got caught. Smutty films are now called “adult,” although every twelve-year-old knows that adults can be smutty sometimes. So there’s a certain logic here.
No one is short any longer. They are height-challenged. Civilian casualties in war are “collateral damage.” But my favorite example is a personal one I read about not long ago.
Brother A learns from Brother B that their mother is gravely ill. Brother A asks Brother B why he was so blunt with the news. “Why not,” he asked, “prepare me for such bad tidings by working up to them? Tell me, for instance, first that the cat is stuck on the roof,” whereupon Brother B says, “Our mother is stuck on the roof.”
Why make words hard when you can make them soft?
This is Tom McBride, and that’s my Perspective.
