By Manila Ryce
Published Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008, 6:07 am
Filed under: Videos: Political, Personal Posts, Society/Culture, Videos, US Politics
Despite the fact that we have the right to freedom of speech, if you live in the West you know the two things you’re not supposed to talk about are politics and religion. You’ll undoubtedly become a social pariah if you make the mistake of saying anything intellectually taxing in public. Strict authoritarian laws are not necessary here. We do a damn good job of censoring ourselves, and institutions like Lake Superior State University are more than happy to remind us of that mental ball gag on a regular basis.
Reuters reports:
A “surge” of overused words and phrases formed a “perfect storm” of “post-9/11″ cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university’s annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.
Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan’s Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics…
…Such phrases as “post 9/11″ and “surge” have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything.
“Waterboarding” was also decidedly banned from 2008. Not the practice of course, just the word. How about this: You stop doing it and we’ll stop discussing it.
I can’t help but question why an institution of higher education and research would place restrictions on public discourse concerning aspects of 9/11, the war, and torture . The list reminds me a bit of the Seven Dirty Words You Can’t say on Television. However, nowadays it’s more improper to talk politics than to say “shit”. You’ll actually hear most of the words in Carlin’s routine on television before you’ll ever hear that the war was based on lies, that our presence is immoral regardless of military success or failure, or that our troops are neither bringing nor defending democracy.
5 Responses to “Self-Censorship: Politics Banned from Watercooler in 2008”
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[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt […]
01/2/08 at 1:11 pm
Are they trying to stop discussion or are they trying to get people to actually understand what they are saying? What I mean is a lot of people like to use terms and labels without thinking at all. Look at any news media; they say a lot of words without saying anything at all…
01/2/08 at 4:13 pm
Well Diablo, here’s the entire explanation they gave for banning waterboarding: “Let’s banish ‘waterboarding’ to the beach, where it belongs with boogie boards and surfboards.”
The other explanations are equally hollow. It doesn’t seem like they have any intention to educate with this list. I’ve criticized the use of the term “post-911″ before, but with more reason that it’s “probably used more, than AD, BC, or Y2K, time references”. The key qualifier seems to be frequency of use, rather than misuse.
01/2/08 at 4:24 pm
Still, simply banning words doesn’t mean there aren’t easy ways continue the discussion. If anything it encourage people to continue the discussions, sort of like China trying to control access to blogs over the internet.
01/2/08 at 4:28 pm
@Diablo
There will always be conversation, but the corporate news agencies and your average Joe will take this list seriously. This list will more often than not, stifle political discourse as people fear being the guy who ruins the party by bringing up one of these topics. There is a big difference between China’s state-censorship and our self-imposed censorship. Like the Russians, the Chinese know there is information their government wants to keep from them. Here, most people are under the illusion that we actually have a free press more interested in informing the masses than controlling them. We are easily led because we think we’re free.
01/2/08 at 11:09 pm