Monday, January 31, 2005
More Orwellian Word Games from the Privatization Crowd
Back when the Cato Institute, having seen the focus-group results, decided to pull a Stalin and banish the word "privatization" to an Orwellian right-wing hell for politically incorrect language, "choice" was the substitute they tried to foist on us. Just as Stalin ordered all evidence of the existence of certain out-of-favor (or liquidated) commissars to be removed -- even down to airbrushing them out of photos -- the neo-Stalinist privatizers went to great lengths to do the same to the word "privatization". Why? So they could try to keep selling the concept of privatization, while fooling everyone into thinking they weren't.
It turned out that "choice" didn't work, so later, they came up with "private accounts."
Just last month, they invented "personal accounts" -- and "private accounts" has now joined "privatization" in the Nacht und Nebel. The press corps, like good little Winston Smiths, followed the dictates of their neo-Stalinist zampolit minders, and overnight "personal accounts" became the politically correct term.
But not for long!
Josh Marshall gives us this Washington Post article by Mike Allen wherein it is noted that the new politically-correct word, soon to be rolled out in the wake of the ideological-purity meeting congressional Republican retreat in West Virginia, is "personalization".
The news was allegedly supposed to be confidential, but it's obvious to me that the Republicans leaked it to the press so that they'd have a head start in slavishly air-brushing "personal accounts" out of their prose.
More blogs about politics.
