Weasel Words

How Did Hunger Become Food Insecurity?

By Joan Opyr, 11-16-06

Yesterday, I woke up with a wicked sore throat, and so I went to see the doctor. The nurse asked me how long my throat had ached, whether or not my ears hurt, if I had a runny nose, and if I'd been coughing. I watched over her shoulder as she typed my answers into the office computer. Somehow, "No, I haven't been coughing" became "Patient denies coughing." I found this both funny and mildly irritating. Patient denies coughing implies patient is forgetful; patient is confused; patient is a big fat liar. Do you mean coughing or hacking? What about rasping? Is coughing the same as violently expelling air past one's vocal chords with a phlegmish sort of hyugh sound? I guess it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Honestly, why would I, the patient, deny coughing? What's in it for me? I wasn't coughing. I am still not coughing. Do people routinely lie about coughing? Is coughing the new adultery? Sure, I hate the foul taste of Robitussin, but I've been known to drink it in a pinch. I am not a cough syrup wimp.

I thought about this "denies coughing" business as I read The Washington Post yesterday. It would seem that the Bush Administration has redefined hunger as "low food security." The words have a real and technical use. Extension agents use "low food security" to describe people who don't know if they're going to be able to afford both food and rent. Low food security can lead to hunger, but it's not the same as hunger. Conflating the two is a nasty political trick. If you'll forgive the pun, it's a way of making starvation seem palatable. The news that 35 million Americans are going hungry sounds so much better when we take terms like low food security and turn them into weasel words.

But why stop with hunger? You and I might think that Iraqi Shiites killing Iraqi Sunnis and Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shiites means that that country has slipped into civil war. But what if we don't call it a civil war? What if we call it sectarian strife? Civil war is scary. Back in the 1860s we had a civil war here in the United States and even now, some 140-odd years later, the national psyche still hasn't fully recovered. But what if the North and the South had only experienced some sectarian strife? Or, better yet, a bit of regional strife? Forget the carnage at Gettysburg and Bull Run. Forget that Gone With the Wind image of Sherman burning Atlanta. Don't think war; think strife. Think name calling, rock throwing, and improvised exlosive devices. Nothing to get worked up about. Nothing we can't handle.

Professionals of all stripes speak in code: doctors, lawyers, engineers, and those bossy, smug geeks at the computer store. Each has a specialized jargon that lifts them above and beyond the people they serve. The patient says she's not coughing? No. The patient denies coughing. I'm fairly certain I know whether or not I'm hacking my lungs out, but sitting on that shiny white paper in the doctor's office, I'm not really in charge. I'm a client. If I were left to my own devices -- if I felt as if I really did know something about my own health and well-being -- I resent that sixty-eight dollar charge for the news that I've got a virus and there's nothing the doctor can do. I did learn a neat trick about gargling with children's liquid Ibuprofen to numb the pain, but I probably could have Googled that for nothing.

[Note: I like my doctor. I like my doctor's nurse, too. And if we had socialized medicine, I wouldn't be paying sixty-eight bucks for a simple office visit, and thus I wouldn't be as cross as two sticks on top of having this blasted sore throat. But that's another story.]

I hate weasel words. I hate shysters and spin doctors and people who duck and dodge and evade. My paternal grandmother cleaned houses. She scrubbed rich peoples' toilets and bathtubs; she sewed their clothes and hemmed their curtains, washed their sheets and made their beds. She did her work well, and she did it with pride. My grandmother was a cleaning lady. She was not self-employed, she was not an entrepreneur, and she was not a household engineer. My grandmother wasn't ashamed of the work she did, and I'm not ashamed of it either. The only thing that bothers me about my grandmother's work is that there were (and are) people who are too rich, too busy, and too important to clean their own toilets. Perhaps it's a class issue, but I can't imagine hiring another human being to scrub the crap out of my toilet. My crap; my job.

On November 7th, an election night that was otherwise a joy to me, it was dispiriting to watch clueless pundit after clueless pundit attempting to spin the Democrats' historic wins in the House and Senate as a victory for conservatism, or a return to bipartisanship, or, my favorite, not really a Democratic win at all but a Republican loss. Please. And I suppose the Red Sox didn't win the 2004 World Series, either. They just laid to rest The Curse of the Bambino.

Spin is not reality. CIvil war is not sectarian strife. Hunger is not low food security. And, by God, I am not coughing!

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