sticks and stones: beaten up by words

The war of words is all about word warfare.

For the longest time, conservatives and Republicans have been working overtime to control the debate by controlling the language. Men like Frank Luntz, who moonlights as an unbiased commentator for NBC News (yeah, right) have given us such gems as renaming the Estate Tax the Death Tax. We’ve seen it at work in recent weeks as wiretapping has been replaced with terrorist surveillance. We’ve been beaten up by the term ‘liberal,” and bludgeoned by the idea that “Democrats don’t have a plan.”

The one that really pissed me off came from a talk radio debate over the South Dakota abortion ban. Caller after caller kept referring to “pre-born babies.”

Give me a break. If you have two kids and a third on the way, you don’t tell everyone you have three kids. Period. End of sentence.

If you’re pregnant on December 31, you still don’t qualify for an extra deduction for a dependant child. Try it and you're pre-audited.

And while we’re at it, you don’t walk into your local Denny’s and order two pre-born chickens sunny side up.
Virgin girls are not pre-fornicated.
Married people are not pre-divorced.
Babies are not pre-educated.
Living people are not pre-dead.
Baked beans are not pre-farted.
Oprah is not pre-deified.
Tom Cruise' unproduced movies are not pre-bombs.
The new Jenna Elfman series is not pre-cancelled.
Employees are not pre-fired.
Unemployed people are not pre-employed.
Homeless people are not pre-housed.

However, we can consider George W. Bush to be pre-impeached.

And we can consider Karl Rove and Dick Cheney pre-indicted.

And since all our communication is monitored as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and because I dare to criticize the Imperial Presidency, I can consider myself pre-busted.

More soon.