- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
One of my own pet peeves along this line is an escalation of language, as in news stories. No one commits murders, they commit brutal murders. It's as if the word murder doesn't convey enough evil or tragedy on its own. Butif someone does something even more horrible, they no longer have a way to express that it is more savage than the murders they describe at other times.
That's the most obvious example, but the same thing happens in other ways. And while I imagine this puts me in the running for curmudgeon of the year, I think the way that use of language desensitizes us is important.
