Yesterday I noticed a headline on the sidebar of some news site (I forget which one) that read "Fewer Hungry People in Amreica." My reaction was to sigh and move on, because I just knew that somehow "fewer" would turn out to be the result of stat juking or a terminology shift or some other thing that did not actually add up to more food on more tables. Reading this does not surprise me, but it makes me sad. Such a casual dismissal of mainstream news should be a sign of cynicism, not realism.

I understand that the other Bush plan is to send fishing poles, bait and an instruction booklet to those labled low food security.

makes me hungry, in the same way Low National Security makes me nauseous. Pass the tomato ketchup as I haven't had my red vegetable yet today. Bush's nihilism has permeated every level of his misguided administration. Shame on these thugs. Bush and his Agricultural Department need to be placed into a room with no food until they feel what it's like to have "low food security". What a crock of shit.

... and like Collateral Damage and Homeland Security.

If you explain to these people that they sound like Big Brother, they just stare back, puzzled yet still arrogant. They do not know who Big Brother is.

And they hate it when anybody makes any reference they don't understand, or tells a joke that goes over their heads. I really believe that this Revenge Of The Dopes syndrome has played a huge role in American politics during the past thirty years.

At the risk of sounding like I don't "get it", what exactly is the problem with this? "Low food security" strikes me as a far more accurate and descriptive term than "Hungry".

I was hungry about twenty minutes ago. There have, at various times, been ads on TV extolling how certain snacks "fight hunger". They're not talking about solving poverty, these ads are referring to that feeling you get in your stomach some time between waking up and lunchtime.

I am not in fear of not having enough food to eat. Most people would have said my state of being fifteen minutes ago amounted to hunger, but did not rise to the level of low food security. (Nor is this a case of massaging the statistics, I doubt anyone would want 300 million Americans who feel a little hungry to count in the statistics when announced at 10am in the morning.)

Even if we pretend, for a moment, that the problem is one of urgency, the use of the word "security", to me, actually implies a level that isn't there in "hungry". It's not a word used by people trying to downplay something.

I say they should keep it.

FWIW, I'm an ex-pat Brit, who now lives in the States. When I was unemployed in the mid-nineties, the government decided to change the term "unemployed" to "job seeker". There was a similar reaction, that somehow the term was being changed to gloss over reality.

Except it wasn't. "Unemployed" implies a group of people who might be seeking jobs, or might be Peggy Bundy. "Job seekers" is pretty unambiguous. And it's pretty difficult to talk, as was the conservative's wont against the unemployed at the time, of "lazy, scrounging, job-seekers". You're saying they're looking for work but somehow lazy?

Not all terminology changes are bad. In this case, they're replacing the ambiguous and normally non-urgent term "Hungry" with something appropriate and descriptive, which cuts to the heart of why it's considered a bad thing. For once, that's a good decision.

Remember when the Reagan era Agriculture Department tried to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable for school lunches? Guess if we did that NOW, it would be a win-win situation for everyone.

As devoted listeners of Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" radio show are aware, the Ketchup Advisory Board is always trying to educate people about the natural mellowing agents in ketchup that relieve stress and anxiety.

"Food insecurity" is obviously subjective, implying stress and anxiety, while "hunger" is way more objective, and less prone to argument or interpretation -- either you are, or you aren't, hungry. People can be "insecure" about many things, for rational or irrational reasons.

Let's crack out the ketchup, and relieve all this anxiety! Out with hunger AND food insecurity! Don't worry -- be happy!

First of all, the word "security" is being overused by the Bush Administration. We hear it way too much.

Second, is the word "security" even appropriate here? How about "procurity," as in the ability to procure food? Do people really secure food?

Third, maybe we should stick to words that everyone understands: starving and famished. But we wouldn't want to make anyone feel guilty about the fact that people in our own country can't afford to eat--or feed their children--nutritiously. It's more important to fuel our economy by encouraging people to go out and buy more useless things in an attempt to fill a non-existent void. Zune, anyone?

The postponement of the report is just sad. Honestly, I think that if the Democrats spent the next two years revisiting, reinstating, and reporting the truth -- the good as well as the bad -- about what happens in DC, and when needed pointing out that the reports used to come every year until the situation got bad at which point the administration suppressed them (if its true), I'd be very happy with the situation.

For the democratic process to work, we need honesty from Washington. Transparency would be great too, but honesty about what is reported is mandatory. Only putting out positive reports, or changing their timing because of elections, is just sad.

Food Security, National Security, Social Security. Seems to me those Republicans are weak on all of our Security Issues.

Mercury.

Then the terrorists have won. No better we should immediately implement massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

sslash, "low food security" may indeed be a more descriptive term than "hunger." I'm not a fan of the term, but you can certainly argue the relative merits of it. What frustrates me, and I'm sure many others, is the way in which these changes in terminology are used. As I stated in my first post, what made me sad was not necessarily the words themselves, but the fact that news outlets were running with the "fewer hungry people" story when the information in the report pointed to exactly the opposite conclusion. Anyone simply scanning headlines, and lacking in a healthy dose of cynicism/realism, is going to be led to believe that poverty in this country is declining under the current administration. This was no accident. It is one more example of neocon double-speak.