Political Euphemisms

"Nobody named Gloria Pérez is ever going to sing well," says a character in Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s novel, Tres tristes tigres (recast into English as Three Trapped Tigers), referring to a popular singer who now calls herself Cuba Venegas. I once read an article on blind dates in which the author pointed out that a girl named, say, Shelley Carlson would be acceptable, while the name Irma Louise Glutz would instantly cause her potential date to balk, because she must be unattractive and socially inept. What’s in a name? Quite a lot, actually.

In a prestigious Eastern college which shall remain anonymous, I mentioned to an equally anonymous professor in his home that one of two copies of a rare 17th-century book in this country had disappeared from a library in Boston. He turned around and looked at his bookcase for a moment, then said, "Oh, yes. Here it is." Many years later, I encountered that professor in California and had the courage to ask him whether he had actually stolen it. He smiled and said, "Let’s just say it was a permanent loan."

The word "euphemism" has to do with "speaking beautifully" or "speaking well of." Auto companies are so conscious of the fact that an ill-named vehicle can cost them that they spend millions to find elegant-sounding names for their lines, whether they mean anything or not. Sometimes they fail to research them sufficiently, though. Not only is a nova a phenomenon that appears on the scene with great brilliance only to fade quickly away, but "no va" means "it doesn’t go" in Spanish. And in Italian a camaro is a crab that goes down the road sideways. Oh, and we don’t buy used cars anymore; they are "previously owned."

Developers are notorious for putting strange, if exotic-sounding, names on their properties. A cheap apartment complex might be known as "Heritage Arms," and I recall a street in Austin, Texas named "Wandering Oak." (Was it named for one of the Ents in Lord of the Rings?) It’s easy to spot the places that were named before the developers got there; Dog Pound, Alberta and Weedpatch, California spring to mind. Morticians are now "bereavement counselors," and the places where corpses are laid out are "slumber rooms."

The military and intelligence services are also notable for their euphemisms. For the test pilots at what is now Edwards AFB, to crash used to be to "buy the farm." For the CIA, to assassinate was to "terminate with extreme prejudice."

More serious, though, are political euphemisms. When a press secretary of Richard Nixon’s was caught in a blatant lie and questioned about it by reporters, he informed them, "That explanation is currently inoperative." Depending on whether we are for or against a politician who has committed an abomination, the act might be termed treason or merely a "misdeed" or an "ill-considered move." Nor is it much comfort to be told, for example, that we citizens are going to have to "cooperate" in "easing the burden of the suffering masses of the world" by "making some sacrifices," when a program consisting of throwing nearly a trillion dollars at world problems means that already overburdened taxpayers are about to be hit harder than ever before with new taxes.

As a result, some of us may have to "rearrange our investments." That’s Santa Barbara talk for going broke.

A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but it can also mask the taste of poison.