We talk about “speaking truth to power”; sometimes using just the right words, even if they’re highfalutin’, can be enormously clarifying. Like “false equivalency.” I am loving how, with greater and greater frequency, the media is calling out out the Right’s “Well, how ’bout . . . ” specious arguments. Which have confounded me for years but, until recently, never had language to understand—and name—this maddening “logic.”
But that’s so much about East Coast, New Yorker subscriber, writerly me! Who loves words—even five syllable ones. But when I acknowledge that, I am quickly brought up short. Because I find myself wondering how such multi-syllabic language plays on Fox News? And aren’t I being elitist? Aren’t I being snotty about my Red State fellow Americans? Who maybe love words just as much as I? And can recognize apple/oranges just as well as I can?
I wonder.