Reuters: Will You People Stop Using 'Surge' and 'Post 9-11'?

This is the time of year for lighthearted fluff for most news agencies and it is usually a welcome respite from hard news as we all get ready to celebrate the arrival of "Baby New Year." The year-end list is a staple of that happy, fluff and we get them up the wazoo, for sure. The list of "overused words" is one of those that we see every year, as well, and Reuters gives us a list by which they hope we wring out a few overused words and phrases as we ring in 2008. But, I am a bit dismayed over the choice of two of the words and phrases they want us to forget. The first is "post 9/11"and the other one is "surge." The choice of words and phrases in the case of these particular two seems to be made not only with a left leaning bias, but with a bias that leads to the sort of dangerous ignorance that caused 9/11 and the surge in the first place. The ignorance of head-in-the-sand, looking the other way that allowed Islamofascism so so easily sneak up on all of us is rampant with the inclusion of these two in this list.

Reuters writer Andrew Stern gives us this first paragraph:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A "surge" of overused words and phrases formed a "perfect storm" of "post-9/11" cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.

While most of the words and phrases that the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie chose for their list is innocuous fun, including "surge" and "post 9/11" seems to me a dangerous inclusion.

Such phrases as "post 9/11" and "surge" have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything.

"Post 9/11" has "out lived its usefulness"? How so? Has the danger of radical Islam passed us by? HARDLY! To make people forget 9/11 is a travesty and will open us right up to the sort of complacency that we wallowed blissfully in on September 10th, 2001 -- a blissful ignorance that was shattered so horribly. Does Reuters and Lake Superior State University want us to return to 9/10 thinking? When one sees that they also want us to forget about Bush's "surge" policies in Iraq, as well, it would seem that forgetting is exactly what they want. It's all just so passé, huh?

There was also one other somewhat disturbing bit in their year-end list of over used words and phrases.

Other contributors took umbrage at the phrase to "give back" as applied to charitable gestures, usually by celebrities.

"The notion has arisen that as one's life progresses, one accumulates a sort of deficit balance with society which must be neutralized by charitable works or financial outlays," one said.

Now they are against charity, too?

I am sorry, but there isn't a damn thing wrong with the very rich imagining that they should "give back" to the community that helped them become so wealthy! Not a thing at all. Why so cynical?

In any case, this is a bad way to start 2008. The makers of this list chose badly, but they chose with their bias in the lead. Still, it’s sad to say that it isn't surprising that a University made the list and a member of the MSM is promoting it.

So, let me end with a list of "overused" words and phrases of my own, ones I'd love to see eliminated:

• Reporters -- here is a creature that died years ago. It is an outdated term that no longer applies
• Journalism -- see above
• Education -- here is something that has also ceased to apply to society, as well

And now for the biggest canard that should be eliminated for 2008 and all the years to come after:

• Government is here to help

Groan! What a myth.

Happy New Year, Newsbusters!