This ones a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, so I won’t belabor it. This morning’s Times relates that some people who other people listen to (as opposed to us unwashed) believe torture isn’t a good idea, not because it’s morally wrong (that’s too quaint an objection) but because it doesn’t work. You’ll find the article here, but the word “torture” appears but once, and then in a context that implies, if it does not say, that somehow what we do is different.
In an exquisite act of self-censorship, the Times refers to “harsh interrogation techniques”, a synonym that a right winger as illustrious as Andrew Sullivan points out was originated by the Nazis. No doubt the Times would argue that the euphemism is necessary to preserve its objectivity. It would, you can hear them argue, be judgmental to call it torture.
But in fact, the Times chooses sides by using the approved euphemism, because it preserves the convenient fiction that we are talking about something other than out and out torture, which we are not.
One Trackback/Pingback
[…] AIDS. Except for some reason I can’t entirely fathom, the word “torture” is used. I noted a while back that the New York Times (and the Times is not alone) can’t seem to cough up the word when describing what we do to […]
Post a Comment