Newspeak

While watching television last night, I heard one of my favorite “newspeak” words “harrisment”. Now, I know there is no such word as “harrisment”, but the current trend in newspeak is to say “harrisment” instead of harassment with the emphasis on “ass”. I’m sure some of it has to do with the religious right who pull much weight to spineless sponsors.

I was in the United States Army and myself and my fellow soldiers were harassed on a continual basis by “professional harassers”. You haven’t been harassed until you have been harassed by the military. Of course, I’m sure they don’t do that anymore. Although sexual harassment wasn’t an issue, general and on-going harassment was. When someone makes you search a one-acre field looking for the drill sergeant’s perspiration—that’s harassment with a capital “H”. That’s why I know that “harrisment” is a term put together by the elitist fifth estate that are afraid of their sponsors will cut them off.

The military would never have anything to do with such a “sissified” term as “harrisment”. Real men don’t “Harris” they harASS. The term has much more power and meaning. When I was in the service, I knew I was being subjected to harassment. If someone had told me that I was being “harrised”, I would have laughed. Such a lame word would have meant absolutely nothing to me. If only it had been as wimpy as “harrisment”.

When I grew up there were nine planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus. Uranus, pronounced “you’re anus”. Now television news has turned it into “urine-us”. Television found anus to be too flatulent for sponsor’s taste except for preparation H and Beano. Now they purvey urine as the word of choice. The sound of “urine us” grates on my ears not to mention sending me for my umbrella.

Sometimes in our efforts to be more genteel, we become silly and foolish. There are other words that television has mangled the pronunciation in an effort to sound dignified and important. For the longest, we had no idea of the difference between a “hoonta” and a “junta”. It took forever to recognize the word as a foreign term and to say it with the appropriate pronunciation.

Language engineering happens all the time. However, it is usually inspired by the common masses. The speaking media may have problems with Uranus and harassment, but the general public knows when it is being harassed and they don’t care about Uranus or someone else’s as long as there is somebody’s ass to kick for this pitiful mess.