Comments on: Euphemisms That Should Disappear: "Chilling Effect"

By: Patrick

Patrick — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:50:54 +0000

Well, at least Obama isn't using the euphemism.

On that note, I recall Clinton trying to shield Bruce Lindsay (an attorney but not his attorney) from testifying about whether the boss had boasted of having his bell rung in the misbegotten Lewinsky case, Reagan trying to shield Ollie North on the ground that delivering missiles, and a key-shaped cake, to an enemy nation is a matter of executive privilege before he decided to throw North to the wolves, and so on and so forth.

Political dishonesty, as opposed to euphemistic semantic dishonesty, is too big a topic for one post.

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:11:40 +0000

I think of all of the offensive uses of "chilling effect," the worst was Bush/Cheney refusing to disclose the names of the people advising them because people would be less forthcoming in advising the President on matters of national importance because they might later be embarrassed if it turned out that their advice was a self-serving moral nightmare. Alas, Obama does not appear to be much better, if at all, about this issue.

By: Joel Rosenberg

Joel Rosenberg — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:08:49 +0000

I was preparing to argue that I do want the fridge to have a chilling effect on the sixpack of Mike's now in it, but, then again, that isn't a euphemism.

But, yeah. It's bizarre to suggest — and it's often more than suggested — that lawsuits and prosecution of perverts who strip 13-year-olds to find hypothetical ibuprofen pills might deter some real school administrator from, say, frisking some young thug to see if the Tonya Tapper he just threatened another kid with is back in the pocket, but that's, well, horseshit.

Now, it's just this side of SCOTUS-endorsed horseshit.