EDITOR'S LETTER

An Insult by Any Other Name

I was having dinner with a colleague in London last month when she mentioned that she had recently been described in a local broadsheet as being "frisky." With a smile she said, "That's a code word for slut, isn't it?" I thought for a moment and replied, "Uh-huh." The woman in question is nothing of the kind, and she made the comment in a delightfully selfdeprecating way. Still, journalists do use code words and euphemisms to dress up points that they want to make about someone they're writing about but that they anticipate their editors would take out if made more frankly. Leading the scholarship on this practice is John Leo, the celebrated columnist for U.S. News & World Report. Like one of those mathematicians who worked at Bletchley Park trying to break the German Enigma code during the Second World War, Leo has been parsing the code words of journalese, as he calls it, for more than 15 years.

For instance, to Leo, when a journalist writes that a politician is "constantly growing," what he really means to say is that the person is a moron; someone who is "most effective in front of small groups" is incapable of giving a decent speech; a person described as being "experienced" is over the hill; "perky" is shorthand for hyperactive; "soft-spoken" means mousy; and "multi-talented" means untalented. In journalese, "militant" is a nice way of saying fanatic, and "steadfast" is polite language to describe someone who is pigheaded.

It has been a longtime practice for the scriveners of the obituary pages to charitably detour around the recently deceased's personality quirks and shortcomings. As Euan Ferguson recently noted in Britain's The Observer, it is not difficult to figure out the writer's intent. So, in obit-speak, "tireless raconteur" is code for bore; someone who "tended to become overattached to certain ideas and theories" was a fascist; a man who "gave colorful accounts of his exploits" was of course a liar; and a woman described as someone who "did not suffer fools gladly" was a shrew.

The English satirical fortnightly Privote Eye has virtually institutionalized its own bag of tricks for getting around libel land mines. "Discussing Ugandan affairs" refers to having sex—generally with someone other than the subject's established partner; "tired and emotional" is code for drunk. (As are, in other publications, "ruddy-faced" for men and "vivacious" for women.) In Private Eye, "bachelor" means the man is gay. "Confirmed bachelor" means that he's gay and out of the closet.

Even glossy, award-winning monthlies sometimes use language in ways George Orwell might frown on. "Exclusive," for instance, is a kind of magazine shorthand, eliminating the qualifier "... only until The New Yorker comes out on Monday." "Special Report" often translates as "That piece on the senator's mistress didn't pan out at the last minute, so we had to run this story on baling wire twice as long." Writers and editors have been known to shovel the word "alleged" in front of things they believe to be true, and that have been expressed by others, but that they cannot prove absolutely. If the allegations have appeared in the tabloids, then the word "reportedly" often precedes them. And watch out for the phrase "masterful job of writing and reporting" in an editor's letter—it's less heartfelt praise than a sure sign a contributor is getting strokes in lieu of the raise he or she really wanted.

The Catholic church, which, it could fairly be said, is having an off year, has proved itself more than up to the task of obfuscation and creative euphemism. As The Wall Street Journal noted, the church has been scrambling to shelter its assets in the face of countless sexual-abuse lawsuits. Dennis Sullivan, a lawyer for the Dallas diocese, made a valiant attempt at refuting plaintiffs' complaints that the church was shuffling assets back to individual parishes, where they would be protected from legal claims. "We did it for clarification," he said. Checkmate. When it comes to having a way with the English language, you really can't beat those frisky old Catholic priests.

GRAYDON CARTER