Sensorrhea

As you listen to members of the press (especially NPR) interview politicians, experts, and each other, keep your ear out for the echolalic use of the word "sense."

"Can you give us a little sense of...?"
"Is there a sense there that...?"
"What's the sense of the sense of...?"

This may seem like a trivial point in the face of so much tragedy, but I believe language use is an important clue to worldview and motives.

This "sense" clue, I believe, begins to explain why the press is so tentative in their coverage of important stories, especially the questioning of public officials. Reporters could easily just drop the "senses" and go right to the question, but they generally don't.

Maybe it's laziness. People can be held responsible for getting facts wrong, but not "senses."

I think what this really reveals is a sad mistrust of reality, a defeatist, post-modern capitulation to the fluidity of fact. The corollary is a susceptibility to spin.

The result is the cowed, bourgeois press we have seen for the last few years. I hope the naked reality of Katrina will shake them out of it enough for them to hold certain people, and even certain popular ideas, responsible.