Obfuscation rules political world

President Barack Obama has been in office for about half a year. In that time, he has ended both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Justin Covington

Confused? You can stop scratching your head now.

According to a March 25 article in The Washington Post, the Obama administration decided to end the use of the phrase “global war on terror” likely because of the connotations it gained after former President George W. Bush began using it to describe U.S. military initiatives abroad.

GWOT was replaced with the phrase “overseas contingency operations,” which sounds squeaky clean compared to the previous term. OCO almost sounds like a massive international aid effort, when it is actually the same set of wars we have been fighting for the better part of this century.

Politicians carefully have used language to reinforce points or shape public perception in a way that benefits a politician’s own agenda.

The name change allows Obama to reposition the U.S. as a global neighbor. During the election, Obama stressed the importance of multilateral approaches to world issues. His main target has been the Middle East.

Obama gave his first television interview on Al Arabiya, a news channel based in the Middle East. He also has been careful to avoid loaded terms such as “crusade,” which still have a negative connotation to much of the Muslim world and caused minor controversy when Bush used it in reference to the global war on terror.

Foreign policy is not the only political arena where rebranding is being done to change perception.

After the passing of Proposition 8, a California constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, a new term began to appear more commonly — “marriage equality.”

“Marriage equality” is a term gay rights activists have adopted in order to sanitize their cause in an attempt to gain more public support. Noticeably missing from the rebranding is a sexual orientation. Although some say it is a desperate attempt to sidestep the elephant in the room, I see it as a way to get past the cultural and religious connotations of homosexuality and focus on the real issue: equality.

The effectiveness of the name change is debatable. Since the passing of Proposition 8, same-sex marriage has been legalized in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. On the other hand, Proposition 8 was not overturned by the California Supreme Court.

On the note of courts, the president’s pick to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has been on the receiving end of many loaded terms from conservatives. If I listened to them, I would believe that Sotomayor is both a “racist” and a “reverse racist.”

Sotomayor has been deemed a racist because of her comment that “a wise Latina woman … with her experience would more often than not reach a ‘better conclusion’ than a white male.”

Never mind that this comment was taken out of its full context. Although her words were chosen badly, her overall argument is that her life experiences give her a unique and valuable perspective as a judge.

In addition, Sotomayor has been called a “reverse racist” by conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh for her ruling in a discrimination case where an exam to become a lieutenant was thrown out by New Haven, Conn., because of fear of a lawsuit by the fire department’s 27 black firefighters.

While this case receives the most media attention of the 400 or so cases she has presided over, it also is hardly characteristic of her views on discrimination. In 96 race-related cases decided by Sotomayor on the court of appeals, she and her fellow judges ruled against discrimination 78 times and agreed with the claims in 10 cases.

Sadly, these explanations don’t seem to fit with the short, charged accusations against her. We now live in an “LOL” culture, where the shorter the sound bite, the better. As a terrible side effect, politicians have tailored their language to short catchphrases and buzzwords in order to convey a lot of feelings and emotions into short packages (which are also handy for presidential debate drinking games, but I digress.)

This loss of explanations allows for such paradoxes as a “war on terror” and “global contingency operations” being the same thing and a judge simultaneously being a “racist” and a “reverse racist.”

With such contradictory ideas such as these, I hope we don’t all end up talking in newspeak.

Justin Covington is a State News guest columnist and political science and journalism junior. Reach him at coving272@msu.edu.