Word: lexicons
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...current cliché from the political lexicon-"the people's right to know"-marks the battlefield but does not exactly illuminate it. This lofty phrase was first used a quarter of a century ago by the late Kent Cooper, then executive director of the Associated Press. "It means," he explained, "that the Government may not, and the newspapers and broadcasters should not, by any method whatever, curb delivery of any information essential to the public welfare and enlightenment." The Constitution, as it happens, does not provide for any such right. The courts, moreover, have never interpreted the First Amendment...
Among Tuttle's clientele−and the patrons of such tattooists as Los Angeles' Jim Malonson and Chicago's Cliff Raven−the most popular new designs are peace symbols, astrological signs, doves, black panthers, Hindu gods and excerpts from the hip lexicon ("right on," "trip" and "head" are among the current favorites). Tuttle's prices vary with complexity. A simple wristlet goes for $20, while a Hindu god or a black panther can cost in excess...
Such nasty little games would not go on if we had any way of keeping our political lexicon up to date. Not merely the hybrids, but elemental political terms such as conservative, liberal, radical, progressive, are wildly misleading as descriptions of the actual positions, motivations and attitudes of most of the people to whom they refer...
...what it means, and neither Humpty Dumpty nor Spiro Agnew can alter that. New things-or newly discovered things -need new names. When a new microorganism swims into the biologist's ken, he does not reach back into folklore and call it a "small dragon"; he quarries the lexicon of a very dead language and concocts, say, "staphylococcus," a word never known before on land or sea, and therefore relatively free of confusing associations. (It is true that staphylo means "bunch of grapes," but since hardly anyone knows this, there is minimal danger that people will be misled into...
...hyperbole, but it is disturbing to find the Vice President engaging in an essentially misleading confusion of political categories. Without question, some liberals have supported or at least been tolerant of some radical causes. But in rational political debate, words must be used precisely. Radicals, in today's lexicon, include bomb throwers and those committed to destroying American institutions. Liberals, often criticized by Agnew as being too soft, cannot by any stretch of definition be lumped in with violent extremists. Yet the Vice President does the trick with a flick of the hyphen...