The Careful Voter's Dictionary of Language Pollution

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Protect yourself in the Year 2000 Election campaigns from spin docs, pols, fanatics, business titans, lawyers, academics and other worthies who are willfully befogging language to muddle your brain. Orwell knew what snake oil can do. Spin rots the mind.Here, presented with stiletto-sharp humor, are hundreds of helpful definitions of polluted words and phrases in current use alone, courtesy call, customer satisfaction, defining moment, rightsizing, investment, the rich, the poor, the children, mean spirited, sexual relations, alternative turkey, liberty impaired and values clarification. The Dictionary arms you with intellectual software for deleting the thick cosmetic overlay of public communications that obscures the real world.Also included is a short history of language pollution, a selection of great examples of polluted words of the recent past and a Glossary of Technical Terms such as plastertalk, willietalk, bravebabble, Halloweentalk, tin-eartalk and Trojan-horse construction.This book is designed to help any careful voter who yearns for a world where, regardless of what anyone swears under oath, that, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "a cat is not a dog."