December 6, 2017--Why Words Matter

I received this comment from Hedy Rona yesterday about the outing of Metropolitan Opera musical director James Levine as a sexual predator--

I hear what you’re saying about going to the New York Times to read news reported in sleazeless/non tabloid-y ways. 

But to mince the words or temper the graphicness of the transgressions and crimes of the predators and harassers can leave all the good and genteel readers less outraged than they might or should be. 

If there are no actual photos as evidence that Matt Lauer or Harvey Weinstein showed a woman their penis (you know—picture being worth a thousand words) then the words used to report what happened need to be blunt, explicit, and factual. 

Though even with the president actually caught on tape saying so explicitly the things he did about grabbing women it still didn’t matter. Lots of people—lots of WOMEN!—voted for him! (And now we even have him saying he didn’t say those things and the tape was doctored. “Fake news!” But that’s another rant altogether.) 

Of course even when you have images that are as graphic as the Emmet Till murder or the bones of victims of genocide (pick a genocide, any genocide of the 20th century for irrefutable evidence that IT HAPPENED) there will still be the deniers. (To wit your story about someone you know in Maine refusing to believe that Mitt Romney, not Democrat governor Deval Patrick, signed the Massachusetts healthcare act even though there is a video of it on YouTube!). But those are the lost causes. The deaf ears the truth will never reach. 

Rather it’s the rational and reasonable people out there who for whatever reason doubt the full extent of the crimes and transgressions of the people who have been so admired. The people who can’t believe that the Matt Lauer they had their cereal with every morning is actually a perverted creep who belongs in stocks at a minimum. It’s just hard to believe what people are capable of. 

But that’s why the words matter.