- The Guardian
- Issue #2118
Distract
Anyone who’s listened to politicians being interviewed will know that when they call something “a distraction,” they mean it’s something they really don’t want to talk about.
An extreme example of the genre comes to us from Australia’s cowardly abstention from voting on the recent UN General Assembly motion to demand that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in the West Bank and Gaza, and evacuate all its illegal settlers. The ALP has been on record as asking Israel to do these things, but didn’t want to annoy the boss (sorry, “ally”), the USA, so Australia didn’t vote. James Larsen, our UN ambassador said that the resolution “distracts from what the world needs Israel to do.” Larsen didn’t explain how asking Israel to do something would distract them.
Communicate
Non-weasellishly, this word is something birds do with bird song, as well as something that married couples in boring movies feel they should do more of (as Tom Lehrer said, if people can’t communicate, they could at least shut up). Weasellishly, ‘communicate’ is a way of being vague-yet-honest about communications you shouldn’t be having at all. The CSIRO has been sprung letting a private company influence submissions to a review of the carbon market, and has tried to brush it off by saying that the organisation regularly communicates with all its stakeholders. Hopefully not all the stakeholders have to put up with that sort of waffle.
Bashing
Non-weasel sense: hitting something or someone hard. Weaselly sense: implying without spelling it out, that criticism is mindless and wrong. Nobody wants to be a thug, so if you describe a whole section of commentary as “bashing,” you’re making that sort of talk seem not just rude, but thuggish. The Business Council of Australia, always a fragile petal, has declared that it will stand united against “business bashing.” This is being reported as news, as if the BCA was ever positive about being bashed or, as the rest of us call it ‘justly criticised.’
Stability
Rumour has it that “If you want stability, vote Labour” will be the “catchcry” for the next election campaign. This is weasel language, because it begs the question of what exactly is stable here. Labour will be hoping that the message is that life will be prosperous and boring, and stay that way. Carbon emissions are far too high and the government keeps approving fossil fuel operations which will make them worse. The government appears to hate effective organised labour, attacking the CFMEU with a disregard for the presumption of innocence that must make the Coalition swoon in secret. We’re tied to the US by an idiotic and wasteful AUKUS alliance condemned by defence experts across the political spectrum. Also, three new coal mines will be opened.
Do we want those things to be stable? We have ‘stability’ in the sense that bad things are the same under Labor as under the Coalition. It’s unsure if that will fire up the voters.
Clarify
Meaning to ‘make clearer’, this word is super-weaselly when used as a way to announce that someone is about to shower you with baffling misinformation. Irksome but necessary job networking company and (kind of) social network Linkedin has been found out using user data to train artificial intelligence models. Outside the EU and Switzerland, Linkedin users have AI data sharing turned on by default and if they don’t want their info being shared they have to mess around with settings to turn it off. Still they can’t say they weren’t told – kind of. Linkedin has “added language to ‘clarify’ how we use the information you share with us” to its User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Clear as mud.
