Straight talk vs. spin

A couple of months ago, the Idaho Statesman printed an excellent feature by Rocky Barker about the controversy over the reintroduction of wolves into Idaho. I was floored by a statement from one of the article’s interviewees, who said: “Hunters’ visions are that they can return to the same location year after year and have a positive experience with elk. Wolves interfere with that.”

How’s that for a euphemism? On my b.s. meter, “a positive experience with elk” in this context ranks right up there with “friendly fire.” What the hunter intends to do is track, shoot, and kill the elk preparatory to sawing off its head. As I wrote in my letter to the editor, the positivity of this experience is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. For the elk, this would be pretty much the epitome of negativity.

I’m not anti-hunting; that’s not my point. What bothers me is the way the speaker is manipulating language to disguise an unpalatable reality and hoping no one will notice. There’s an excellent word for this: obfuscation. There’s also a more commonly used word: spin. Straight talkers hold themselves accountable for their words and actions, but where there is obfuscation there is always a man-behind-the-curtain desperately trying to cover up something he’s ashamed of.

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