This Really Annoys Me...

For some reason, I got extremely angry reading this... Aside from the obvious stupidity of Lenox Hill's management with regards to what they did and how they treated the other patients and their families, it could also have been the guard's use of the word "lockdown." Lockdown is one of my Top 5 most HATED words these days. It is used by the lazy news media way too much to describe freakin' everything that happens. And it is used by organizations way too much to describe freakin' everything that happens.

To me, the word lockdown is one of those post-9/11 scare tactic words that somehow creeped into our vocabulary that is used by morons to control other people.

N.Y. / REGION
After Beyoncé Gives Birth, Patients Protest Celebrity Security at Lenox Hill Hospital
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: January 9, 2012
Noncelebrity maternity patients said they experienced a series of indignities as Lenox Hill Hospital went all-out to protect the privacy of Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

At one point, another father, Edgar Ramirez, 25, said, security guards kept him out of the neonatal unit for three hours while his wife and newborn were waiting for him. At another point on Saturday, a guard declared that “the floor is on lockdown,” Ms. Nash-Coulon said, and told her that if she left the neonatal unit, she would not be allowed back in to see her babies.

By the way, in case you can't tell, the use of language is one of my pet peeves. I am a huge fan of George Orwell's 1984 book. It really really angers me when language is used by people who think they are smart -- usually, they're just about the stupidest ones out there -- to control other people. It is dangerous, it is irresponsible, it is arrogant.

Case in point, "The Surge." This was supposedly a tactic used in Iraq. What was it? Well, ask the Republicans and it was a tactic that changed the course of the Iraq "War." What was it really? They finally added the extra troops they should have had in the first place there. While on that topic, "Iraq War." The first few weeks of this were a "war." The rest was an occupation. How many battles were fought? To me, a war is when you are fighting battles. When you basically occupy a country and hold off a resistance for years, as we did in Iraq, that is an occupation. Oh, I can go on and on...

And I think I will!...One of the most egregious, and arrogant, cases of the use of language to cloud the truth is being done by the Right Wing government of Israel. Every time the Palestinians try to launch an attack of some sort against Israel, Netanyahu calls it "terror." No, it is resistance to an occupation. When you bomb a Passover seder and kill innocent people, that is indeed horrific terror. When you lob missiles into Israel from your occupied territory, that is not terror, it is resistance. (I am very fond of Israel by the way, having lived there for a year, so I am extra sensitive to the stupid things its Right Wing government says and does.)

By the way, I cannot believe I somehow managed to include Beyoncé, Jay-Z, George Orwell, the Iraq War and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict all in one post. But I did, so there you go. As my friend, Walt, used to say, "It's a small world after all...."