Many Americans pride themselves on being discriminating foodies, avoiding excessive salt, sugar and fat. However, discriminating listeners we are not. We'll scarf down anything as long as it sounds good or vaguely logical.
The once straight-talking America prefers truth-lite, and we're big into sound bites. Spin is slathered on with a spatula to make less marketable concepts palatable, even tasty.
Presidential campaigns gave our brain cells a vigorous workout that kept us intellectually fit. Candidates waxed eloquent, but astute voters knew candidates accentuate the positive and sweeten the poison. No more.
Rudy Giuliani told us "illegal immigration isn't a crime." There was nary a challenge to that nonsensical remark. Ditto for Hillary Clinton who won't raise taxes but wants to ditch tax cuts and raise revenues. Christopher Dodd fed us his Iraq cut-and-run position as "terminate that participation." Audiences lapped it up.
O.J. Simpson is trying to spin his way out of prosecution for a so-called sting operation in Las Vegas where he barreled into a room last week to reclaim sports memorabilia. His 1995 murder trial was fraught with spin. In his just-released camouflaged admission, "If I Did It" ("Confessions of the Killer" added by the new distributor), Simpson trashes his murdered ex-wife with such venom that his spin suggests she deserved to be slaughtered.
The death industry is adept at homogenizing its unpleasant fare. Funeral directors are bereavement support coordinators, and a grave is a final resting place. No one dies anymore; we pass.
And buyers beware. Used cars are now pre-owned vehicles. A rat-infested shed is a fixer-upper. Fake diamonds are laboratory gemstones. One seller on eBay just listed a beat-up old cabinet as shabby-chic.
Pre-spin, an early-learning center was day care, undocumented workers were illegals, neurological compromise was paralysis, incarcerated persons were jailbirds, covert operators were spies, color-vision deficient was color-blind, dentures were false teeth, and a staunch feminist was (dare I say it?) a shrew.
Sin benefits the most from creative linguistics. Always tempting, sin's present-day spike thanks deceptive advertising. It is easier to acquiesce to something distasteful when ingredients are masked.
"Do not bite the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it," said Thomas Jefferson. Lots of garbage is made to look appetizing. Would we be quick to belly up to the buffet if truth hadn't been skewered? Many could escape the latest trendy sin if someone would just tell it like it is.
Sodomy is now gay. Porn is adult entertainment. Gluttony is over-eating and the resulting corpulence is plus-size. Drunks and drug addicts are chemically dependent. Liars misspeak. Mutually adulterous husbands and wives are swingers in open marriage. And rage is an anger issue.
Fornication has several marketable tags, including friend-with-benefits, co-habitation and domestic coupledom. The United States Census Bureau provided a clever acronym for significant others living in sin. Shack-ups in the '70s became Possle-ques, (POSSLQ: "persons of the opposite sex sharing living quarters").
Planned Parenthood and its abortion cronies spun baby into fetus into tissue. PPA's national website re-wrote clinical specifics when describing the abortion procedure. Abortionists don't slice and dice, they empty the womb.
Even us church girls try to slip one by occasionally. At potlucks (where we partake, not pig-out), it is not gossip when we traffic hot news; it's sharing.
But God knows, yes indeed. And only when examining our intake using His discernment will we, like a repentant fatso, recognize the delectable lies we've swallowed. Then it's time for detox and a resolve not to succumb to spin's deceptive sweets.
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