“Let us have an end of such phras­es as these: ‘It is also of impor­tance to bear in mind the fol­low­ing con­sid­er­a­tions….’ Or: ‘Con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing into effect.’ Most of these wool­ly phras­es are mere padding, which can be left out alto­geth­er or replaced by a sin­gle word. Let us not shrink from using the short expres­sive phras­es, even if it is con­ver­sa­tion­al.” —Win­ston S. Churchill “to my col­leagues and their staffs,” 9 August 1940.

Canceling Clichés

Com­men­ta­tor Bill O’Reilly pro­pos­es a new Can­cel Cul­ture for a col­lec­tion of jar­gon that Churchill would define as “gri­maces.” A cliché, he says, is “a phrase or opin­ion that is overused and lacks orig­i­nal thought.” Good on Bill, and we applaud his nom­i­na­tions for gri­maces we nev­er need to hear again. He for­got “issues,” but it’s not a bad list….

“Cir­cle back”: A banal term often used in pres­i­den­tial briefings

“Here’s the deal”: Pres­i­dent Biden’s favorite.

“Deep Dive” (used inter­change­ably with “From 30,000 feet”): Sup­posed to refer to your detailed opin­ion (from the worm’s eye, or from on high). Often encoun­tered in the media—always painful.

“Per­fect Storm”: Descrip­tion of the 2024 U.S. election.

“At the end of the day”: O’Reilly: “What day? Thurs­day? Stop it! Ath­letes in particular.”

“It is what it is.” Dreadful.

“Give a lis­ten.” Used in absence of an intro. Beloved by Brett Baier on Fox. [I added that one.]

“I’ll be hon­est”: This implies that most of the time you’re not honest.

“Sor­ry, not sor­ry”:  O’Reilly: “Sor­ry, you are a moron.”

“Game chang­er”: All-pur­pose slough off.

“We’ll see”: When you don’t know what you’ll see.

“The new nor­mal”: Means you don’t know what is normal.

“Slam dunk”: “The most over-used phrase in the language.”

“By the way”: “What way? Where? Stop!”

Why has this jar­gon so per­me­at­ed the media? One of the cul­prits, O’Reilly sug­gests, “is the col­laps­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem. In New York City, tax­pay­ers spend $31,000 per stu­dent per year and many stu­dents can­not speak prop­er English.”

 Some issues over “issues”

O’Reilly is tar­get­ing brief phras­es or sin­gle words. Some­what longer “wooly phras­es” have also been creep­ing into our language—for a long time. For decades now, we have sub­sti­tut­ed polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect fad-phras­es for long-under­stood words in every­day language.

My pet favorite is the word “issues,” as sub­sti­tut­ed for “prob­lems” or “dif­fi­cul­ties.” The idea is that we must not be judg­men­tal (anoth­er pop­u­lar favorite) about our trou­bles, because our trou­bles may be right. After all, a mug­ger with a knife is only express­ing his issues.

No. Issues are sub­jects on which there are dif­fer­ent points of view. Most of the time, when we say we have “issues,” we mean to say we have ”prob­lems.” But we want to be nice.

This word-sub­sti­tu­tion is sub­con­scious­ly catch­ing, because we all want to use hip forms of speech. If edi­tors don’t watch out, even we fall for it. I recent­ly had to stop myself from say­ing that I had “issues” with cer­tain fanat­ics who are try­ing to kill us. What I had, of course, are “prob­lems,” if not “vio­lent objections.”

“Reaching out”

Then there is “reach­ing out.” One doesn’t con­tact some­one any more. One “reach­es out.” The the­ol­o­gy behind that is that “con­tact” sug­gests you are “demand­ing” some­thing. Like the cour­tesy of a reply, which might be “offen­sive.” By “reach­ing out,” you become a sup­pli­cant, mak­ing a ten­ta­tive plea that will not offend any­one. Your con­tact doesn’t real­ly have to answer. (And have you noticed? Quite a few of them don’t.)

One might expect any­one famil­iar with the life of Win­ston Churchill to tilt toward tra­di­tion­al lan­guage, and one would be right. I don’t care what you think about the wars in Ukraine or Syr­ia or Gaza, eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, immi­gra­tion, reli­gion, glob­al warm­ing, or the lead­ers of coun­tries. All those are legit­i­mate, er, issues, over which rea­son­able peo­ple may disagree.

Real issues

Issues (in the legit­i­mate mean­ing of the word) came up at a schol­ar­ly pan­el over the “per­cent­ages” agree­ment. That was the “spheres of influ­ence” agree­ment in east­ern Europe, between Churchill and Stal­in at the “Tol­stoy” con­fer­ence in Octo­ber 1944. That, it was said at the time, proved that Churchill and Britain were no dif­fer­ent than Stal­in and Rus­sia. Both sides had iden­ti­cal objec­tives, i.e., their own nation­al inter­ests. But British inter­ests in Greece involved things like the ouzo con­ces­sion for Har­rods, or maybe Greek sup­port for British Mediter­ranean pol­i­cy. Sovi­et inter­est in Roma­nia were every­thing Roma­nia had or could produce.

There are those who would have us believe that the West­ern democ­ra­cies are no bet­ter than Nazis, Sovi­ets, or Islam­o­fas­cists. We hear the line quite often nowa­days. A High Per­son­age will sug­gest that the dis­place­ment of Pales­tini­ans after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war was moral­ly equiv­a­lent to the Holocaust.

Right, that’s an issue. Why then are there no “issues” over oth­er forced migra­tions since 1945? Such as six­teen mil­lion Sikhs, Mus­lims and Hin­dus in India; 800,000 Jews from Ara­bia; Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars “relo­cat­ed” by Stal­in; Japan­ese and Kore­an Kuril and Sakhalin islanders; or Ital­ians in Istria? What about three mil­lion eth­nic Ger­mans in Sile­sia and the Sude­ten­land? Or, more recent­ly, the Greeks of Turkey and Cyprus and the Viet­namese boat people?

“Many of these refugees built new lives and a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing than in the lands they left,” wrote Andrew Roberts. “None are today active­ly demand­ing the right to mur­der peo­ple who have now lived in their for­mer lands for over sev­en decades.” Sor­ry. I digress.

A shade of difference

Let us cel­e­brate Mr. O’Reilly’s mod­est pro­pos­al. Avoid fash­ion­able fil­ters and “fad-words” in lan­guage. “Short words are best,” Churchill said, “and the old words, when short, are best of all.” His thoughts and deeds, how­ev­er antique they may sound today, still rep­re­sent con­cepts we can under­stand. No issues there.

Related reading

“Churchill on Jar­gon: The Lan­guage as We Man­gle It,” 2019.

“Churchill on Jar­gon: “Let Us Have an End to This Gri­mace,” 2024.

“Athens, 1944: Some Lighter Moments in a Seri­ous Sit­u­a­tion,” 2020.

“Churchill, Orwell and 1984.” 2022.

“Churchill’s War Mem­oirs: Aside from the Sto­ry, Sim­ply Great Writ­ing,” 2023.