How To Speak Republican by Jack Shafer at SLATE

[applegrove]

How To Speak Republican …
… or Democratic.
By Jack Shafer
SLATE
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006, at 7:02 PM ET

"In recent weeks, major U.S. news organizations have started using the phrase "civil war" to describe the unpleasantness in Iraq, prompting a brawl between liberal and conservative commentators.

Speaking on the left, Eric Boehlert derides the press for only now calling the mayhem a civil war. Boehlert accuses various organizations, which include NBC News, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times, of accommodating President Bush by keeping the phrase out of their coverage for three-plus years. The administration abhors the phrase, preferring "sectarian violence."

On the right, James S. Robbins insists that the Iraq war is bigger than civil—it's an "international conflict with significant regional impact"—and accuses liberals and others of playing semantic games by pushing the civil-war label.

That some innocent-sounding phrases carry a political charge is hardly news, and yet who would have thought that scores and even hundreds of the little buggers exist? "What Drives Media Slant?," a working paper on media bias by University of Chicago scholars Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, locates a slew of two- and three-word phrases that they say can be uniquely identified with either Republican or Democratic members of Congress.

...........SNIP"

http://www.slate.com/id/2154992

[Redstone]

1. Um, can we cut the semantic bullshit? People are DYING. Lots of them.

Redstone

[NMDemDist2]

2. "karl rove" showed up on the Democratic list

how funny is that??

[Skittles]

3. "elite"

that is pure repuke speak