Don't address the problem, just rename it

More word games from the U.S. governnment. In a Washington Post article entitled Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won't Call Them Hungry, Elizabeth Williamson writes:

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

Now, I *do* understand the point of wanting a more accurate word for what is being measured. But, coming from *this* administration, which has been adept at choosing emotion-laden words for what they hope will be their "winning issues", I can't help but wince when they shift to a *less* emotional, more "clinical" word in this particular case.

Brings to mind this piece from Douglas Adams...

[W]hen the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said 'Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists' instead of 'Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists'), they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present ...

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