Why is the news media (and late-night TV hosts) making so much of Kellyanne Conway’s term “alternative facts”? The poor lady just misspoke, didn’t she?
Doesn’t matter. She represents the President, as does the press secretary, who is official spokesperson for him. He doesn’t need people using terms that have this kind of connotation.
Which is, as many people are noting, awfully close to “newspeak,” seen in George Orwell’s book 1984. That term is defined in the Oxford Dictionaries as language that is “designed and controlled by the state in order to suppress free thought, individualism, and happiness.” It is language that totalitarian dictators use in the book to control the masses. Both that term and “alternative facts” twist the facts so that non-facts (we won’t call them “lies”) are touted as facts and then often blindly accepted.
President Trump has enough problems with unfortunate word-choice in his tweets. The people who most closely represent him (outside of his family) are adding to the problem. If he isn’t careful, people will start perceiving him as a self-centered, ego-maniacal, totalitarian dictator rather leader of a free, democratic nation.
Yes, words DO matter.
Meanwhile, copies of 1984 are flying off the shelves of bookstores.