Ta Ta, Locavore

by tristero

“Locavore” is a beautiful coinage, and for a while it meant something real, and real important, and real good. Oh, well:

When Jessica Prentice, a food writer in the San Francisco Bay area, invented the term “locavore,” she didn’t have Lay’s potato chips in mind.

But never mind. On Tuesday, five potato farmers rang the bell of the New York Stock Exchange, kicking off a marketing campaign that is trying to position the nation’s best-selling brand of potato chips as local food.

This, of course, is the same kind of mentality that’s managed to re-brand the advocacy of coat-hanger abortions as “pro-life.” Or calling the stupid, immoral violence of torture “intelligent interrogation” (Cheney’s latest doublespeak). It’s a deliberate corruption of language, increasing its power to manipulate and insinuate while weakening its ability to persuade and describe.