While the Moron-in-Chief and his Repugnant congressional acolytes gloat about their ginormous victory in passing the 2017 Trump Tax Fraud bill. This blog will not dignify that legislative monstrosity and offers a dual view of the latest sttempt at destruction of the US government with the banning of 7 words from any document issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If the Moron-in-Chief believes that he can control speech, he is invited to peruse this blog until his head explodes. We do not have "fake-news," but we do have a fake-government. If this is a (fair & balanced) rejection of autocracy, so be it.
PS: Look at the Directory below and click on the [bracketed number] to go to that essay; click on "Back To Directory" to return to the top of the page.
Vannevar Bush hypertext — Bracketed numerics — Directory]
[1] Health Care Professional's View — Toni Inglis On The CDC Prohibition Of 7 Words
[2] Layperson's View — Kathleen Parker Asks: Banning Words Now?
[1] — Back To Directory
[x Austin Fishwrap]
The CDC Can’t Use 7 Terms On Paper: Here’s What To Expect
By Toni Inglis
WordSift Cloud of the following piece of writing
Just when I think the Trump administration can no longer surprise me, they go and do it. But the latest stunt is more a shock than a surprise.
Senior budget officials of the esteemed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were called to a meeting last Thursday and read a list of forbidden words and phrases — including the term “science-based” — that the Trump administration does not want to see in the agency’s official budget documents to circulate within Congress and the federal government in preparation for the upcoming presidential budget proposal.
The banned words and phrases are “fetus,” “transgender,” “science-based,” “diversity,” “evidence-based,” “entitlement” and “vulnerable.” This to the home of many of the world’s leading epidemiologists and researchers whose job it is to provide for the defense of the nation against health threats and promote the public health.
Can you imagine the atmosphere in the room? I’m envisioning a stunned silence. It’s a good thing they were sitting down.
The officials were given alternate phrases, such as turning “science-based” or “evidence-based” into the clunky “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes” — an outright admission of contempt of science, and the triumph of politics and ideology over science. Why not use the more streamlined, “science-and politics-based” or maybe “evidence- and ideology-based?”
When I worked neonatal intense care, we gave immunizations based on recommendations published by the CDC. In 1980, when I started until the year 2000, I don’t recall a single baby whose parents refused to sign the consent. But when I retired in 2012, reasoning with a new wave of empowered, educated parents to vaccinate their babies had become the hardest part of my job. Using logic from the Trump administration, maybe the CDC should no longer recommend immunizations based “on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.” Right? Wrong.
In health care, you can do things because you’ve always done them that way — or, you can do things based on scientific research. The latter is what we do in neonatal intensive care — and what the best hospitals do in all areas. It’s called evidence-based practice. In practice, we look to the CDC for published guidelines on immunizations, infection control and for all manner of health statistics and research data.
Last year, I went to the emergency room after being bitten by a dog with nystagmus, a condition in which the eyes make involuntary, repetitive movements. The first thing the doctor did was go to her computer to look up rabies statistics from the CDC. Only then did she give me her recommendation regarding shots.
The CDC funds Texas’ basic health functions, such as the control and prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis. It supports state laboratories for development of new techniques. It funds disease surveillance — especially when you need to know in a hurry where the infections are popping up.
Remember the case of Ebola in Dallas in 2014? Officials from the CDC were dispatched to help with training and surveillance. Remember the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil in 2015 that caused children to be born with microcephaly? Hundreds of cases were reported in South Texas, but so far this year there’s only 45 cases. The CDC funds the Zika Pregnancy Registry and the Texas Birth Defect Registry.
If the administration is saying to the CDC that they can’t use the words “transgender” and “diversity” in their budget request, you can bet that means “don’t pay attention to those issues.”
This blatant contempt for science must not stand. We need the CDC to sustain and continue to build its vast repository of science information and its culture of excellence. Politics has no place there. # # #
[Toni Inglis is retired from the Seton Healthcare System in Austin, TX and she practiced neonatal intensive care nursing for more than three decades in the Seton group of hospitals. She also wrote/edited Seton’s monthly nursing publication, NursingNews, for 20 years and also blogged there for six years. Inglis received three degrees from The University of Texas at Austin: a BA (Spanish and French), a BS (nursing), and an MS (nursing).]
Copyright © 2017 Austin American-Statesman/Cox Media Group
[2] — Back To Directory
[x WaPo]
So We’re Banning Words Now? (Here’s My List)
By Kathleen Parker
WordSift Cloud of the following piece of writing
The recent excitement over an incredible story about the government trying to ban certain words reminded me of all the words and phrases I despise and wish were banned.
For the sake of getting on with it, briefly: The Post reported Friday that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had been forbidden from using seven words as they prepared their 2019 budget documents. The words were: “vulnerable,” “diversity,” “entitlement,” “fetus,” “transgender,” “science-based” and “evidence-based.”
Everybody went bonkers on cue.
Pro-choice activists insisted that such word changes were an attempt to thwart abortion rights. The CDC pushed back and denied the ban. Anonymous analysts continued to confuse everyone. CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald went straight to Twitter, writing: “I want to assure you there are no banned words at CDC. We will continue to talk about all our important public health programs.”
What really happened? It’s hard to know for sure at this point. The Post sees a heavy-handed silencing, but National Review’s Yuval Levin offers a different explanation. According to Levin’s sources, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, issued a style guide to departments for the preparation of budget documents. Included were three of the words mentioned above — “vulnerable,” “diversity” and “entitlement” — with the suggestion that they be used as little as possible because they were either used too often or incorrectly.
Now that you mention it, I think I’ll add them to my list.
Levin was also told that other, more intriguing words were mentioned in a meeting as possible “trigger” words that might so upset congressional Republicans that they’d slash funding. These were “fetus”, “science-based,” “evidence-based” and “transgender.” In some cases, alternatives were suggested, such as “unborn child” for “fetus.” In other words, if you want those people — congressional Republicans — to fund us, don’t use language they don’t like.
One could call this “Oh, my God, they’re trying to ban words!” Or, one could call it common sense. I’m not sure which is more discomfiting, however: CDC guys worried that “science-based” would so frighten Republicans that they’d kill their budget, or, that this could possibly be true.
So that happened.
Obviously, the government shouldn’t ban words, but there’s no reason a columnist, who gets to be queen for about 750 words, can’t take a stab. In a gesture of democratic pandering, I even enlisted the help of my kingdom of Facebook “friends.” Because they were self-selecting, this survey should not be construed as “science-based.”
But the evidence suggests that my friends are a peevish lot when it comes to mis- or over-used words, which makes me like them even more. My own personal list, the phrasing of which is rhythmically pleasing if obviously redundant, begins with nouns that have been “repurposed” as verbs.
When a friend recently said to me that she hadn’t been “gifted” in a long while, I thought (to myself), “So I see.” Then, “lo and behold,” (a phrase that will be allowed at Christmastime), I was informed by a linguist that “to gift” has been a verb since 1550. He noted, however, that he would have interpreted my friend’s statement as meaning that she hadn’t been given (as a gift) in a while. That, too, I’m sure.
To put it bluntly, “awesome” isn’t anymore. “Snowflake” produces more ennui than insult. “Pivot,” “veritable,” “in reality” and “best practices” wear us down. As do: “reach out,” “share” and “think outside the box.” “Own” it, if you must, but I’d sell it on eBay. Just sayin’.
“Breaking news” IS news. It’s “devastated,” not “decimated.” You don’t “effort,” for heaven’s sake. You make an effort. Or, maybe just try. Which apparently is a thing. No problem? You’re welcome. And I take back my thank you.
Literally, where is all this “low-hanging fruit,” if you don’t mind my asking. And, no, you’re not recording me “for quality and training purposes.” You’re collecting profane diatribes to read at the company holiday party. Nice try. Or just “nice.” Sick. Stop it.
We’re not going to “unpack” anything, unless you’re my valet, or “drill down,” unless you’re the plumber. We’re sick of “optics,” “mansplaining,” “onboarding” and “THIS,” as in “what she said.” We’ve had it with “closure” and “ideating,” as well as “doubling down on” “the whole nine yards.” No one is “woke.”
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the fact of the matter is we were all vulnerable as fetuses, some of whom were surely bound to become transgender because evidence-based diversity is what it is.
But, no worries. It’s all good. Believe me. Bigly. # # #
[Kathleen Parker is a syndicated columnist whose twice-weekly columns generally support US conservative ideology and are syndicated nationally by The Washington Post. She received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2010. Parker is the author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (2008). Parker received both a BA, Phi Beta Kappa and an MA (both in Spanish literature) from Florida State University.]
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