Not the ANsWeR?

     When I was on a plane filled with press heading to Valdez in 1989, a Boston Globe reporter and I got to talking about Exxon’s spill and Big Oil’s PR campaign.

     “What do you guys call it up here?” he said, referring to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

     “Oh, you mean, ANWR?”

     “You call it that, too? I hear that the acronym ANWR is promoted by oil industry publicists to dehumanize the area, to make it sound like ‘another war.’”

     Since the reporter pointed it out, I’ve noticed how the oil industry—and the politicians they own—uses the term ANWR exclusively.

     “ANWR” certainly doesn’t conjure the image a “refuge” does (given the nature of the place and the increasing growth of industrial exploitation, isn’t “refuge” more apt?).

     We all buy into these semantics thanks to language maestros.

     Those beguiled environmentalists who, in a recent protest, dressed up in shirts proclaiming “drilling is not the ANsWeR” didn’t realize that all one saw from a quick glance at the newspaper photo were the words “ANWR, ANWR, ANWR.” Likewise, environmentalists now routinely use “climate change” for to what I call “global melting” in editorials, much to the happy chagrin of right-wing planners. It was a key Republican Party strategist, after all, who came up with the ever-present labels “death tax” for estate tax and “climate change” for global warming. Now the mainstream media uses these words universally.

     Another way you’re being manipulated with language is that the neo-cons and their underlings smother the obvious with detail. They use language to oppress the palpable logic of dissent.

     Take this statement from Lisa Murkowski’s letter justifying drilling in the refuge:  “The United States must take a balanced approach to lessening our dependence on unstable foreign energy sources, and environmentally responsible exploration in the Coastal Plain should be part of that plan.”

     Balance?

     Dependence?

     Written by some flak, no doubt. Careful wording.

     Yet, all it takes to clear the windshield of Murkowski’s bug splats of opinion is the shop rag of reality. Take a look at the guy in the white pick-up idling in traffic. A single, young, white guy, just out “cruising chicks.” This kid is “dependent?” We need to tear up the refuge for this guy, multiplied by 250 million, for whom gas consumption is as mindless as a swipe of the credit card? Although the car economy and oil-influenced politicians have created a society that revolves around auto transit, most people still don’t need to drive anywhere. Like the obscenely overweight capitalist who explodes with one last thin mint in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Ted, Don, and Lisa want to overwhelm our overindulgence with the “thin mint” of refuge oil.

     What do we do? Well, when you find a word that doesn’t quite connote the reality of the situation, don’t repeat the language of your oppressor. Fight back with your own euphemism!

     Don Young says a vote to prevent exploration is a vote for terrorism. We say Retire Young. “Climate change” becomes “Global Melting.” As for ANWR? “Arctic Splurge” will do.