Overly friendly is the word
“Overly friendly” is fast becoming the new “activist judge” or “staying the course:” words or short taglines that are repeated so much that they become an identifiable message dealing with an identifiable issue; identifiable just from one or two words.
Of course, I am talking about Mark Foley’s “overly friendly” e-mails to a congressional page. But even if you have only seen one news report on the matter, you would have guessed.
Just yesterday I wrote about the indoctrination of children with taglines, so that they can parrot those words. These even shorter two-word taglines described above are being indoctrinated—without sounding like a conspiracy theorist—through the media across the public. Even though the words are usually marked by apostrophes and met with a healthy skepticism of the reporter, they are still repeated over and over again. Almost as in the assertion that there is no bad publicity; these words, even when negatively mentioned, get the exposure they crave.
In a non-political sense, Richard Bailey, at PR Studies, talks about “one word equity.” He cites the example of Google, which owns the word “search.” Conservatives are especially crafty in these one or two word equities; they own many words, but more importantly, they own the words’ publicly perceived definitions. Whether they use it for good or evil is left to personal opinion, but I for one am awed by the craft.
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