{"id":3574,"date":"2011-09-03T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2011-09-03T15:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=3574"},"modified":"2011-09-02T23:36:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T04:36:08","slug":"no-theyre-not-just-u-s-bureaucrats-theyre-our-federal-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=3574","title":{"rendered":"No, they&#8217;re not just U.S. bureaucrats: They&#8217;re our &#8216;federal family&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Federal-family-3.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3576\" title=\"Federal family 3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Federal-family-3.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"249\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Federal-family-3.jpeg 249w, https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Federal-family-3-197x300.jpg 197w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 249px) 100vw, 249px\" \/><\/a>Lack of honesty in communication bugs me, but it&#8217;s also something I understand very well. As a longtime political consultant, I&#8217;ve been guilty of saying things to the <a title=\"How to exploit school kids to get elected to almost any office\" href=\"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=1386\" target=\"_blank\">public to push emotional buttons at times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m not sure whether to be disgusted or feel professional admiration for the public relations people at the Federal Emergency Management Agency who are responsible for morphing government bureaucrats into our &#8220;federal family.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.palmbeachpost.com\/storm\/femas-use-of-term-federal-family-for-government-1808751.html\" target=\"_blank\">According to the Palm Beach Post<\/a>, FEMA has pretty much banished the word &#8220;government&#8221; from its news releases. In its place, you&#8217;ll find talk of the &#8220;federal family,&#8221; as though they&#8217;re going to take us on vacation when school gets out.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s definitely creepy and kooky, but there&#8217;s nothing mysterious about it. They&#8217;re not the Addams Family. They&#8217;re just politicians twisting the meaning of words.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->As I&#8217;ve mentioned before, I certainly didn&#8217;t agree with <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Orwell\" target=\"_blank\">George Orwell<\/a>&#8216;s politics &#8212; since he was a socialist &#8212; but he had some intellectually honest things to say about word use in a 1946 essay called &#8220;Politics and the English Language.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mtholyoke.edu\/acad\/intrel\/orwell46.htm\" target=\"_blank\">I suggest you read and consider the whole thing<\/a>, but don&#8217;t expect politicians to do the same thing, because &#8212; honestly &#8212; they&#8217;re mostly interested in their own agendas. Being truthful with you is very, very far down on that priority list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lack of honesty in communication bugs me, but it&#8217;s also something I understand very well. As a longtime political consultant, I&#8217;ve been guilty of saying things to the public to push emotional buttons at times. So I&#8217;m not sure whether to be disgusted or feel professional admiration for the public relations people at the Federal <a href=\"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=3574\" class=\"more-link\">Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-VE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3574"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3605,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions\/3605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}