So, a question occurred to me this morning as I was watching the news: when did the media stop calling people who are suspected of a crime “suspects” and start calling them “persons of interest”? Is it some kind of political correctness thing? Or maybe it’s the result of some nervous nelly in the legal department who’s afraid they might get sued if somebody feels insulted by being called a suspect? But isn’t that what a person of interest is? Why else would they be “of interest” if they weren’t suspected<\/i> of being involved?<\/p>\n
\nI know I obsess too much about this sort of thing, but it seems to me that our language has undergone a major evolution over the past 20 years, and I don’t think it’s for the better in a lot of cases. Perfectly good words have been replaced by euphemism and spin, and as a result, English is less precise and less colorful, governed more by a perceived need for caution than to accurately describe things. Yeah, we’re trying to avoid hurting people’s feelings, which is laudable, but maybe our energies would be better spent in strengthening our resistance to being hurt, if that makes sense. To put it another way, I wish people would stop being so damn touchy about everything.<\/p>\n