More linguistic niggling

I just read this post on Feministe. It's a serious piece about domestic violence and Black churches, and should be taken seriously. But of course, being me, I had to react to the some of the language I saw.

Atlanta-based televangelist Juanita Bynum — 1 of the country’s most popular female ministers, who has turned her national and international following into a multimillion dollar business — has gone public with allegations of domestic violence against her husband, minister Thomas W- Weeks the Third, who faces charges of aggravated assault and making terroristic threats.

Let's set the silly name on one side. Many Americans are scarred by having names like Harvey P. Grossout IV Jr. and still manage to avoid beating their wives. But "terroristic threats"? I doubt if "terroristic" is a word; in fact I don't think even George Bush has used it. But even if it were, how could a threat not be terroristic? Can you imagine a Mafia boss saying "I'm thinking of murdering your entire family before torturing you to death - but I really don't want you to get alarmed about it."

More Orwellian is the Department of Justice's term "nonfatal intimate partner violence". Now this does actually mean something (if you pause to figure it out) but it is a euphemism on a par with "collateral damage". I mean we're talking about men kicking the shit out of women while stopping short of actually killing them, but "nonfatal intimate partner violence" sounds like an obscure but not terribly dangerous medical condition.

Juxtaposition

The proliferation of the blogosphere sometimes brings up some very odd Google results, since widely differing articles appear on the same page. Take this, for example:

A Letter from Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers .... "Would someone please give this man a blowjob so we can impeach him"