Euphemism-The Most Absurd I’ve Seen

Post Views: 12

  I was in a doctor’s waiting-area, picked up a random copy of, perhaps, Time. I skimmed, didn’t read, was rather bored, until I was struck by an advert from the Japanese government highlighting what it said were significant moments in the history of that nation’s relations with the United States. The occasion for the quarter-page offering was the 150th anniversary of Commodore Perry’s “opening” of Japan to the West. 

     As I’m a sucker for historical time-lines and accompanying maps of all sorts and origins, I began to read with some interest. It was all rather boilerplate until this:

          1941-1945 :  four years of unfortunate misunderstandings between the two nations

   I  felt as if slapped hard across the face. I phoned my dad, a Second War vet. At first he refused to believe what I’d read him, then just had to laugh at the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s crazy, face-saving folly.

   It remains the most strikingly forced, absurd euphemism I’ve seen in print, its inanity (if not evil) made worse by the enormity of its simple irony.

Loading