“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln
It’s called the Gulf of Mexico.
It has been called that for centuries. It borders Mexico. Everybody knows what and where it is. The only reason to change the name is to try to satisfy Donald Trump’s insatiable appetite for getting out his Sharpie and bending the world to his will.
Thus it was a juvenile act for the White House to ban journalists from the Associated Press from a recent Oval Office meeting because that news organization — the most important arbiter of the language used in American journalism — hasn’t changed its stylebook to conform with Trump’s inane order to start calling it the Gulf of America.
Playing with the language to change the way people think is literally what the word “Orwellian” means. It’s fascism. And, as an advocate for democracy in general and the First Amendment in particular, the AP would be wrong to bend to Trump’s goofy edict.
The resourceful reporters for the AP will find a way to work around this banishment. It won’t affect what gets reported from Washington.
But Trump’s demand that the press use the language he prefers, rather than tell the simple truth, is just another symptom of the disease he has brought to Washington.
It would be helpful if political leaders from Utah — if it is still called that — would say so.
