I know it is very au courant to say everybody is outraged by the AIG bonuses. Everybody is saying it. Media, print and broadcast. Bloggers and e-mail friends. Outraged has become the favorite hot word of the week.
I have a different take. And I think we should be a lot more precise in our language.
Darfur outrages me. Gitmo outrages me. Iraq outrages me. The number of unemployed, growing by leaps and bounds, outrages me. AIG? Just another bunch of scummy financial boy toys that have no grounding in reality, nor appreciation for the outcomes they leveraged.
Singling out the selfish, immoral, and greedy for application of the word outrage lessens the impact that word should have.
Let's save the word outrage for the truly evil. The truly abhorrent. The truly inhumane and destructive activities of governments and psychopaths.
The AIG bonuses are annoying. Short sighted. Incredibly impolitic. Bound to cause a claw back of remarkable proportions and well may be the final nail in the coffin of Wall Street for the next 50 years.
But let's stop posturing, along with our truly stupid Congress Critters, and using the word outrage to describe something so trivial in the greater scheme of things.
If we use up the words that describe the limits of our tolerance for stupidity and evil, how will we talk about the Hell Holes in the world with authority?