So yesterday, I posted about the phrase, “In a post-Imus world,” and I think I was misunderstood. Perhaps it seemed like the post was about Imus, but I didn’t really mean that.
The Bush White House is inordinately fond of the phrase “in a post-September 11 world.” We are meant to believe that “everything is different now.” Our response to a national tragedy was manipulated to put us into an unjust and unrelated war, and to strip away our civil liberties.
The phrase is irritating not just because it’s manipulative, but because it’s short-sighted. The phrase implies that the whole world is changed. The whole world. It says we don’t need context, we don’t need history, we don’t need anything except to understand that there’s a Before, and there’s an After, and whatever standards, morals, goals, ethics, you are adhering to are Before so forget ’em.
If this creeps into our language as a snowclone, I will lose my frickin mind. Does the radio host who said “in a post-Imus world” truly believe that the very world he lives in is altered by Imus’s firing? Because fuck, I didn’t know worlds changed so easily. Or is it just incredibly lazy speech that is so annoying I almost ripped the radio out of my dashboard? I vote for the latter.
