When the Press Says “Fiery” It Means “Insane”
https://newrepublic.com/article/188512/medias-euphemism-trumps-appointees-fiery
With the president-elect choosing his rogues’ gallery of future appointees, the political press is really wearing out its go-to synonym for crazy.
…
The meaning of mainstream media euphemisms has always been pretty plain to me, even before I entered the business. But just as I need my daughter, Alice, to translate when she says, “John is rizzing up trade”—it means “John is flirting with someone attractive”—it stands to reason that a new generation might need help with the word fiery. It means “sociopathic or clinically insane.”
Suddenly the news is full of fiery people. Stephen Miller is “fiery” (Associated Press, CNN). Elise Stefanik is “fiery” (Politico, Albany Times Union). Matt Gaetz is “fiery” (New York Times, Sky News) and also a “firebrand” (Financial Times, Reuters). Gaetz is so proud of the latter that in 2020 he published a book titled Firebrand. The puppy-killing South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, whom Trump nominated for secretary of homeland security, is another “firebrand” (Fox News). So is (Financial Times, Daily Mail), the ax-throwing Fox News personality Trump nominated for secretary of defense. So is the Trump superloyalist Kash Patel (Daily Mail), rumored to be Trump’s pick for FBI director. This is all just in the past week. Little fires everywhere.
The one person who hasn’t been called “fiery” or “firebrand” lately is Robert Kennedy Jr. I find this omission puzzling, given that Trump’s nominee for health and human services secretary practically stepped out of a textbook on abnormal psychology: whale-beheader, dead-bear fancier, sex diarist, etc. And that’s before we plumb RFK Jr.’s novel opinions against vaccines and fluoridation. Maybe the press feels squeamish about the worm that ate part of Kennedy’s brain. But they don’t come much fierier.
…
America’s firebrand in chief is Donald Trump. We’ve all been witnessing Trump’s mental derangement for so long that when the press describes Trump as “fiery” it has come to mean more than just “toxic and unhinged.” It means “more toxic and unhinged than usual.”
…
https://newrepublic.com/article/188512/medias-euphemism-trumps-appointees-fiery