It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' Baby talk! Closely related is the phenomenon of what might be called 'first grade English.' George Bush and others have spoken of 'growing the economy.' One grows tomatoes, not economies. But perhaps I am being peevish and pedantic.
What about the current overuse of 'broken'? Are you as sick of it as I am? The Los Angeles Times (20 December 2010) opines that California Isn't Broken. No? One hears that the Social Security Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service are 'broken.' One breaks things like guitar strings, bicycle chains, and glasses. That which is broken no longer functions as it was intended to. A broken X is not a sub-optimally functioning X but a non-functioning X. Social Security checks are mailed to millions of recipients reliably month after month. Clearly, neither the SSA nor the INS are 'broken' strictly speaking. They just don't function very well and are in need of reform.
So why call them 'broken'? Is your vocabulary so impoverished that no better word comes to mind? Is it perhaps your vocabulary that is ‘broken’?
"President Obama has said plainly that America's health care system is broken." That from Peter Singer in "Why We Must Ration Health Care" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 2009, p. 40.) I guess that is why Canadians and others come to the USA for the medical treatment they cannot get under a socialized system.
Why are people such linguistic lemmings? If some clown uses 'broken' inappropriately, why ape him? One has to be quite a lemming to ape a clown. (How's that for a triple mixed metaphor?)
People who employ baby talk and first-grade English in contexts that demand careful thought demonstrate their thoughtlessness and unseriousness. Precision in the use of language may not be sufficient for clear and productive thinking, but it is necessary.
Language matters.
UPDATE (7 September 2024)
The trend continues. This morning I found the following title at a generally excellent venue: “The American Classroom is More Broken Than You Think.” Does ‘brokenness admit of degrees? But let that pass.
The queen of first-grade English these days is none other than Kamala Harris who was recently anointed the ‘successor puppet’ of Joseph Biden upon the latter’s ‘democratic’ deposition.
Here she is on Russia and Ukraine. But it gets worse. Here she is on time.
To call the latter “word-salad” as language lemmings in the press like to do is to employ an inappropriate metaphor. A salad is a coherent comestible. How many of Kamala’s joyful verbal effusions are coherent?