Spin doctor terminology has infected the population faster than the Corona virus itself.
This Orwellian process of dumbing down our language must always be opposed. When we all talk in cliches it allows the usual suspects to tell lies and to frame all debate on their own terms.
Sodium Haze’s trusty media-bullshit scanner has detected ten Corona specific phrases that people ought to stop parroting from the media – here is the first:
10. Deep Clean
What is a ‘deep clean’ exactly? My parents were cleaners and used to go cleaning in the 70’s. Back then an area or a thing was either clean or it wasn’t; you were either cleaning it properly with a bit of elbow grease or you weren’t.
This phrase was initially a marketing term for cleaning firms – same cleaning, same cleaners but with reassuringly expensive prices – but now it is deployed by every person and organisation who stumbles into the Corona spotlight.
It has become impolitic and insufficient to simply clean something – that might imply it wasn’t clean before. Were they keeping a dirty house?
A ‘deep clean’ implies that people can leap beyond cleaning to some wondrous sci-fi clean undertaken by super-beings that are taking apart a classroom or a cruise liner at the molecular level, going underground to clean beneath the molten crust upon which infected offices stand and then venting particles of dust into deep space.
Who do you think does all these deep cleans? Does a specialised squad arrive – a cross between Ghost Busters and Thunderbirds with flashing sirens and never before seen equipment?
When St Josephs Primary School in Middle England deploys the media approved phrase “closed for deep cleaning” – who do you think is doing the actual cleaning? Could it be the same poorly paid zero hours workers they normally use? Using the same equipment?
Do we imagine that people paid below the living wage and juggling three jobs in between trips to the food bank are going to do something radically different when they get texted at short notice to come in and do another shift?
Who defines the nonsensical difference between ‘clean’ and ‘deep clean’. It’s that Daz blue whiteness all over again.
Who checks to see that a ‘deep clean’ is sufficiently deep and not just erm cleaning. Which people commute every day to their jobs as deep cleaning inspectors at the Institute Of Deep Cleaning: the body which sets all the enforceable legal standards for deep cleaning across the land? Could it be nobody?
Where will we go when even ‘deep cleaning’ isn’t enough? Will the Shake N Vac advert make a come back as a public information film? The whole thing will begin to sound like the titles of bad porno movies: your local library will be closed for some ‘super deep cleaning action’ – cleaning that penetrates deeper than ever before and in places you never imagined!
Stop colluding with this nonsense. Slapping a media-friendly badge on to cleaners doesn’t change them into people with special powers or get them any better paid.
If you want to see some actual ‘deep cleaning’ then go to China where people in Hazmat suits with all sorts of special kit actually do some pukka cleaning. But in China it seems the reality is more important than the spin – an idea that will surely never catch on in the West. In our advertising and PR dominated culture, if you want to change the nature of something you just change its name. Job done.
Must dash everyone. In these troubled times I must go and ‘deep clean’ my teeth and initiate my ‘ultimate cleanse’ shower and ‘galactic standard’ hand wash procedures…
Since 2013 I have worked between 4-6 hours a day on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and uncovering truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
I am a home schooling parent on a low income – paying for the domain, web hosting and security entirely out of my own pocket.
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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
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