A desperate declaration of war on word salad

Quite frankly, moving forward, our partners, community partners, and stakeholders must step up to the plate to reach out, speak out, and double down on a robust, impactful, pushback against Word Salad.

So, clearly, our paid professional purveyors of political communication are obviously resonating with an obsessive-compulsive doubling down on words and phrases that frankly take up space but add no weight to The Conversation.

Going forward, we must bring a sense of urgency to the table and, quite frankly, unpack this, as we move forward to step up to the plate and meet this challenge in the State of Florida.

Along with manatees and panthers, the simple declarative sentence is an endangered species. The annoying and downright ludicrous verbal tics of Word Salad have taken over the language of politics, like pythons in the Everglades and Gambian pouched rats in Carl Hiaasen’s new novel.

Here’s a partial list of fresh from Florida Word Salad ingredients:

at the table

basically

call out

challenge

clearly

community partners

double down

drill down

frankly

get our arms around

going forward

icon

I’d love to work with you

impactful

legendary

lessons learned

level the playing field

like

obviously

moving forward

partnering

picking winners and losers

policies in place

pushback

reach out

resonates

right?

robust

sense of urgency

So

speak out

stakeholders

step up to the plate

strategic vision

thank you for that question

thank you for the opportunity

that said

The Conversation

The State of Florida

The takeaway

unfortunately

unpack

working group

Some of these nasty bits of kale show up twice in a single sentence. Or three times. A particularly fluent speaker of Word Salad can spew four or five in a row without pausing for breath.

It will not be easy to rid The State of Florida of the empty calories and vapid clichés of a pervasive verbal virus that reduces even the smartest and most sincere speaker to an easy target for parody. The public expects and deserves nutritious platters of protein-rich food for thought. People in #TheProcess, resolve to cast off those rhetorical pork rinds and potato chips, and #makeFloridacoherentagain.