When was the last time you said - "I can feel the fetus kicking!" I guess you don't work in the liberal media. Let me explain. Or better yet, let Opinion Journal explain.....

AlterNet.org has a hilarious excerpt of an interview that the delightfully named Jennifer Nix conducted with George Lakoff, the left-wing linguistics guru who has fooled Democrats into think he invented euphemism and dysphemism (ellipsis in original):

Nix: Can you give an example of the media not understanding what's going on?

Lakoff: A producer from a National Public Radio show "On the Media" called me up recently to tell me that [a style manual] . . . many journalists around the country call on when writing their stories is dictating that journalists stop using the word fetus and replace it with the term unborn child. This producer asked me if I thought this was political, and when I said, "Of course it's political," she debated me. We've heard this phrase unborn child so much that it's physically changing our brains. Also, the word fetus has been demonized, even though it is a technical, scientific term. The right is so successfully framing this issue that a term representing a political agenda is becoming the "neutral" or "objective" word that journalists are supposed to use in their stories.

Of course, Lakoff gets it exactly backwards. As we've chronicled extensively, news organizations bend over backward to use the term fetus, often with ridiculous results. Isn't the more "political" term the one that differs from common usage? Has a pregnant woman ever said, "The fetus is kicking"? For that matter, has a woman choosing an abortion ever said, "I don't want the fetus"? Any reporter who uses the term fetus where an ordinary person would say child or baby might as well stick a pro-choice bumper sticker right underneath his byline.