Relax, Bambi, it’s only a managed harvest.

When advertisers, lobbyists, promoters, politicians, flacks and hacks use a euphemism long enough it usually gets adopted by the media. Our dictionary definition of “gaming” is defined as: “Euphemism for gambling. Used by papers supporting a casino. A specific lottery is always a ‘game.’ The effect is to make high-takes gambling sound like Scrabble or Monopoly.” And sure enough, Massachusetts passed a casino-enabling law overseen by an official “Gaming Commission.”

Another wonderful euphemism is “harvesting” to mean hunting. An Associated Press story, Jan. 5, 2018, in The Boston Globe is headlined: “2017 deer harvest was largest ever recorded.” The story says, the “deer harvest was 13,220” during the hunting season Oct. 16-Nov. 25, according to state wildlife officials at MassWildlife. The agency is analyzing 2017 to prepare for the “annual spring deer management review.”

Last year, the Globe’s story put the word “harvest” in quotation marks. Guess the anti-hunting editor missed this year’s story. He or she also missed “deer management.”

File under: Wait for venison to be called recycled harvested managed deer.

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