Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Opening the Department of Words Matter allows me to underline one of the words I don’t like much these days – transparency.

No one knows what it means, especially in politics.

It is just a code word political figures turn to as they seek to justify their actions.

Wall Street Journal writer Joseph Epstein wrote about this in an “essay” that appeared under this headline:  “I See Through Your Calls for ‘Transparency:’  Like all other vogue words, it will gradually lose its appeal and fall out of common use.”

Here are excerpts of what he wrote:

“Words, like clothes, can lose their elegance, come to seem inappropriate, sometimes even no longer quite fit.  They can also wear out from overuse.  Think ‘consumer society,’ think ‘lifestyle’ — vogue words of yesteryear. Think ‘tipping point,’ think ‘outlier’ — more recent vogue words now no longer altogether in vogue.

“Every now and then a word emerges from obscurity, or even from nothingness or a merely potential and not actual existence, into sudden popularity,” wrote H.W. Fowler, one of the small number of gods in my cultural pantheon.  ‘Ready acceptance of vogue-words seems to some people the sign of an alert mind; to others it stands for the herd instinct and lack of individuality.’

“Then there are ‘cant’ words deployed in ‘parrot-like appeal to principles, religious, moral, or scientific, that the speaker does not believe in or act upon or does not understand.”

That, Epstein writes, applies to the word “transparent.”

Here is how the dictionary defines the word:

“The quality of allowing light to pass through so that objects behind can be distinctly seen.”

Sounds good, but…

“In congressional hearings, in city councils, no doubt in psychotherapy sessions, transparency nowadays is regularly requested, even though many of the various people requesting surely must know that it isn’t really available.

“At the moment, with hundreds of drones flying over New Jersey and New York, and with no one knowing quite what they are doing there or whose they are, one hears from every quarter — senators, representatives, city officials, local citizens — the call for transparency about these flying objects.  None has been forthcoming, and so the calls continue, with transparent and transparency, at least for now, lodging themselves more firmly in the language.”

The word “transparent,” Epstein adds, “has several shades of meaning, and various synonyms, among them pellucid, diaphanous and translucent.  Transparent has itself become a baggy-pantsed synonym of sorts for ‘the truth.’  Politicians nowadays regularly call for transparency, though the majority of them are barred from delivering or even receiving it by their ideological blinders.”

Then, Epstein continues with a few solid sentences that indicate that, among other things, he knows how to use words well.

“Words can glimmer, glow, dance and sing, but they don’t always obey their users.  Transparent is such a word.  By now discerning people should be avoiding the word not like the plague (a cliché this discerning writer can’t allow himself) but sedulously.”

For me, a retired lobbyist, I heard the word “transparency” early on when it was used to describe the State of Oregon budget-making process.

Let’s make it transparent said those responsible for the challenge..

But the word was nearly useless. 

If you looked at the State of Oregon budget and tried to make sense of it, you would be at a loss.  So would other taxpayers who fund it.

Even to me, after so many years of involvement, I found the word to be opaque when it came to understanding the state budget.

So, if you hear the word, be skeptical, at least until you see that it actually does mean clarity of thought and effort.