Euphemisms sweep away the manure

As an amateur collector of euphemisms, I’m thrilled to clip new specimens that pass my smell test for excellence.

Perhaps you saw them and inhaled their perfumed perfection.

Granted, they’re not in the same nuclear league as Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of unconditional surrender in 1945:

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage,” the courtly emperor said following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Still, I’m pasting these local beauties into the scrap book.

As you’ve probably read ad nauseam, a Los Angeles developer wants to build houses on the Escondido Country Club, once a north Escondido golf landmark but now a fenced ghost course.

For more than a year, Michael Schlesinger has been in foul odor for dumping five tons of raw chicken manure on the sun-blasted fairways he’d stopped watering.

Commentary: More Logan Jenkins columns about our region

Why would Schlesinger (or, more accurately, guys who worked for him) do such a gross thing on withered grass?

It takes the deductive abilities of a sixth-grader to figure out with 95 percent certainty that Stuck in the Rough, Schlesinger’s aptly named company, was retaliating against neighbors who’d passed an initiative blocking his plans.

You want to raise a stink, I’ll give you a stink!

Responding to resident complaints of nausea, headaches and hampered breathing, the San Diego Air Pollution Control District threatened to fine Schlesinger for poisoning the air.

Last week, the district announced a settlement: Schlesinger forks over $100,000; in exchange, he admits no guilt.

When interviewed, district Director Robert Kard said the “fine” (mark this word) for dumping raw “manure” (mark this one, too) on dry fairways was a fair resolution.

In his interview, however, Ronald Richards, Stuck in the Rough’s lawyer, rejected the district’s harsh words.

He insisted the manure was not manure but “soil enhancer.”

(This delightful euphemism may owe something to the genius transformation of torture into “enhanced interrogation techniques.”)

In addition, Richards emphasized with a straight face that the $100,000 fine was not a fine but was, in fact, a “donation” to the region’s air quality.

In other words, out of the goodness of his green philanthropic heart, Schlesinger was happy to improve the atmosphere, not pay a penalty for spoiling the air.

The face-saving soft-focusing of reality.

When executed with style, they send thrills up the legs of euphemism collectors.

Another memorable example of the art form was chronicled in detail recently by the Voice of San Diego.

A $40,000 report critical of Poway Unified School District’s technology program evidently struck Superintendent John Collins as too blunt.

What the document needed was an infusion of euphemisms to blur the Kansas City consultant’s harsh lighting.

Without taking credit for his fine-comb editing — what modesty! — Collins put wavy hair on bald words.

For example, “extreme and even chaotic” decisions became “problematic” decisions.

“Wasted” investment was changed to the Hirohito-like “not having the desired impact.”

In addition to his wordsmithing, Collins slashed whole passages that reflect poorly on the district’s IT management, the Voice reports.

(To hard-line euphemists, deletion is an admission of failure. But I quibble.)

Collins is the most highly paid superintendent in the county, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported recently.

In light of this newly discovered lode of euphemisms, his Croesus-level compensation makes much more sense.

In addition to an educator, Poway also has a deft editor, an enhancer of the truth.

All the manure is swept away, leaving behind a sweet load of B.S.

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