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"Spry" refers to any senior citizen who is not in a wheelchair or a coma, and "stereotype" introduces the discussion of something entirely obvious that the writer wishes to disparage, as in "the stereotype that boys like to play with trucks and girls like to play with dolls." "Life-style" has made the transition from psychobabble to journalese. Though often misused to indicate gays, joggers, wheat-germ consumers and other defiant minorities, it actually refers to any practice that makes the normal citizen's hair stand on end. The fellow who tortures iguanas in his basement has a life-style. The rest of us merely have lives.
Many terms in journalese come from sportswriting. "A complex, sensitive man" (lunatic) and "ebullient" (space cadet) were developed by baseball writers. When baseball players of the 1940s and 1950s were fined for the usual excesses with women and booze, the writers faithfully reported that the penalties were for "nightclubbing." Nowadays the vast consumption of controlled and uncontrolled substances would be covered by circumlocutions like "he works hard and he plays hard." Sportswriters also taught journalese users how to recast a boring story with exciting verbiage. Hence all the crucial issues, dramatic confrontations and stunning breakthroughs. "Arguably" is the most useful adverb on the excitement frontier, because it introduces a sweeping factoid that no one will be able to check: "Frobisher is arguably the richest Rotarian living west of the Susquehanna."
Often English words mean exactly the opposite in journalese. "Multitalented" means "untalented" and is used to identify entertainers who have great pep and who perspire a lot but do nothing particularly well. "Community" means non-community, as in the intelligence community, the gay community or the journalese-speaking community. Under this usage, everyone shooting everyone else in and around Beirut, say, could be fairly referred to as the Lebanese community.
"Middle America" has disappeared from political journalese, for the simple reason that in the Age of Reagan, America is all middle, with no edges. Similarly, yesterday's "radical right-winger" is today's "mainstream Republican," while "unabashed" now modifies "liberal" instead of "conservative." Yet most political journalese is timeless. A "savvy political pro" is anyone who has lived through two or more Administrations and can still get a table in a decent restaurant. An elder statesman is an out-of-office politician who is senile, and a neoliberal is any Democrat under 45 with blow-dried hair. All seasoned reporters (old-timers) know that when two or more political appointees are fired on the same day, they need only check their calendars before tapping out "Bloody Wednesday" or "the Thursday Early-Afternoon Massacre." Political journalese has a number of famed option plays. One man's squealer is another's whistle blower, and Frobisher's magnificent five-point agenda can also be described as a shopping list, or worse, a wish list.