A Wired Journalist Shows How to Avoid Boosting Musk's and Trump's Dodgy "DOGE" Propaganda
It's a small thing to say "Dodge" instead of DOGE, but words do matter fighting authoritarian takeovers.
Please take time to listen to, and share, the recent Stacey Abrams Assembly Required podcast on Elon Musk’s nearly unfettered access to the digital assets of agencies managing trillions of dollars in government transactions and petabytes of Americans’ personal data.
Please hit the ♡ button if you like what I’m doing here. I’m told it helps post visibility.
Abrams did a great job laying out the momentous legal and political issues raised by this shadow presidency with her guests, Wired senior politics editor Leah Feiger and University of Pennsylvania law professor and Strict Scrutiny co-host Kate Shaw.
But Feiger, who’s part of the fantastic Wired team covering the Musk end of Trump’s first 100 days, did something in her part of the conversation that was kind of buried but needs to be in the foreground.
When referencing Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, she didn’t say “DŌGE.” She said “dodge.” Here’s my brief commentary picking out several great examples.
There’s been a woeful pattern of parroting Musk’s name for his Trump-sanctioned budget busting project.
It’s not a department. It’s a rebranded technical office – the US Digital Service – at least that’s what Trump’s executive order said. This “department” is tasked with "modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity."
In court proceedings so far Trump administration lawyers have yet to clarify what Musk’s operatives are allowed to do or even clarify who is in charge. News outlets keep reporting granular shifts in assertions. Keep track via Google News.
Or step back and understand the fog and flood are the story.
Every time it is used, DOGE is also a not-so-subtle promotion of Musk’s favorite crypto-currency - Dogecoin, as here when he was the guest host of SNL in 2021):
That’s why I was happy to hear Feiger routinely refer to DOGE as DODGE.
Why not?
I’ll reach out to p.r. and communication experts like David Fenton and George Lakoff for their thoughts. Here’s a related post on David Fenton’s views of Trump and information pollution:
A Call for a Communication Solution to Trump's Climate Information Pollution
The longtime progressive public relations pioneer David Fenton and I have disagreed on some things - most notably the role of nuclear energy in powering a climate-safe future. But we agree on lots more and his media and communication insights are invaluable.
Then there are the Artful Dodgers.
Gil Duran, who co-runs the great TheFramelab.org blog/newsletter on politics, language and the brain sent this note: This seems like a question of "sound symbolism." "Dodge" = Evasion, Trickery. "Dodge" reinforces a frame of deception, avoidance, and corporate misdirection. This fits the idea of a billionaire-led government takeover that sidesteps democratic accountability.
Corporations often "dodge" taxes, regulations, and oversight—an apt metaphor for a private takeover of public institutions. This pronunciation encodes corporate trickery into the name itself.
There's no reason to accept the other, odd pronouncing of the word.