Simply excessive

The late Martin "Red" Gibson, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, wrote a textbook that deplored what he called "excessive elegance,'' fancy titles for common things. You see them all the time: medical center for hospital, media center for library, customer service representatives for bank tellers, sanitary engineers for trash collectors, and on and on.

I recalled Gibson's American Press Institute lecture about these terms while editing Friday's commentary by Carl Golden about the state's budget crisis. He noted that Gov. Corzine and the legislative leaders kept referring to a balance of "recurring revenues'' with "non-recurring revenues.'' As Golden wisely pointed out, that's a fancy way of saying taxes or increased fees vs. one-shots and gimmicks, or anything that doesn't say "tax.'' Thankfully, we didn't hear much about taxes as "revenue enhancers.''

The other evening, my hair stylist -- that's how my wife refers to my barber -- told me about losing one of her long-time customers. You see, he couldn't bring himself to having his hair cut at her latest shop, a beauty salon. What would Red Gibson say?