...of which I'm never really short on, anyway.

Current news headline from the AOL.com home page: "Hurricane That Devastated Haiti May Target U.S."

I'm not about to go all media studies on this little nugget - I've had enough of that all day and am just winding down from it now, but I couldn't help but notice. Perhaps the headline link writer didn't have any ulterior motive as she wrote that - maybe she didn't even think twice about it (doubtful, given the layers of production that the content of a major corporate homepage must filter through, but still.) But do you notice anything about that sentence? I do - it's the hardly-required anthropomorphizing of this otherwise-nothing-like-any-person-I-know weather system (as if giving it a name wasn't phase one in that process, but I digress). Things that don't think don't 'target' - nor do they attack (and for the sake of argument, put the word 'attack' in place of 'target' and see how jarring and ridiculous it sounds.)
Unless you're willing to tell me Hurricane Jeanne has suddenly, spontaneously developed a consciousness - in which case I'd say that's fantastic, but perhaps it would have been a little more convenient if it did so before killing 700-odd Haitians. That better be one penitent hurricane.

Let's look at a couple verbs that just as easily could have fit in that metonymic slot:

To approach...
To move towards...
To target...

What do you feel in your gut when you hear that word 'target'?
Who else (so we're told) 'targets' the U.S. on a constant, eternal basis, who's always coming at us with destructive, hateful, evil ambitions?

Take out the first four words of the headline, leave the last three:

"_________________ May Target U.S."

That's got to be saved in a macro at just about every corporate media office. Say you're a journalist - nary a day would go by that you couldn't use it somewhere. Wonderful.

The language of fear is even - or perhaps, most profoundly and subtly - at work in the most innocuous places. Perhaps it's even more important to notice it when it's in incremental little episodes like this. Picky, picky, picky, right?
Remember, never stop being afraid.