Optics¶
Political Rhetoric, 2011
A word people who want to sound intellectual™ use for “appearance”.
Optics are the scientific study of light and vision. That was, until President Jimmy Carter’s special counsel on inflation, Robert Strauss, misused the term in 1978. However, the contemporary abuse of this doublespeak found its legs during the Libya crisis of Barack Obama’s reign in 2011, as the media needed a word which sounded smarter.