Dumbing Down Vocabulary

I need some help.  I don't remember exactly when this phenomenon first began but I know it has irritated me for some time.  When did "bust" or "busted" replace broken, break, apprehended, arrested, etc.

When I hear a news anchor reading a serious piece then interject "busted" it's like fingernails on a blackboard to me.  Or is it chalk board these days.  Blackboard is probably politically incorrect.

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal there was an editorial about the over reaching of New York's crop of AGs.   I'm reading along about the current AG's attempt to... ""bust" up the class action law suit..."

Please!  I know government is  trying to redefine much of what is happening in the world.  We no longer have a war on terror.  And groups are overly sensitive to what "they", who ever "they" are, feel are racial slurs.  Like the Washington "Redskins".

When real American Indians come out en masse to complain about the name then I might listen.  Until then, go away.

Words used to be fun.  Slang used to be fun but now it always seems to be offensive to some one  some where therefore it must never more be used. I'm tempted to one day write a post using every politically incorrect word or phrase I can come up with.  The problem is there are so many it could turn into a book!

Bust certainly has it's place in the vernacular.  "Spring is bustin' out all over...",  California or bust,  I busted my chops and so on.  Times, however, when there are more appropriate words why are they no longer used?  Is it a fault of education?  Is it lazy writing?  Do the people who write the copy for news readers not know better?  Can't the news readers change it or don't they review their copy before going on air? Maybe they don't know better either.

As for print media, the fault must certainly be with the writer. I'd like to think an editor would change it. Then again, to do so might be offensive to the writer thus lowering his or her self esteem and we can't have that.

We'll just go on dumbing down the language until there are so few words for so many things, no one will have a clue what's being discussed.  We can barely read, "they" want to eliminate the teaching of cursive writing in many schools and now they want to make words so multidimensional they lose their magic, their charm, their poetry.

Face it, there is nothing even marginally appealing about the word bust in it's common usage today. It's a shame.  And a puzzlement.