Fetus? The notion that Trump’s Health and Human Services department could dictate to the Centers for Disease Control that it was banned from using the word “fetus” was beyond outrageous. It was absurd.

The [Washington Post] article said that C.D.C. policy analysts were told of the forbidden words and phrases at a meeting on Thursday with senior officials who oversee the agency’s budget. Other words included “entitlement,” “diversity” and “evidence-based.”

In some cases, The Post reported, alternative phrases were suggested. Instead of “science-based,” or “evidence-based,” The Post reported, “the suggested phrase is ‘C.D.C. bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes.’’’

Unnamed sources, confirmed with other unnamed sources, named the list of banned words:

 The forbidden terms are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

It was beyond ridiculous. It also wasn’t quite true.

The Times confirmed some details of the report with several officials, although a few suggested that the proposal was not so much a ban on words but recommendations to avoid some language to ease the path toward budget approval by Republicans.

So when the Times used the words, “was not so much,” they meant “isn’t at all.” CDC Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald said:

CDC has a long-standing history of making public health and budget decisions that are based on the best available science and data and for the benefit of all people—and we will continue to do so.

And HHS chimed in as well.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a misrepresentation.

“The assertion that H.H.S. has ‘banned words’ is a complete mischaracterization of discussions regarding the budget formulation process,” Matt Lloyd, an agency spokesman, said in a statement. “H.H.S. will continue to use the best scientific evidence available to improve the health of all Americans. H.H.S. also strongly encourages the use of outcome and evidence data in program evaluations and budget decisions.”

But even in the the story backtracking the original claim, the Times couldn’t help themselves from including an unnamed source’s paean to the Apocalypse.

A former federal official, who asked not to be named, called the move unprecedented.

“It’s absurd and Orwellian, it’s stupid and Orwellian, but they are not saying to not use the words in reports or articles or scientific publications or anything else the C.D.C. does,” the former official said. “They’re saying not to use it in your request for money because it will hurt you. It’s not about censoring what C.D.C. can say to the American public. It’s about a budget strategy to get funded.”

While it is not at all what the WaPo screamed it was, evoking shrieks of outrage for all the wrong reasons (though not Fake News, which doesn’t happen at mainstream newspapers like the WaPo), it does reflect the silliness of political cover.

If a CDC request for funding is expressed in words like “evidence-based” and “transgender,” it can be used against conservatives to outrage their constituents. A pro-life pol can’t be exposed to voting in favor of funding for a scientific study that undermines their constituents’ favored beliefs. And if an exposed red seat does so, a blue challenger will seize upon the opportunity to attack him as a closet abortion lover.

This War of Words is nothing new, even if its rhetoric has grown increasingly heated and childishly silly. Clearly, the original article raised the “absurd and Orwellian” specter that the CDC would be coerced into relying on biblical passages in its reports on disease control. Clearly, that was not the case, and will not be the case. Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Rather than tone down the rhetoric, or more to the point, report facts rather than truth, the need to exacerbate every perceived offense, even after its initial false report has been corrected, remains strong.

But some in the scientific community said that forbidding certain words could help change the direction of policies at the CDC, the nation’s top public health agency.

“If you are saying you cannot use words like ‘transgender’ and ‘diversity,’ it’s a clear statement that you cannot pay attention to these issues,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University’s School of Public Health, to the Associated Press.

“Some” say it “could help change” CDC policy because it’s a “clear statement”? One would hope that the dean of BU’s School of Public Health would be pretty smart, and generally familiar with the English language. Could it? Sure, just as space aliens could appear on the steps of the capital later today, carrying a cookbook. And it could do nothing of the sort. If Dr. Galea wants to “pay attention” to words like “transgender and diversity,” who could stop her?

Then again, if her real complaint is that she might not get her hands on federal funding to prove that icebergs are a weapon of the Patriarchy to undermine diversity, she might walk away sad. Not every project is worthy of a few million tax dollars.

The idea that government would ban words is, without a doubt, absurd and Orwellian. The idea that certain words will play better in funding requests, on the other hand, is basic politics. And it’s made more obvious by the abusive use of rhetoric, carefully crafted words and phrases designed to convey one side’s message or the other’s, dog whistles notwithstanding.

There should be no words, no ideas, that science finds so ideologically unworthy that they’re removed from the table. But there are, of course, on both sides of the aisle. If the war on words is going to be fought by one side, why be surprised that the other is going to fight back? The sword cuts both ways, even if there shouldn’t be a sword at all.