No doubt when you were growing up, some adult admonished you to “say what you mean, and mean what you say.” That advice should be spread far and wide today when politicians, commentators, and others use words and phrases without any precision.

When the New York Times hired Sarah Jeong, critics pointed to all of her tweets and verbal attacks on “white people” and law enforcement.  J.J. McCullough in a recent commentary reminds us that one of the defenses of her horrible statements was that all of this was just done “satirically and hyperbolically.”

Well, using extreme language and hyperbole might get you hired by the New York Times but it won’t work in the real world. While taking a tour of the White House, say that you wish you could kill the president. See how that works out for you. While you are in a police station, say that you wish all the cops would die. I doubt you would get a linguistic pass for that statement.

The term “fake news” used to be applied to websites (like The Onion) that used satire to make a political point. Today the term has been so overused that it is almost meaningless. For most people today, the term “fake news” is used to describe a story or news organization they dislike.

And while we are talking about hyperbole and “fake news,” we need to mention the president’s tweets. Some of his defenders try to defend his indefensible comments by saying that we shouldn’t always take what he writes literally. No, we should always take the words and actions of a president seriously.

We have also heard the term “deep state” used indiscriminately. It used to mean a nefarious group of insiders in a foreign government. Today, it is often used to describe some federal bureaucrat you don’t like and don’t trust.

These are just a few examples of why our elders told us to “say what you mean, and mean what you say.”