Oxymorons

Most people know what an oxymoron is supposed to be - a combination of words with opposite or very different meanings. Jokes get made about them all the time. But the real oxymorons seem to be accepted much more readily.

For example, I see headlines about famous people taking secrets to the grave. Yet the magazines are apparently telling what those secrets are. Which makes it an oxymoron. A secret taken to the grave is secret only if no one knows about it. That's the definition of a secret - something no one else knows.

Yet people will read and believe the articles. I can understand why the term secret is still used. No one wants to read about the knowledge or the information that so-and-so took to his/her grave. It doesn't sound scandalous.

If I had a secret to take to my grave, I would make certain no one knew it and there was nothing around that even hinted at it. Otherwise it would be the secret I kept in life. And that someone spilled once I was no longer living.

But no one wants to see "Someone who might be famous but probably isn't spills the secrets of a famous person who had trusted him/her with them" or "Secrets of so-and-so exposed". Well, actually, that second headline might get attention. But see the words "The secret so-and-so took to the grave" and you get people buying the magazine like crazy.

Because "private lives of the stars" is another oxymoron. Once people becomes famous they don't have a private life. Often, their family members don't either. For some strange reason, we seem to feel that a person gives up the right to privacy once he/she becomes famous. We think we have the right to root through their history and hold up every mistake to the light of day. Yet, let anyone try and do that back to one of us and privacy laws get quoted and lawsuits are threatened.

But this post is about oxymorons not double standards. Although the two can go hand in hand. Most double standards are or can be considered oxymorons. A lot of oxymorons are concepts that should be able to go together but for one reason or another don't so that rather than being truths they have become oxymorons. Probably the biggest oxymoron out there is common sense. Because it really isn't that common any more. Which is a shame because the world needs more of it. Maybe if we got it we'd be able to turn that other big oxymoron back into a truth instead. World peace.