Challenging or Difficult?

Yahoo send out a mail, asking their account holders to comment on how they deal with their finances in these challenging times. They want us to sign up for yahoo finance, maybe spend some money there, you know the drill. But I want to talk about the ´challenging´, as in ´challenging times´.

It used to be, once upon a time, that times like these were simply called ´difficult´. That was straight, to the point, no ambiguity here, everybody understood it. But somehow that doesn´t seem to be politically correct anymore. It´s just not proactive enough, is it?

Who falls for that nonsense? These times are difficult, the business environment is difficult, life is difficult, for crying out loud. So what! It always has been. But let´s call things by their names. Talking politically correct talk always makes me feel as if people are hiding from reality.