A possible dodge for canny sportscasters appears to be proving just as useful for general-news reporters--perhaps especially so if they're a tad too involved with the nuances of presenting their good side to the camera to have given much thought to the finer points of the human psyche.   

Thus, whether they're describing a long dreamt-of reunion of twins cruelly separated for thirty years, people going through the ruins of their homes after a devastating earthquake, or a ceremony bestowing a Nobel Prize on a person who was born blind in a Third World country too poor to afford a paved road, newsfolk today pop in the E-word with such undeviating robotic-manufacturing efficiency you'd swear it was mandated by the Official Manual of Voice-Overs.  Then, having once uttered it (typically in a tone meant to convey a sense of understated but heartfelt empathy), they're done with the feelings and mushy stuff.

Ordinary people, always quick to pick up on the mores and habits of their perceived betters on the media mountaintop, have modified their own usage accordingly.  As a result, when people have had something remarkable enough occur in their lives to place them in front of the media's microphones, and they're asked how they felt during their experience, they answer straight from the perceived script:  "Emotional." 

Helpful, that.

It's hard to see how people steeped in a culture that considers this an adequate way of describing the complex tapestry of human feeling might rise to the kind of subtly nuanced, frank and fearless examination of their own personal motivations and passions that has characterized great figures in the past.  It could even stymie a simple attempt to get help with a personal problem.  "I feel...I feel stuff.  Like, you know, emotional."    What in the world could a shrink make of that?

Of course, "talk therapy" appears to be on its way to extinction, and possibly the more modern approach would be for the doctor to simply prescribe a pill that makes you talk that way regardless of how you started out speaking.  So perhaps the usage is appropriate, in the grand scheme of things, for an age that seems bent on morphing us into formless blobs of protoplasm and id.

But if we're going to replace descriptive terms requiring thought or other unpleasant exertion with something more effortless and universally applicable, why stop at just words for people's feelings?

Personally, I'm waiting for the day when it's common to describe objects as "very adjective."