Not sure why this is, but no one ever says the word "zombie" in a zombie movie (except Zombieland). I know that it would get tiresome if they ONLY said zombie, but have they said it once? Did anyone use the z-word in Night of the Living Dead? It just seems that if you have cities overrun with millions of dead people walking around and craving the flesh of the living, the word "zombie" might come up in casual conversation.
In NOTL they were "ghouls", which is a flipped inversion. As for why no one ever says it, well, up until the Romero model became the standard model (and that probably couldn't be said to be in "general" popular culture until quite a while after DAWN OF THE DEAD (original), despite the popularity of NOTL and all the resultant knock-offs), "zombie" probably wouldn't occur to the common man as these weren't mindless slaves toiling in the Carribean. Post-Romero until the Triumph of Geek Culture (tm), you have the problem of acknowledging popular culture in a way that doesn't immediately undermine the validity of the threat (see also "vampires"). THE NIGHT STALKER TV movie and the related series were probably the best example of the popular-culture struggle in a narrative of presenting the ideas of monsters that the general public were familiar with but considered generally "kids stuff".
As for whether or not this is what we've been waiting for, well, the jury's still out for me. I wanted a Romero zombie style TV series back in the early 90s and now it all feels - well, the jury's still out, but I've changed a lot since then. Too much focus on survival and the central nihilism of the Romero concept get undermined and it becomes just another variation on 1980's ROAD WARRIOR bullshit-culture ("the nuclear war we may have to start to kill Communism, when it comes, will be survivable but only by hardened survivor types that know you have to enforce Democracy with wanton violence"), another "possible threat" of the movies/pop-culture neutered by serial narrative (see also the pallative purpose of THE X-FILES in the 90s - "it's okay of the Government does something behind our backs because everybody believes in conspiracies and all conspiracies are equally crazy and thus equally valid/equally dismissable". I expect the defusing "environmental threat" pop-culture narrative to be popping up any year now. The "constant surveillance is okay because it helps reduce crime and terrorism" pop-cult narrative seems already in place in the UK with things like TORCHWOOD). On the other hand, embracing the inherent nihilism of the Romero model quickly leads to a darkly unwatchable show (I wryly joked with my friend, after watching the first episode of THE WALKING DEAD, that each show should follow a new character until the episode's end when they make some fatal mistake and get eaten. Every week, new variation of the theme!). Too much soap opera (which seems to be the hidden secret weapon of the "new television", lifted from comic books in general) and I'd turn it off either way. Maybe it's just that I don't really trust the serial format anymore, regardless. But then I'm bitter.
As for empathizing, I have a somewhat different view than your "political correctness" idea. I loved Romero's films (and dislike most modern zombie films) because Romero went out of his way to give the audience moments of empathy with the zombies (Barbara's brother and the little girl in NOTL, The Nurse stuck in the door in DAWN, Bub in DAY), humanizing them (sometimes by making them laughable). "They're us" not just because of the propensity for violence, but because we'll all end up like that someday. Specifically, the scenes of non-aggresive zombies in DAWN OF THE DEAD (original, of course) underline this point - the dead are to be pitied, not hated (so obviously, I disagree that "that's as far as you can go"). The Modern take makes them the "killable enemy" (amongst other things by, yes, making them fast-moving, roaring monsters - something the WALKING DEAD hasn't really done much of yet, thank goodness), extending another subtle point of Romero's films (that in the end, the audience is getting off on watching people die, really - just "people" redefined so that you don't have to care about them) into uncomfortable (for the thinking) but more pallatible ("it's fun!") territory and missing the point. Or perhaps not - and here I can link to a wonderful article Scattercat found, at
http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-1/.
The Hobbesian Conservatism of the new zombie film, as posited by the article, is wonderfully served by making the zombies "the masses" and leaving out the empathizing. It gives us all the illicit thrill Romero was playing with, with none of the troubling social commentary (like most modern pop-culture)! As to what that may be training us for, well, my current take on the New Zombie is that they represent the pop-cult audiences' subconscious hatred of the actual reality of Democracy in the modern age (and how it conflicts with the goals of Capitalism), in which everyone, including the stupid and violent and slow and angry and hungry and poor, have to come along and get annoying things like "human rights" as well - wouldn't it be good if we could just feel better about shooting them until "the problems" are solved and "feel bad" about it later - a kinder, gentler, ROAD-WARRIOR-esque "final solution" for rough-tough survivalists? But then, I'm the kind of cynic (on my bad days) that hopes I'm not alive for the private security forces gunning people down in the streets during food riots while FOX NEWS shills tell us how it's okay because they're breaking the law and thus "deserve it" (and the pussy Neo-Libs do nothing, as always, for fear of their treasured "honored opposition" status). Yeah, I'm "that" kind of crazy...
But I really do hope THE WALKING DEAD turns out to have a lot up its sleeve. We'll know eventually.
