Overheard from another table this morning at breakfast in a public setting:
"This change is necessitating reorging."
Arrghh. No confirmation at this time whether the speaker was actually David Brent.
Overheard, to my sorrow
5 Replies
Category Archives: Words
McCain increasingly turns toward November
Here’s an excerpt from a McCain release that illustrates what we’re seeing more and more, which is the "presumptive" nominee starting the general election campaign:
The Washington Post this week clearly laid out one of the key differences at stake in the coming general election. The Post reported, "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year’s spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group." Barack Obama is no better; he requested and received over $91 million of our hard-earned tax dollars for his own special interests and earmarks.
What’s worse is that Senator Obama, who claims to be a candidate of "change," has refused to disclose the earmarks he requested prior to last year, when he started running for president. Washington needs change, but we will ever see it from someone who is part of the business as usual crowd in the Senate. How many earmarks did John McCain request last year? Zero.
This is a good place for him to start, since fighting pork gets him in good with those crybabies in his base we keep hearing about, and plays well with independents. Heck, even Speaker Pelosi has teamed up with Jim DeMint to fight earmarks.
One quibble, though: It makes no logical sense to say, "Barack Obama is no better," when in the same sentence you quantify the degree to which he was at least less bad: He sought $91 million worth of pork to Sen. Clinton’s $340 million. Assuming, of course, those numbers are accurate.
Huck Finn had a good rule of them that should be applied to political rhetoric: "Overreaching don’t pay."
The real split in American politics
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor
LATE ON SUPER Tuesday, I was typing on my blog in one room while Hillary Clinton was addressing her supporters on the TV in another.
I couldn’t hear every word, but the ones that did cut through were telling:
Now, we know the Republicans won’t give up the White House without a fight. Well, let me be clear — I won’t let anyone swift boat this country’s future.
“Republicans.” “Fight.” “Swift boat.” Terms calculated to stir the blood of the Angry Faithful. Then, later: “Together, we’re going to take back America.”
There was kinder, gentler stuff (if I’m allowed to borrow language from that other side) in the speech, about health care for all and supporting our veterans and helping the powerless. But Barack Obama talks about that stuff, too. Since these primaries are about choosing one or the other, one listens for the differences.
Between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, the difference lies in those fighting words. It’s a difference set out with great clarity in a recent letter to the editor in this newspaper:
…(W)hile Sen. Barack Obama is an incredible orator and inspires hope for a post-partisan future, the reality of American politics is partisan. Astute voters realize this and want the candidate who is best suited to fight the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton and her team have gone toe-to-toe with the Republicans and beaten them more often than not.
The reality of American politics is partisan. And Barack Obama is running on a platform of changing that reality. So, in his own way, is John McCain.
The Democrats to whom Sen. Clinton appeals don’t despise Sen. Obama (they save that for Republicans), but they don’t see him as having his blood sufficiently up for doing battle with the “enemy.” And they’re right.
Consider what Sen. Obama said in South Carolina on the night of his primary victory:
We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents… it’s the kind of partisanship where you’re not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea — even if it’s one you never agreed with. That’s the kind of politics that is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.
In the Republican camp, Sen. McCain has done more than just talk about moving beyond mindless partisanship; he’s risked his political future repeatedly to work with Democrats to achieve goals that put country before party. Last week, he asked the Angry Faithful in his party to “calm down,” and defended his habit of working across the aisle. Self-appointed spokesman for the Angry Faithful Rush Limbaugh responded:
When did the measure of conservatism… become reaching out to Democrats?… If this were a war, what we’re saying is, “Enemy, come on in, and come be who you are when you get here.”… We view those people as threats to the American way of life, as we’ve always known it…. We view them as people who need to be defeated, not worked with.
The truly great irony here is that the Angries on the left and the right do work together. In their pas de deux of mutual loathing, they cling to each other so tightly that there’s no room for anyone who’d like to separate them and create a space for rational discourse, or — the gods of left and right forbid — agreement on issues.
Here’s an example of how the left’s Angries work with their counterparts on the right: The left emotionally demands stem cell research, as Sen. Clinton did in her speech Tuesday. The right cries, No, Never! Ignored are such facts as a) stem cell research is going on, just without federal funding in some areas; b) recent breakthroughs could make embryonic stem cells, the kind being fought over, irrelevant; and c) the man Sen. Clinton seeks to face in the fall, John McCain, favors broadened stem cell research.
Another example: Last week, the leftists of the Berkeley, Calif., city council dissed the U.S. Marines. Eager warriors on the right (such as our own Rep. Joe Wilson and Sen. Jim DeMint) practically fell over themselves rushing to denounce the Berkeley council. The Marines are a great bogeyman for the loonies in Berkeley; Berkeley is a rare, juicy steak to the right. Call me paranoid, but sometimes I suspect the two sides of working out these stunts between them ahead of time. Everybody comes out on top, except the Marines — and somehow I think the guys who took Iwo Jima will overcome this as well.
There is indeed a stark divide in this country, but it’s not between the Angry Left and the Angry Right. They just prop each other up. Collectively, they are both the Other Side to me, striving to distract us from realizing the central truth that we’re all in this together.
On the one hand are the Clinton Democrats and the Republicans who sincerely would rather see Sen. Clinton elected than Sen. McCain. They depend upon each other. They deserve each other.
The rest of us believe we deserve, for once, a presidential election between candidates who care more about solutions than whether left or right “wins.”
This is not about affirming some “mushy middle.” You can hardly find two positions farther apart that the McCain and Obama views on Iraq. They have very different ideas on how to fight America’s enemies abroad. But at least neither of them sees the main “enemy” as being their fellow Americans who happen to disagree.
More art for Mitt’s sake
Before, I thought him the most prosaic of candidates. Now, each picture of him stirs me to poetry — or something.
Here’s my latest:
Cynosure of eyes
They hung on every word
But not anymore
A haiku for Mitt
There are different ways of looking at Mitt’s departure. And when I say different, I mean different. The WSJ has a blog that’s kept count on how many lawyers there were in the race, and has been striking them off the list one by one. (I called it up because the headline, "Mitt Romney (Harvard Law ‘75) Suspends Campaign," seemed an odd thing to be stressing at this moment.)
But what’s odder still is that this "Law Blog" has invited readers to submit haiku about each lawyer-candidate who has dropped out. Some samples:
Pony with one trick,
Don’t forget Nine Eleven,
Nine Eleven’s it.They called him “tortoise”
But now the man with no hair
Has got out of ours
They call the form "bye-ku." Here’s my first attempt at one for Mitt:
French cuffs, perfect coif
He offered a ‘turnaround’
We didn’t want one
I’m sure you can do better. And no, I don’t know offhand whether he actually does wear French cuffs. Want to see my literary license?
Somebody give these TV people a thesaurus
Here it is early on the night of Super-Duper-Pooper Tuesday, and I’ve already heard the word "presumptive" too many times. Can’t these networks afford a thesaurus?
Sure, I like what the word means — when applied to McCain — but enough is enough.
How about, instead of "John McCain, presumptive…" they were to say, "John McCain, by the grace of God…"
True, the connotation does change. The denotation too, I suppose. But it has a ring to it.
Aesop updated: The Fable of Mitt and the ‘Sour Grapes’
An interested party with a certain other campaign pointed out to me the irony in Mitt Romney having duly sought the endorsement of a certain newspaper — the Concord Monitor — only to scorn that endorsement as something he wouldn’t have wanted, after he didn’t get it. Here’s what Mr. Romney’s campaign had to say about the Monitor‘s endorsement of John McCain (who so far has received about every endorsement a candidate would want):
GOV. MITT ROMNEY: THE CHOICE OF CONSERVATIVES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
Liberal Press Disagrees With Real Conservatives’ Choice For President…
And so forth, yadda-yadda, with various quotations in the same vein. In an odd wording, the release claims that the Monitor‘s "Editorial Board Personally Attacked Gov. Romney." Golly, I hope he’s gonna be OK, don’t you? Anyway, you can see the entire release here.
It’s really sort of disturbing that a supposedly serious candidate for POTUS would engage in such mindless, vapid name-calling — saying "liberal" over and over, as thought that constituted an argument. It’s the sort of thing I usually see in the less-worthy candidates for the state Legislature — the sorts of candidates who are not plugged into their communities and their real concerns, the sort who are recruited and backed by out-of-state money that knows nothing and cares nothing about our state’s concerns. It’s just plain cheesy.
But there’s nothing remarkable about Mr. Romney acting as though he didn’t want the endorsement, after he sincerely went after it. We see this sort of Aesop’s Fable phenomenon quite frequently. We have several candidates who do that right here in S.C. in every election cycle. Right up until the day the endorsement editorial runs, they are as cloyingly ingratiating as an insurance salesman, and then (after they don’t get the endorsement they had wanted so badly), they act as though they wouldn’t have accepted the newspaper’s support at gunpoint. All of a sudden, it was the last thing they ever would have wanted. That’s another sort of cheesy behavior.
But campaigns do a lot of cheesy things. Here’s hoping that Mr. Romney rises above that level as he comes to South Carolina. I look forward to interviewing him for our endorsement. Like Messrs. Giuliani, Obama, Edwards and Mrs. Clinton, he has yet to set an appointment for that. And we need to get them set soon. We’ll only have about two good days to devote to the Republicans between the time they’re done in New Hampshire and the time we have to get the endorsement written and ready for publication.
We’re aiming for Sunday the 13th on that, by the way.
So in Washington, spending equals revenue?
It’s been over 20 years since my job entailed dealing regularly, via phone, with editors in the old Knight Ridder Washington bureau, so I guess I forgot what it could be like.
When I was editing the George Will column for today’s op-ed page, I ran across this paragragh:
In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "paygo,” the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for” by compensatory tax increases or revenue cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.
Does that make sense to you? It sure didn’t to me. So I called The Washington Post Writers Group, and asked the question, did he mean "’paid for’ by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts?" The first person I asked referred me to another person (which is fine; I hadn’t exactly expected the first person to answer the phone to address the question anyway — he had just sounded like he wanted to try).
The second person I spoke with was one of those people who is unbothered by long stretches of "dead air" in a conversation. A couple of times, while waiting for a response from him, I had to say, "Hello?" to see if he was still there.
After I repeated the question to him, and waited through a long pause, he said he supposed that would be a fine substitution, as it was synonymous.
I could have just let that go in the interest of getting on with a very busy day and enabling folks to go home and start their holiday, but my inner Scrooge asserted himself: Obviously we were miscommunicating.
They’re hardly synonymous, I insisted. "Revenue" is money coming in; "spending" is money going out. It you were going to cut something in order to balance a tax cut, it would have to be the latter.
Another long pause.
Finally, he conceded that he saw my point.
After another long wait, I said, so that substitution’s OK?
Yes, he said.
And then, he added most strangely, "He just meant it in the Washington sense." If there had been irony in his tone, I would have laughed politely. But he sounded so serious, so "you folks in the hinterland wouldn’t understand our insider lingo," that I almost laughed anyway — and not politely.
But I let it go. I had a lot more work to do.
Buzzwords that don’t buzz
Just a moment ago, I suddenly remembered who Fred Thompson keeps reminding me of, and it turns out it’s a fellow Tennessean — Victor Ashe, the former mayor of Knoxville.
Mr. Ashe was the Republican nominee selected as a sacrificial lamb to go up against Al Gore in 1984, as Rep. Gore strode easily into Howard Baker’s former Senate seat. I covered the race, such as it was.
Mr. Thompson reminds me of Mr. Ashe not because of any physical resemblance — there is none — but because of a rhetorical quirk.
During the 1984 campaign, Mr. Ashe led a bulldog around on a leash, and adopted the slogan, "Bulldog Tough — Downright Tennessee!" At least that’s the way I remember it; it was either that or something equally goofy and meaningless. (If you were there, and have a record of the exact quote, please contact me.)
Perhaps as his answer to McCain’s "Straight-Talk Express," Mr. Thompson has apparently also named his bus tour. It’s called "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" Really. I don’t know what they call the bus when they’re in a hurry. "Clear," maybe. A sample release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Darrel Ng
December 17, 2007 571-730-1010
"The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" Bus Tour Schedule
McLEAN, VA – The Fred Thompson campaign announces an updated schedule for Senator Thompson’s bus tour through Iowa from December 18-December 22.
In addition to Senator Thompson’s previously scheduled events in Iowa on December 18th, he will also be interviewed on various radio and television programs. There are no other changes to the schedule.
Media inquiries for the Iowa tour should contact Darrel Ng …
… and so forth. "The Clear Conservative Choice: Hands Down!" is almost, although admittedly not quite, as devoid of clear meaning as Mr. Ashe’s long-ago effort.
It reminds me of some of the statements Jim DeMint has issued in favor of Mitt Romney. Never mind the details, he’s conservative, I’m telling you! Just like you and me!
Buzzwords, but no buzz, as near as I can tell. But wonderfully goofy — Hands down! Downright Tennessee!
The Eclectic Sandlapping Palmetto Tree
The NYT today has a story keyed to the 20th anniversary of Bonfire of the Vanities, from the perspective of “how has New York changed since then?”
Thinking back on the way he wrote about the Big Apple, it occurs to me that if Wolfe would really like to write about bizarre, rococo foibles in a sociopolitical context, he should come to South Carolina. He’s done New York; he’s done Atlanta; now he’s doing Miami. All have been done to death. He should come to the home of neo-Confederates, Green Diamond, Bob Jones University, Jake (it’s pronounced “Jakie,” Mr. Wolfe) Knotts, an antebellum form of government, the nation’s most libertarian governor, Andre Bauer, Thomas Ravenel, John Land, Glenn McConnell (arguably the most powerful man in the state, Mr. Wolfe — pictured at right) and the Hunley — and, just a bit into our recent past, Lee Atwater, Strom Thurmond, Fritz Hollings, Jack Lindsay, Ron Cobb, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker… by comparison, even Rudy Giuliani seems boring.
It would be like Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test without the acid (who would need it?). Actually, come to think of that, I’d much rather see him write about us in his nonfiction mode — partly because the reality here is weirder than any fiction, and partly because I just prefer his nonfiction works, particularly Acid Test and The Right Stuff.
You know why Wolfe disappoints me as a fiction writer? He has no love for any of his characters. Think about it — is there a sympathetic character anywhere in Bonfire or the Atlanta book? It’s a very depressing view of humanity. By contrast, his detached-but-intimate style of journalism makes real people come into view in a way that is far more engaging.
The Love Song of Dennis J. Kucinich
I don’t have anything to say about this (at least, nothing more than I already said); I just liked The Washington Post‘s headline, which I reproduced verbatim above. I also like the blurb teasing to the story:
Dennis Kucinich is the happiest candidate in the presidential race. True, he is polling in the low single digits. But he has his wife, Elizabeth.
Here’s the actual story.
Ya gotta love it when a headline riffs on T.S. Eliot. It’s way literary.
McCain on question about beating the ‘rhymes with rich’
Just got this from B.J. over at the McCain campaign:
Hey Mr. Warthen –
I think you might be interested in this. Here’s the deal: On Monday in Hilton Head at a Meet & Greet, some lady asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” He responded. (See Video 1) Last night, CNN’s Rick Sanchez stooped to new levels of sensationalism in reporting the incident. (See Video 2). This morning, we released a statement from Buzz Jacobs, SC Campaign Manager. (See Below) Today at noon, McCain is holding a national blogger call and this is sure to be the hot topic. I thought you might want to get on that call, so if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP and I will send you the call info.Thanks,
BJ
I told him, yeah, I might want to listen in on that. Anything y’all want to share prior to that? Personally, my immediate reaction is that I have but one complaint about the way Sen. McCain handled it: he spoke of the nomination of the "Democrat Party," not the Democratic Party. And I think the guy on CNN talking about it makes an ass of himself.
Also, here’s the release to which B.J. referred:
STATEMENT FROM SC CAMPAIGN MANAGER ON CNN REPORT
For Immediate Release
Contact: SC Press Office
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
COLUMBIA, SC — U.S. Senator John McCain’s South Carolina campaign manager Buzz Jacobs issued the following statement in response to a report aired last evening by CNN’s Rick Sanchez:"It is disappointing that Mr. Sanchez would choose to engage in sensationalism in the hopes of generating a story. It not only reflects poorly on him, but on CNN. If Mr. Sanchez had even the faintest perspective on the race for the White House, he would know that Senator McCain has expressed his utmost respect for Senator Clinton numerous times on the campaign trail as he did at Monday’s event in Hilton Head."
###
The essence of “democracy?” Not exactly
Reading proofs for today’s op-ed page, I found myself quibbling with a word choice of Thomas Friedman’s. It’s not that I didn’t understand what he meant; I was just in a quibbling mood.
It was his simplistic, not-quite-right use of the word, "democracy:"
The very essence of democracy is peaceful rotations of power, no matter whose party or tribe is in or out. But that ethic does not apply in most of the Arab-Muslim world today, where the political ethos remains “Rule or Die.” Either my group is in power or I’m dead, in prison, in exile or lying very low. But democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can’t take root.
As I say, I knew what he meant. We’ve all sort of agreed amongst ourselves that the thing the Bush administration says it wants to bring to Iraq and the rest of the region (whether one agrees with that goal or not, or believe that is the true motive) is called, for convenience, "democracy." Even though democracy is not what we have in this country — or rather, it’s not what we’re supposed to have, to the extent that we respect the wishes and wisdom of the Framers who bequeathed us a specific sort of republic, defined by a constitution.
What Friedman means to say is that "the very essence" of a system like ours is peaceful rotation of power — or at least it was a goal of the Framers, though it wasn’t achieved until the election of 1800. That year marked the real American revolution, seen from that perspective. A peaceful transition was by no means guaranteed before that.
The truth is that "democracy" can occur without such peaceful transitions, and certainly without respect for other factions or tribes. (I could also point out that "Rule or Die" sounds a lot like the rhetoric of political partisans in this country, although fortunately they have not yet backed it up with civil bloodshed.)
He’s also wrong when he says democracy "is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights." No, democracy IS about majority rule, which is why it is so messy in so many parts of the world, and why Madison, Jay, Hamilton and the rest rejected it in favor of a republic with minority rights guaranteed by way of a carefully balanced constitutional form of government. Those guys were very worried about the passions of the mob, which is why our government is composed of various parts with differing constituencies and loads of checks and balances.
Again, I knew what he meant; but sometimes it helps us to think more clearly about these things when we examine the terms more closely.
Can you read this?
posting via Treo from Rotary…
Our speaker today is Debbie Yoho of the Greater Columbia Literacy Council, talking about the problem of adult illiteracy in South Carolina.
Her Most Alarming Fact sums up why we should care: 52 percent of adults in South Carolina can’t read beyond an elementary school basis. It’s actually worse than that sounds … Debbie explains that what that means is that a majority of adults in our state can’t anything beyond 300 to 500 simple word they recognize by sight. I don’t know about you, but I’m guessing I was at that point sometime during the first grade.
Explains a lot, huh?
Words fail
You may have noticed that I haven’t had anything to say about the kids who died in the fire. That’s because I don’t know what to say, beyond the fact that it’s awful.
More importantly, we haven’t said anything editorially. At least, we haven’t said anything that’s been published. We forced ourselves to do an editorial for tomorrow’s paper. Warren Bolton, God bless him, volunteered to write it after Cindi and I (remember, Mike’s out) both said we didn’t think we were up to it.
Part of this is that Cindi and I are not the world’s best empathizers. Of those currently on the board, Warren (who is almost, but not quite yet, an ordained AME minister), is the best. At times such as this, we really miss Claudia Brinson, who was really good at it. She said the right thing, and said it beautifully. Back when she and John Monk were on the board, they were always the first to say we needed to say something about something like this. I would agree with them; I just wouldn’t know what to say about something like this — something that everyone was talking about, but which did not have an obvious editorial point. No matter of policy or anything like that, which of course is the usual province of editorials. (The term we use under such circumstances is that we just need to "resonate" to the news, something I’m not that great at.)
But there’s more to it than that, at least for me. As I said in our meeting this morning, I don’t even know what to say in a case like this when I’m intimately involved with it. When my youngest daughter’s boyfriend died a month back, I drove up to Pennsylvania to be with her, and was there for the visitation and funeral, and I still didn’t know what to say — to his mother, his friends, even to my daughter. Warren says that sometimes you don’t have to say anything; you just need to be there. And that’s true, which is why I drove up there. But there’s still a moment that demands something be said — such as when I was introduced to David’s mother at the funeral home — and I am struck dumb.
I continue to want to comfort my daughter over the phone, but I continue to be at a loss. I just tell her a lot that I love her.
Pretty lame, huh? I’m at no loss for words when it comes to total B.S. — such as chatting with a celebrity about nothing, in the "Seinfeld" sense of nothing — but wordless when it comes to the things that matter most.
Anyway, we have an editorial for tomorrow — a short editorial, fleshed out with a photo, because there are just so many words you can come up with even when you’re trying hard. Warren wrote it, and I tried to improve it in the editing, but I just finally had to let go and put it on the page, dissatisfied.
Words are just so inadequate.
I do have a column rattling around that is peripherally related to this tragedy, but I think it’s one that would be better a few days from now, so I’m saving it for Sunday. A column is easier than an editorial under such circumstance. An editorial demands authoritative pronouncements; a column allows for vagueness and uncertainty. But I’m going to let that one gestate.
In the meantime, if you have words — perhaps there are some Claudias out there among you, who possess the words I lack — you may put them here. Or better yet, go to this page at thestate.com. That would be more respectful. A blog just seems like an awfully frivolous, useless thing at a time like this.
‘Around the nation?’
This morning, I heard somebody say something on the radio that’s been bugging me lately. If words are not your stock in trade, you probably haven’t noticed it. And I really don’t attach any importance to it beyond my passing curiosity regarding the way language develops.
Someone on the radio said that something was happening "around the nation." Sometimes you see or hear it as "around the country." I’ve seen it a lot in copy that I’ve edited over the last year or so. I always change it automatically to "across the country" or nation.
I do this for two reasons. First, "across" is the established idiomatic phrase (isn’t it? or did I dream that?). That’s the way one expresses that alternative to "nationally." Second, I just have trouble visualizing the newly trendy alternative. What does "around" the country mean? Does it refer to Canada, Mexico and the two oceans? Or is it a reference to the border and coastal states, leaving out the landlocked heartland? That’s what it sounds like, although I realize that’s not how it’s meant.
But "across the country" implies a quick, inclusive, coast-to-coast descriptive stroke that expresses what you’re trying to say without the mind having to stop and think about it.
Not that anyone thinks about it but me. And when I think about it, it’s for no more than a second, when I’m changing it and thinking "I wonder why he/she wrote it that way?" I guess today I just reached the point at which those seconds added up to a critical mass, and I decided to say something about it — which I just did.
Anybody else hear a black helicopter?
Ever since I got some rudimentary training in the manipulating the guts of thestate.com (to help in managing the opinion portion), I’ve been on some list that means I get all sorts of extremely esoteric, bewildering technical e-mails from some entity known as "McClatchy Interactive."
Fortunately, the subject lines are distinctive (gobbledegook such as system_notices-bounces@lists.mcclatchyinteractive.com), so I can delete them without thinking.
But just before I deleted the latest one, I saw this language in the body of the message:
We identified the
offending process and have stopped it from executing. All services are now back
up and should be functioning correctly.
That sounds way cold-blooded. Like the revenge of the Hal and his pals. They stopped it from executing "with extreme prejudice."
Be afraid. Be virtually afraid.
Granfalloons
Back in a comment on this post, I referred to the Kurt Vonnegut term "granfalloon." Let’s examine it further.
I was never that big a fan of Vonnegut back in the day, when so many of my friends were into him. I disliked anything that smacked of nihilism, and Cat’s Cradle in particular seemed to preach the message, "Why try? Everything is pointless." There is something in me that rebels fiercely against that. I remember writing an essay in high school comparing it unfavorably to Catch-22. Yossarian seemed trapped in malignant absurdity, too, but at the end (warning! plot spoiler coming!), there is a life-affirming burst of hope when he learns that Orr had paddled all the way to Sweden, whereas at the end of Cat’s Cradle, the protagonist is contemplating tasting ice-nine.
Maybe I would feel better about it if I read him now; I don’t know. Maybe I could accept fatalism more favorably coming from a soldier of the ill-fated 106th Infantry Division (which may not qualify as a granfalloon, since so many of its members, such as my own father-in-law, indeed shared a similar fate, which might make it a true karass). But having granfalloon pop into my head while typing that earlier response at least causes me to have greater respect for him for having invented that term.
It’s an important word to have, because it explains why the politics of identity leave me cold. I simply don’t ever feel the impulse to identify with, or stick up for, a person who simply has the same color skin that I do, or is the same gender, or believes in the same religion (even though Catholicism for me is a choice, rather than an accident of birth). Assuming a kinship with someone over such things seems every bit as absurd as the shared association of being Hoosiers, to cite one of Vonnegut’s examples.
Sometimes in the past, I’ve tried to express the thing I object to in terms of "teams." I apply this in particular to the political parties — another form of voluntary association (even though, once people have joined them, they seem to act as though they were born into them and are congenitally incapable of contradicting the party line). Since I don’t see either Democrats or Republicans as embracing coherent, rational philosophies, but being coagulations of people with unconnected goals who have decided to band together, I think of them as having formed teams for purely pragmatic reasons — safety in numbers, pooling resources for organizational purposes, etc.
And teams are not a thing I’m into. The importance that some people attach to identification with, say, the Gamecocks seems to me suggestive of something far uglier. I know that’s ridiculous; it’s generally innocent, but such massive demonstrations of pointless solidarity put me off.
Anyway, now that I’ve retrieved it from my memory banks, I should use "granfalloon" more often.
Affricated American
Sometimes I think the spell-check function in whatever application I’m using just ain’t hep. It’s like
whoever programmed it never actually spoke any English, but read about it in a book.
I was reminded of that again today, when I told Michael Graham via e-mail in Outlook that having me on his radio show via phone before 9:30 a.m. tomorrow is risky, because I am not fully caffeinated before that time.
The spell check really, really didn’t know what to make of "caffeinated." It only had one guess. That guess was "affricated," a word I had neither met nor worked with previously. Even after I looked it up, I’m not entirely sure what the fricative it’s supposed to mean. Ironically, given what I said above, it is apparently a word you will only understand if you hear what it describes, in actual speech.
Strange, very strange.
Buzzword. Buzzword, buzzword, buzzword!
Long, long ago — the ’70s at least, probably during his ’76 run at the presidency — I read a magazine article about Jerry Brown (the slacker blogger — last post, Oct. 2005). It was one of the first things I ever read about him, as I recall. More to the point, it was the first time I ever ran across the term, "buzzword." (It’s even been suggested that he coined the term, that it’s "an old Jerry Brown term for words/phrases that go buzz in your head"".
It was used in the context of showing what a hip, intellectual, cool, detached kind of guy Brown was. It opened, in New Journalism style, with an anecdote that had him seated in front of a TV watching his own TV ad. He was riveted to the tube, and offering a running commentary that consisted of making a slashing or chopping motion with his hand and calling out "Buzzword!" with satisfaction each time the ad used a term to which that definition applied: "Buzzword…. buzzword, buzzword, buzzword!" Chop, slash.
It was probably in either Esquire or Rolling Stone, to list the publications I read at the time that would have been likely to run a piece like that. If anyone can refer me to it, I’d be interested to go back and read it again.
So what got me to thinking about that? Nothing much. I got a press release from the Romney campaign that consisted of nothing more than this statement (I think it was related to the debate yesterday):
A STATEMENT FROM SENATOR JIM DEMINT (R-SC)
"The fact is our federal government has gotten too big, taxes are too high and federal spending is way out of control. This is why Governor Romney believes Republicans must first make changes in our own house, because as he said, ‘Change must begin with us.’ Today, Mitt Romney once again showed that he is the real candidate of change for fiscal conservatives and that is why I am proud to support his candidacy."— Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
October 9, 2007
… and I was struck, for about the billionth time, with the fact that our most ideological politicians — from DeMint to Pelosi — often seem to communicate almost entirely by way of buzzwords and cant phrases.
There were no specifics in that statement. No reference to a particular point made about a particular situation. Just broad generalities of the sort that communicate (I suppose) to like-minded ideologues but one message:
I’m one of you. I speak your language. So does this other guy.
The statement is as bland and ignorable as beige wallpaper, but it is apparently designed to go "buzz" in somebody’s head.
No attempt to cite an example of something government does that is unnecessary (even thought it would be easy, even for an anti-libertarian such as myself), or a tax that’s too high or an economic argument demonstrating why it’s too high, or anything. Just a sort of bumper-sticker sentiment, too boring in its repetitiveness even to evoke a high-five from the truest of true believers; it was worth at the VERY most a slight nod.
When I read non-statement statements such as that, I often wonder whether the person who typed it and sent it out thought, at any point in that process, "This is a useless exercise. It offers nothing to the debate, for good or ill." Or did he or she think, "Well, at least I’m getting paid for this."
Or perhaps: "Buzzword!" Slash, chop. "Buzzword, buzzword, buzzword!"