Category Archives: Words

Propaganda as gibberish

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What I was looking for when I ran across the old link discussed in my previous post was the lead story from the NYT’s Week In Review section.

It was all about how scary the North Korean missile tests are, seeing as how:

    Perhaps everyone can learn from failure, even the North Koreans.
    Their missile, the Taepodong 2, took flight briefly last week, and seems to be in no shape to send an atom bomb whizzing halfway around the globe toward the United States. Experts judge that many years of testing beyond that inaugural flight on Tuesday will probably be needed before the North would entrust the new missile with anything as costly and precious as a nuclear warhead.
    "It would take five or six tests of their final design before they’d be confident it could go someplace," said Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the nation’s nuclear arms.

Kim_jong_ilSo, it will be "several years" before the Dear Doofus is likely to boost some warheads our way. That’s good.

At the same time, that assumption seems based on the belief that North Korea will act rationally, not throwing away the first nuke they manage to produce. That’s weak assurance.

I gain more comfort from the caption on this propaganda poster, which the Times assures us reads, "First sound of gunfire from big power."

Really? Even allowing for idiomatic and stylistic differences between cultures, or poor translation, that is amazingly awkward and uninspiring. And, well, stupid.

How am I supposed to take seriously a threat from someone who can’t write any better than that?

They ought to require essay contests or something before letting bad guys into the Axis of Evil.

Me wonder, too

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Some folks suspect that the very choicest bits don’t make it into "Letters to the Editor." And in some ways, they’re right. Sometimes letter-writers get so mad at us they lose all ability to communicate, and it would unfairly hold them up to ridicule to run what they submit.

I usually don’t see these things in raw form, but sometimes they are copied to me, or (erroneously, let me hasten to add; the correct address for letters is stateeditor@thestate.com) sent to me first.

A favorite from the last few days was one that took issue — to put it mildly — with Associate Editor Cindi Ross Scoppe.

"What planet does her reside?" the overwrought writer demanded to know.

I sometimes wonder the same thing myself.

Last words

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It’s not just headlines. I can’t stop myself from doing that "finishing thoughts" thing with quotes, either.

Take this one from Gen. Michael Hayden:

Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern, constantly. And it’s a concern in this program, it’s a concern in everything we’ve done.

The rest of the thought:

It’s more than a concern; it’s a damned nuisance if you ask me. And I’ve heard more than I want to hear about it.

That’s the trouble with the biased media — always taking quotes out of context, leaving behind the good parts.

Finishing Thoughts

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Subhead: "If You Use the Term ‘Thoughts’ Loosely"

This definitely goes under the heading of something you wouldn’t confess if you didn’t have a blog.

I am a notoriously slow reader, and one of the stupider reasons for that is that I can’t seem to read any small grouping of words — a headline, a bumper sticker, a quote — without adding some nonsensical something to "finish the thought."

Take The New York Times today. Please. I found myself composing "subheads" for several of the headlines.

Actual headline: "Europe to Offer Iran Conditional Incentives"
My subhead: "’You Don’t Blow Us Up, We’ll Do Business’"

Actual headline: "Lens Cleaner is Recalled Worldwide"
My subhead: "Household Product Stirs Fond Memories"

Actual headline: "U.S. Urges Jurors to Punish ‘Lies’ at Enron"
My subhead: "12 Bars of Soap Handed Out by Judge"

Actual headline: "Most Bush Holdings Listed as Real Estate"
My subhead: "Democratic Response: No, it’s FALSE Estate"

OK, I’ll go away now.

Although it really doesn’t feel right…

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The Columbia Postmaster suggests, in a letter to the editor today, that we try "patronizing" our rural mail carriers.

Well, OK. I don’t feel right about it, but I’ll try:

Hey, love the car, really. With that wheel on the right-hand side, I thought for a minute it was James Bond’s Aston-Martin. Wow. And I’ve always said nothing beats an early-80s, Day-Glo green Chrysler for style. It’s just as good as one of those "official," custom-built panel trucks the fancy-pants city carriers drive. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

I really don’t see how this does anybody any good, but I tried.

‘Mary’ stands accused

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I’ve decided to set before this "community" an interesting proposition. Buried deep among the record 108 comments on my lengthy March 26 column is the following, from fellow Unpartian (I think) Paul DeMarco:

Thanks for trying to keep the debate civil. Personal attacks simply
demonstate that the attacker’s argument won’t stand on its own merit.
Mary’s "worthless piece of garbage" routine is tiresome and mitigates
any impact the substance of her message might have. If I were Brad, I
wouldn’t stand for it. I’d warn her and her like and then ban them from
the site if they continued. If not, I predict, the ugliness will only
worsen.

As you can see, the Unparty — assuming I’m right about Paul’s affiliation — is not for libertarians. We believe in the rule of law.

The thing is, the shifting community that has formed on this blog has no laws as yet. And we are still small enough that we have not formed a republic, therefore to the extent that we deliberate, we must do so through the "town-meeting" sort of direct democracy.

But now Citizen DeMarco has proposed not only a law, but presented its first test. He says that Mary Rosh‘s behavior is unacceptable in these virtual parts. He proposes a community standard, and a means of enforcement — a warning, followed if necessary by excommunication.

This is fascinating. We are present at the birth of a society, however rudimentary it may be. I’d like to see where the group will take this. I expect a wide variety of viewpoints to be expressed, but I’m curious to see whether we can nevertheless move toward a consensus — one way or the other, or in between somewhere.

Since I have a rather unique role in this society — you might say I’m sort of a unitary executive in a very liberal (in the classic sense) democracy — I’m not going to say what I think about Mary’s case at this point.

Anyway, we have the bill before us. Let’s debate it.

Hal makes a statement

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I thought this was sort of interesting: I was sending a link to my last post to someone via e-mail, and in my note I referred to the straight majority using the shortcut "heteros."

Guess what the spell checker on Outlook wanted to change it to? "Haters." Actually, it suggested several alternatives (such as "heaters," "hereto," "meteors," "hectares," etc.), but that was its first choice.

So was the programmer of that tool trying to make a political statement, or did the boola-boola logic (or whatever in the world drives those things) just lead inevitably to that word? I believe it’s the latter, but I could see how some folks would suspect the former.

Could it be? Could Hal the devious laptop be trying to tell us all something? Nah.

Why “gay?” Why not “queer?”

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Somehow, my last, brief post having fun with Mark Sanford’s reputation for frugality quickly led to a discussion between readers about whether Abraham Lincoln was gay. Don’t ask me how, just look and see if you don’t believe me. Such is the nature of blog comment threads.

Anyway, the discussion led me off on my own mental digression. I started thinking about words.

Lincoln_statues_1To begin with, I don’t believe there was anything "gay" about Lincoln, in any sense of the word. He was pretty much chronically depressed, as I recall.

Along those lines, have you ever considered what an odd euphemism "gay" is for "homosexual?" I’ve never liked it, and I don’t know why "gay" people do. First, I don’t see why anyone would associate unreserved felicity with any particular sexual orientation, much less one that carries so much painful stigma with it. To call people who carry that burden through their lives in this hetero world "gay" is to mock the pain that must, very often, certainly be their lot. Also, it seems insulting and dismissive to me. It’s like we’re calling them "giddy" or "silly," or in some other way dismissing them as unworthy of being considered seriously.

Why people would embrace it as a way to describe themselves is beyond me. It seems, if you will forgive the term, perverse. It’s as though one is declaring, "Look at me, I’m a silly person who fulfills all the stereotypes in your head — I just go gaily through life thinking of nothing but Judy Garland, decorating my home and clothes shopping." And maybe that’s what it’s about — defiant irony. But I don’t think it works.

To see how inadequate the term is, follow bill‘s suggestion and go to Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Check out the serious thoughtfulness with which he deals with issues. Is "gay" a proper term to use to describe him, simply because he is homosexual? It certainly isn’t the first word that would come to my mind.

Even if it is embraced ironically, "gay" just doesn’t make sense to me. (Of course, I have to admit that homosexuality doesn’t make sense to me either, so I guess my lack of understanding is to be expected.) I think those more "in-your-face" activists who defiantly use the term "queer" are more on the mark. The word makes sense from both hetero- and homo- perspectives. To straight people, homosexuality is queer, in the sense of being an aberration (certainly in the statistical sense, at the very least), and so alien to the way we think that it is beyond our ken. For homosexuals themselves, it seems to be a more effective banner to fly to demonstrate pride in being different — especially if you’re trying to be defiantly ironic.

Anyway, that’s the way the words strike me.