Fritinancy

Banksters

An ad on the op-ed page of yesterday's New York Times caught my eye, and not only for its ransom-note design:

   

It was that word banksters along the right-hand margin that made me pause. Clever, I thought: a portmanteau of banker and gangster. Seems like the perfect coinage for the high-finance bailfest we're currently witnessing.

The ad was produced by the Institute for America's Future, a D.C. "center of non-partisan research and  education" (with a K Street address, I feel obliged to add) whose efforts "help shape a compelling progressive agenda primarily focusing on kitchen-table concerns such as affordable health care, accessible higher education, retirement security, living wages, healthy workplaces, strong infrastructures, safe food, fair trade and clean energy."

Sign me up for all of the above. But what about banksters? Was it invented by one of the institute's neologists?

The Google says ... not so fast. A search for bankster produces more than 27,000 results. Some are for people with the surname Bankster, but there also are many citations from earlier this year, when large cracks began appearing in the fiscal infrastructure. (See, for example, "Saving Bankster Bonuses," posted in March 2008 by a Ron Paul supporter, and "[Treasury Secretary] Paulson's Gift to His Bankster Buddies," also posted in March, on a "radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and justice.") The relevant entry at Urban Dictionary is likewise dated March 2008. (The other entry refers to graffiti artists who emulate British street artist Banksy.)

Double-Tongued Dictionary, Grant Barrett's excellent lexicon of slang and jargon, provides an even earlier--and non-U.S.--citation. A Nov. 10, 2005, article in the Miami Herald claimed the word had been coined by Ecuadoreans during their country's 1998-1999 banking crisis. But in a comment, Tad Cook pointed out that bankster has a much longer and uglier history. "This term has been used by the fringe of the far right in the USA for at least 70 years," Cook wrote, "in reference to some sort of conspiracy involving bankers and the Federal Reserve."

He's right. And not just "some sort of conspiracy." Take a look, if you have the stomach for it, at this venomous bit of propaganda about "Judeo-Masonic Banksters" and "Jewish Banksters, such as Rothschild and Warburg." Or this screed, sweetly titled "Time to Remove the Parasitic War-Loving Zionist Bankster Brain."

Coincidentally or not, Time magazine in the 1930s was fond of bankster as a descriptor for crooked lenders. "Bankster Jailed," reads the headline on a Sept. 5, 1932, story about "Scottish immigrant, onetime plumber, Bankster [John] Bain [who] had prospered in real estate, then branched into banking." And "Bankster's Moll" was the Runyonesque headline on a 1933 review of a novel that attacked "U. S. economic conditions in general, on small-town banksters in particular."

Will the Institute for America's Future reclaim bankster as a progressive epithet? Or will anti-Semitic hatemongers hear it as a dog whistle--a code word aimed at their ears? I wonder.

Update: I also wonder whether the old/scurrilous bankster usage was a portmanteau of banker and shyster.

Really Mad Men

Wasn't advertising wonderful in the old, single-entendre days?

 

If you're a man, did you cross your legs reflexively when you read "Peter Pain" in conjunction with "Ben-Gay"? Just checking.

Lots more wacky real ads like this one (plus one pretty obvious parody) at Weirdomatic. Some benefit from historical perspective, like the one for Union Carbide in which a huge hand pours a blood-red fluid over an Indian farm (headline: "Science helps build a new India"). And others are downright surreal:

 

That's even creepier than the old Chicken Boy restaurant in downtown L.A., which featured a gigantic statue of a pants-wearing chicken (boy?) holding ... a bucket of chicken parts.

Via Very Short List. By the way, if you haven't yet discovered VSL, I recommend you check it out. Founded in 2006 by Kurt Anderson (of Studio 360, the late Spy magazine, and many other interesting endeavors), it's a free service that delivers just one well-written, well-designed e-mail to your inbox each day. The basic VSL service focuses on entertainment picks; you can also sign up for VSL: Science and VSL: Web. Coming soon: similar services for food, books, and kids' stuff.

Here's a Sarah I'd Vote For

Thanks, AdFreak, Editrix, and Jezebel, for telling me about the droll Sarah Haskins, whose "Target: Women" segments on Current (the network started by Al Gore) are a bracing antidote to the marketing and media hogwash aimed at women. Like yogurt commercials: 

Or wedding shows. Or chick flicks. Or birth-control commercials that never actually mention, you know, sex.

Haskins's most recent segment takes on Sarah Palin--or, more precisely, the "P.A.N.T.H.E.R." voters who might be swayed by her. What's a P.A.N.T.H.E.R.? A "Proud American Needing Token Hillary Estrogen Replacement."

You'll find all of Sarah Haskins's "Target: Women" segments here. By the way, Harvard grad-slash-comedian Sarah Haskins is not triathlete Sarah Haskins. Read an interview with the funny Sarah here.

Specious Home, Fully Remolded!

I think I know what's causing the slump in the housing market: typos, eggcorns, and spelling mistakes in real-estate listings.

Redfin, a Bay Area real-estate blog, pointed me to some real howlers:

• walking closet (for walk-in)
• fully remolded single-family home (for remodeled)
• stainless steal appliances (presumably purchased legitimately)
• sinking living room (for sunken)
• specious apartment (for spacious)

And remember our friend Hugh Reductions? We meet his cousins Hugh Gourmet and Hugh (and) Bright in this listing for a house in San Francisco's Merced Manor neighborhood, out in the Avenues near Stonestown Galleria and San Francisco State. That listing is also full of abbreviations that qualify as bizarre even in the strange world of Realtorspeak: cbnts, wineculr, jaccz, detchd. The asking price, by the way, is $1,299,000. Tip: Make it an even $1.3 million and buy a few vowels. Better yet, hire a proofreader.

My favorite real-estate blooper--with strong eggcorn potential--comes from the comments on another real estate blog, Active Rain: "Great neighborhood at the end of a cuddlesack."

Seen any funny real-estate goofs lately?

(Hat tip: Tracey Taylor.)

Olympics Notebook

Thoughts from three days of Games:

• I caught some flak for saying so on Twitter, but I'm liking NBC's new slogan, "Chime In." "Chime" is an allusion to the network's old three-note audio logo, which was first heard on radio in 1929. And "chime in" makes it seem interactive.¹ Compared to broadcasters' pathetic past sloganeering attempts--anyone remember ABC's "TV Is Good"?--it's practically Shakespearean. As much as I like the slogan, though, I'm a whole lot less fond of the promotional ad that turns the network's stars into shills. By the way, the NBC chimes were the first sound to receive trademark protection, in 1950. And those three notes? They're G3, E4, and C4 (middle C). More on the NBC chimes here.
• Would it be too much to ask NBC to identify the expert commentators at the events? Who the heck was China expert "Josh" at the opening ceremonies? I watched and listened for a couple of hours and never found out. Who was doing the fencing commentary? He was terrific--I learned a lot. (Those little staccato runs the fencers make? They're called stutter steps.) And I know that "Rowdy" is Rowdy Gaines, the three-time Olympic gold medalist (100m freestyle), but if you don't normally follow swimming you might find it helpful to be reminded now and then.
• I can't distinguish one car commercial from another. 
• Tell me again why it's OK for NBA players to participate in the supposedly amateur Olympic Games?
• During Olympics programming I saw two of the stunning new United Airlines commercials, "Sea Orchestra" and "Two Worlds."  I was wowed by the inventive animation (reportedly even more gorgeous in high-def) and by the music. United has been using Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as its theme for more than 20 years, but I can't recall a more effective or creatively scored version than this one, performed by the L.A. Phil.² Creating this spot and others in the campaign was an international effort; read more here. Watch all four spots here.
• The McDonald's ad "Victory" has no dialogue--just irresistible music ("A Minha Menina" by the 1960s Brazilian band Os Mutantes) and an equally irresistible story: at a kids' soccer match, the winners gloat--but the losers get Happy Meals. Would I prefer it if the kids were eating carrot sticks and homemade cookies? Yes, I would. Do I think McDonald's is evil? Yes, I do.  Nevertheless, I love this commercial. Agency is DDB/Chicago.

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¹ Emphasis on "seem." In real life, NBC worked feverishly to prevent Olympics fans from getting a real-time jump on the network's tape-delayed opening ceremonies; the New York Times 's Brian Stelter called it "digital whack-a-mole."

² The ad is so gorgeous, you're tempted to forget what a living hell the actual experience of flying is nowadays. On the other hand, it helps to remember that the campaign is promoting international first- and business-class travel. They get Gershwin; we get peanuts.

Grape-Nuts and Gasoline

Remember Grape-Nuts and "It Is What It Is"? Here's another ad in the campaign, spotted at a Shell station on Bryant Street in San Francisco:

Now, I buy my gas at Costco, so I haven't seen much of' this type of point-of-purchase cross-selling. But the juxtaposition sure looks odd to me. I mean, Shell and its competitors spend millions trying to convince us that there's something magical about their particular formula, and here comes Grape-Nuts to say Nah, it's just plain old car juice.

Brilliant or bizarre? You tell me.

P.S. Yep, a gallon of gas was going for $4.79 at this station yesterday.

You Don't Have to Be Jewish...

...to take this fascinating survey of "American Jewish language." Its authors, a pair of social scientists from Hebrew Union College, say it's "the first of its kind to ask North Americans about the words from Yiddish and Hebrew (and other languages) that they may use or recognize."

Part of the survey is a vocabulary quiz that includes words such as the well-assimilated chutzpah, shmooze, maven, and mensch. There's also a section on Jewish-flavored English idioms, some of which were completely alien to me: Sure, I've heard (and used) "Enough already," but not "Are you coming to us for dinner?" or "What do we learn out from this?"

Because trends in baby naming are a demi-obsession of mine, I particularly enjoyed the questions about names you'd consider for your hypothetical children. Options include what I'd consider über-goyish (Christopher and Christine, absolutely; but John strikes me as more culturally neutral than the other choices) to modern Hebrew (Matan for a boy, Noa for a girl) and old-school Yiddish (Moishe, Mende, Basya, Freydie).

And yes, they're curious about non-Jews' linguistic scope, too. (You'll get a shorter survey than the one I took.)

But I wasn't able to discern which "other languages" were in the survey besides Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Anyone? *

Via Polyglot Conspiracy.

* Update: I figured it out. There's a least one Ladino term in the survey. (Ladino: Judeo-Spanish spoken by Sephardic Jews.)

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P.S. About the post title: "You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy's Real Jewish Rye" was a famous ad campaign created by advertising genius Bill Bernbach (he also dreamed up Volkswagen's "Think Small" slogan). Beginning around 1970, the posters--featuring models from all ethnic groups-- appeared all over the New York subway system. Here's one poster; here's another.

One X at a Time

Remember 360 Vodka's twist on the formulaic "X-ing the Y, One Z at a Time"?

(Sorry I couldn't find a bigger photo; the slogan reads "Saving the planet, one glass at a time.")

When I wrote about it last September, I cited ten other examples of this sloganclone (my term for a commercial snowclone--a specific type of cliché).

Here's a new variation I spotted the other day:

The snowclone "Changing the [world/earth/planet], one X at a time" appears to be more common than "Saving the [world/earth/planet], one X at a time" (584,000 Google hits for the first, with the "world" variant; 181,000 for the second). Snowclone queen Erin O'Connor includes "Saving the world, one X at a time" in her snowclones queue--a long list of snowclones awaiting analysis.

It Is. (What?) It Is!

Good thing I was on foot when I spotted this billboard:

Because if I'd been toodling by at 30 mph I'd have either (a) thought it was graffiti of zero interest, or (b) been so distracted by "Certified Pre-Owned" vs. "Used" (meaning? and so what?) that I'd have missed what's going on in the lower right-hand corner.

Oh yeah: Grape-Nuts.

You may need to click and enlarge to see the accompanying text: It is what it is in red, "hand-scrawled" type, and this URL: NoGrapesNoNuts.com.

Go ahead and click the link. I'll wait.

Back so soon? Have you recovered from the vertigo induced by that gently oscillating background? Have you decided whether the site is too cool for a brand that's been around since 1898? Not cool enough? Did it make you hungry for a big bowl of NoGrapesNoNuts? Did it answer your questions about the product's name?

OK, I'll spare you the tortured self-questioning and the NoAffectNoInfo Web experience. Here's Straight Dope (from way back in 1982) on how Grape-Nuts got its name. (Short version: grape sugar, nutty flavor.)

Because what really interests me about this Grape-Nuts campaign is the slogan: "It Is What It Is." Which means ... what, exactly? No, it isn't grapes. No, it isn't nuts. It's ... what it is.

Now, Grape-Nuts may be the first brand to appropriate "It is what it is" for commercial purposes (is it? actually, I don't know), but I'd be deeply disappointed to learn that a copywriter was paid and attaboyed to create it. Because selecting "It is what it is" is like playing buzzword bingo in the office. Haven't heard someone say it yet today? Don't worry; you will.

Besides, there's something sort of defeated-sounding about "It is what it is" for a century-old cereal brand. You want excitement, stimulation, flavor? Sorry. Not gonna happen.

Covering the Congressional steroid hearings a few months ago for Slate, Douglas McCollam called "It is what it is" "a sports cliché for our times." Coaches and players wield it shamelessly. Politicians, especially the Bush gang, love it, too: it allows them to sound thoughtful without, you know, having to think. McCollam couldn't identify a single point of origin for the phrase, but found published citations going back to 1996. And much earlier: "Indeed, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, philosopher John Locke wrote that 'essence may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is.'"

Just last week, also in Slate, Ron Rosenbaum tackled the general subject of catchphrases, observing that "our language has become more catchphrase-driven, catchphrase-focused. So much so that catchphrase self-consciousness has become a phenomenon of its own." I urge anyone interested in language to read the whole article, which covers a lot of ground and, like all of Rosenbaum's writing, is laugh-out-loud funny (as they say). Here, though, I want to focus on Rosenbaum's four stages of catchphrase use: from Stage 1 ("when you first hear a phrase and take pleasure in its imaginative use of language on the literal and metaphorical level") to Stage 4 ("terminal obsolescence, dead phrase walking"). "At the end of the day" is in the latter category, Rosenbaum writes:

It kind of stuns me whenever I find someone still saying "at the end of the day" with a straight face. What are they, stuck on stupid, as they say?

But there's a worse fate than Stage 4, and "it is what it is" is consigned to it:

And then there's the danger that arises when Stage-4, zombie catchphrases that have previously been confined to a subculture escape their niche. We recently saw this happen with "It is what it is," which used to be an all-purpose coach-speak sports-night cliché. But since then, it's broken out and become a wise-sounding but profoundly empty surrogate for wisdom and perspective all too often used by idiot consultants and talking-head political pundits who seek to make themselves sound both worldly and gurulike: "It is what it is." To which one wants to say, using a monosyllabic catchphrase that is a particular favorite of mine and deserves its longevity: "Duh."

At least "It is what it is" doesn't suggest that the is-ness in question is good or bad; it's just that you can't argue it doesn't exist. Is "It is what it is" pop existentialism, at once an acknowledgement of the tragic immutability of being and a challenge to us to "take arms against a sea of troubles," as some well-known guy once said? Or is it an Eastern quietism, a rationale for resignation?

...A lasting catchphrase often earns its longevity because it has some philosophical question buried in it that hooks us. "It is what it is" is something I struggle with: How much should I accept in an "It's all good" way? Much of the time I'd much prefer if "it" isn't what "it" is. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. As they say.

So put that in your bowl of cereal and chew on it. Myself, I like my Grape-Nuts au nuke: cover with milk, heat in the microwave for about two minutes. Tasty! 

Bonus link #1: Andy Griffiths and Don Knotts in a 1964 Grape-Nuts commercial embedded into an episode of "The Andy Griffiths Show." You thought integrated advertising was something new? Hah!

Bonus link #2: Euell Gibbons shilling for Grape-Nuts ("reminds me of wild hickory nuts!") in a 1974 TV spot.

From the Mailbag

This post is guaranteed to be 100 percent reader-generated!

Mark Gunnion forwards a link to his favorite new product name: the Looj™ remote-controlled gutter-cleaner from iRobot. Yep, it shoots down your gutter just like a little luge and "blasts out debris, clogs and sludge." Comes with a handy holster, too!

Christa Allan thinks someone should have paid closer attention to the way this domain name looks: http://goredforwomen.com. "The campaign is to draw attention to women's health, specifically heart problems, by wearing red," Christa writes. "I suppose being gored for women is the ultimate sacrifice." (¡Olé!) For more insights into unintended parsing issues (remember Pen Island?), check out Tate Linden's post on Putincups.com.

"The umlaut is officially no longer hardcore," declares Dan Holbrook, who blogs at Language Is the People's and therefore knows about the heavy metal umlaut (aka "rock dots"), as in Mötley Crüe. He forwards photographic evidence:

  

The Spä line is made by a company called BeautiControl, which does sound a tad Teutonic. (Photo swiped from eBay.)

Judith K. thought I'd like NuttyBuddy, which she discovered while shopping for equipment for her adolescent son. She was so right. NuttyBuddy's tagline is "Protecting the Boys"; its product is "the first athletic cup that was designed to protect the full groin area of the male body." You've got to love the "size tool" that tells you whether to order "The Hammer," "The Boss," "The Hog," or "Mongo."

Jan Freeman, who writes about language for the Boston Globe, is amused by an ad she saw in the New York Times for a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. "The headline is 'My Kingdom for your Old Jewelry,' from, of course, Shakespeare's libellous play about the last of the Plantagenets, Richard III. The picture is a portrait of Henry (Tudor) VIII, son of the Henry whose rebellion killed off Richard and his line. The name of the store is Windsor Jewelers Inc.--and though Windsor is old, it wasn't a royal name till the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha royals decided WWI was a good reason for the name change."

Jan adds: "Perhaps I was sensitive to this because I just finished reading Josephine Tey's classic pro-Richard III mystery, The Daughter of Time. But I would think many a Shakespeare fan would notice the odd juxtaposition. Or am I too optimistic?"

By the way, I highly recommend Jan's Sunday columns, which examine newsworthy issues such as the spurious origins of the phrase "belly up to the bar."