Fritinancy

The Word Haters

The October 13 New Yorker—the politics issue—just arrived, and it's full of articles I can't wait to read. (Plus: two cartoons by the magnificent Roz Chast. I could find only one online, though.)

I'm saving the longer articles for later. But a two-page essay by James Wood, who teaches at Harvard and is the author of How Fiction Works, wouldn't let me go. Its title is "Verbage"; the subtitle is "The Republican war on words." I urge you to read it, because it goes a long way toward explaining many of the bizarre campaign tactics we've been witnessing.

Wood suggests that the McCain campaign's attacks on Barack Obama as "just a person of words" reflect "a deep suspicion of language itself ... as if Republican practitioners saw words the way Captain Ahab saw 'all visible objects'—as 'pasteboard masks,' concealing acts and deeds and things—and, like Ahab, were bent on striking through those masks."

To those of us who "just work with words" in the service of commerce, this paragraph has special resonance:

Or take McCain’s slogan “The Original Maverick,” now attached to many of the campaign’s ads. It cynically stipulates that politics is just merchandise, by sounding as close to a logo or a brand name as possible. But it also understands that consumers trust brands that sound like “quality.” Thus “Original,” which has the reassuring solidity of something like “Serving Americans of discernment since 1851,” or, indeed, “Levi’s 501: Original Jeans.” In such formulations, “Original” means eccentric, strange, unusual, and also first, best, belatedly copied by others. Better still, the phrase sounds like the tagline from a movie poster; not for nothing has McCain taken to announcing that “change is coming soon, to a district near you.”

Read the entire essay, which takes its title from Sarah Palin's (deliberate?) mispronunciation of verbiage. Wood writes: "It would be hard to find a better example of the Republican disdain for words than that remarkable term, so close to garbage, so far from language."

While you're on the site, check out the magazine's endorsement of Barack Obama. It hardly comes as a surprise, but that doesn't make it any less eloquent and compelling. 

From My Twitter Files

I've been using Twitter to post quick links to blogs and articles I find interesting. Here's a roundup of about a week's worth of my tweets about names, brands, and language (okay, and politics, too):

Convivium Brands, a California company specializing in "on-demand private-label wine and spirits brands," has introduced four varietals under a new wine brand: Lipstick on a Pig. Each bottle is available with a red (presumably Republican) and a blue (Democratic) label. According to the website: "Lipstick On A Pig Wines allow consumers to weigh in and voice their opinions with their palates!" (In case you missed it, you can read here about the political flap over the expression "lipstick on a pig.")

I got a kick out of Newsweek columnist Joe Klein's nickname for Alaska Governor Sarah Palin: "Embarracuda." Other nifty words in the column: "nothingburger" and "empretzeled."

Anyone else catch the name of the Treasury Department guy who'll be overseeing the $700 million financial bailout? It's Neel Kashkari. Yeah. Cash and carry. That's going to be everyone's motto pretty soon.

Writer Anne Lamott misses the late, great newspaper columnist Molly Ivins this campaign season. Me too. (Never heard of Ivins? Read my tribute to her.)

John McCain and Sarah Palin are fond of calling themselves mavericks. But a descendant of 19th-century Texas rancher Samuel Maverick--whose unbranded cattle were known as Maverick's--warns them to put a lid on it. Terellita Maverick, 82, a  member emeritus of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says McCain "is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase." "He's a Republican," she said. "He's branded."

Jay Rosen, who's on the journalism faculty at NYU and whom I follow on Twitter, suggests that Gov. Palin's speech patterns were influenced by her brief stint on a television news program, and directs us to Michael Kinsley's 2001 essay for Slate about "what TV news is doing to our precious verbs." Answer: they've been reduced to "universal gerundiciples." Judge for yourself. Here's Kinsley, in full parody mode:

I suspecting the trend of TV news talking in headline-ese traceable to Rupert Murdoch, who buys the New York Post many years ago and founding Fox TV News more recently. The Post famous for its brilliant headlines. Fox News, though hypocritical about denying its brazen right-wing politics, the most creative of the TV news networks.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on Sarah Palin's "pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism."

Language Log's Mark Liberman takes issue with Dowd's assertion that one of Palin's spoken sentences--“It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there"--defies diagramming. He manages to wrangle it into shape. Other Palin sentences don't fare so well.

Two more Language Log posts on Palinesque predilictions: one on the governor's affection for affective demonstratives--the point words "this" and "that"--without referents ("loaning us these dollars," "trying to forge that peace," "craving that straight talk"), and one on her curious use of also as semantic glue, especially at the end of sentences.

And while we're in LanguageLogLand, here's Geoff Nunberg commenting on Steven Pinker commenting on Ms. Palin's pronunciation of nuclear: 

Palin has to be aware that many people consider her pronunciation nonstandard, and she (or her handlers) seems to have made some effort at correction, which is presumably why she pronounced the word as "new clear" when reading off the teleprompter in her convention speech. Since then, though, it's been "nucular" all the way, which may be part of the "let Palin be Palin" strategy. 

I'm learning the most interesting things from fashion blogs. For example, The Thoughtful Dresser (in the UK!) led me to www.270toWin.com, an interactive Electoral College map with current projections and actual results going back to 1789. And Je Ne Sais Quoi posted a nice graphic that compares the presidential candidates' tangible assets.

One more, then back to work: Critic Roger Ebert watched last week's vice-presidential debate and was reminded of Fargo. But he couldn't decide whether Sarah Palin was channeling Marge Gunderson or Jerry Lundegaard.

I'm Thinking of a Number

You've heard about the $700 billion Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is requesting (demanding?) from U.S. taxpayers to bail out the investment banks, right? You may have asked yourself, "How do those guys come up with a figure like $700 billion?" Well, here's your answer, direct from the capitalist tool itself, Forbes magazine:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Forbes's response: "Wow."

When I posted that link on Twitter, Pammybean of Beancounters tweeted back:

Why not ask for a gazillion?  ::ahem::  The bailout will cost eleventy gazillion dollars. And sixty-two cents.

By the way, the "Thought of the Day" at Forbes.com was "Health is more important than wealth." So very, very true. And with that great health insurance you've got ... What was that again? Sorry--I can't hear you over the screaming and gnashing of teeth.

Colorless Green Is the New Black

Aliona Doletskaya, the editor of Russian Vogue, has a Ph.D. in linguistics:

As an editor, Ms. Doletskaya treads a fine line, hewing to the commercial demands of what is arguably the world’s most influential fashion franchise and, at the same time, catering to the tastes of her Russian readership.

An unlikely style maven, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative linguistics. And she strives to edit a magazine that reflects all that has historically defined the Russian style. The fashion pages in her September issue open with a portrait of Anna Selezneva, one of Russia’s most-sought-after models, photographed to resemble an icon — the religious kind.

That image is meant to reflect “the Byzantine past of the country,” Ms. Doletskaya said, “which, with its love of gilding, is really over [t]he top.”

Yet in Moscow, where Vogue has its offices, tastes are shifting, as reflected by the stepped-up presence of American designers in her magazine. “The full-on extravagance, the red lipstick, the diamonds, the furs, all that is passé,” she said firmly. “The Russians are getting far more sophisticated.”

Ms. Doletskaya herself is intent on fostering those newly cosmopolitan tendencies. “What I want to say now to my readers is that we are part of the world,” she said, “no longer wild unfriendly creatures sitting behind a wall.”

According to the Times article, Russian Vogue, which was launched ten years ago, has a circulation of 200,000. (American Vogue, according to Portfolio magazine, has a circulation of 383,833.)

Title credit: N. Chomsky.

Are You Smarter Than a V.P. Candidate?

Passport, a blog by the editors of Foreign Policy, has posted 20 questions on global issues that it hopes ABC's Charlie Gibson will ask vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin when he becomes the first journalist to interview her later this week. Meanwhile, the Anchorage Daily News, in Gov. Palin's home state, poses ten questions of its own.

A commenter on the Passport site suggested that the questions would make a good Internet meme, so I'm taking up the challenge. Are you smarter than a V.P. candidate? How many questions can you answer?

Do you think the questions are fair? Inclusive? Relevant?

By the way, although the ADN's questions cover several Alaskan issues, they don't seem to require arcane Last Frontier knowledge. For example:

Sen. Ted Stevens' trial is still pending; he has declined to say whether he would accept a pardon from President Bush before Bush leaves office in January. Do Alaska voters deserve an answer to that question before they cast their vote for or against Stevens in November? What is your position on a president pardoning a public official before a jury has ruled on guilt or innocence?

And also this:

In spring of 2004, the Daily News reported that you cited family considerations in deciding not to try for the U.S. Senate: "How could I be the team mom if I was a U.S. senator?" What was different this time as you decided to run for vice president?

One more question for you (not Sarah Palin, you): How likely do you think it is that Charlie Gibson will ask any of these questions?¹

Hat tip: Lance Knobel of Davos Newbies, who also gave me my favorite new acronym: OPNP, which stands for for Obnoxious Populist Nationalist Party. Every Balkan nation has one, Lance writes: "The sad thing is the US has one too."

___

¹ Fake Charlie Gibson has a few questions of his own.

What I'm Reading

I admit it: I've been a little obsessed with the presidential campaign. Okay, a lot obsessed. I do want to keep this blog a relatively politics-free zone, except when I can use politics as a platform for discussing language, names, and brands. But before I head off on the high road, here are some of the ways I'm following the news (in addition to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Slate, etc.):

• Jon Stewart was terrific last night, skewering Republican inconsistencies on The Daily Show. Watch the video here.

• Crooks and Liars shreds John McCain's "delusional" claims about Sarah Palin's experience and qualifications.

• Laura McGann of the Washington Independent has been filing excellent reports from Gov. Palin's home state of Alaska. Ms. McGann is doing the tedious, important work of combing through files and microfiches to get at the truth. You can also follow her shorter dispatches on Twitter.

• NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen has written a provocative piece, "The Palin Convention and the Culture War Option," that's posted on his website, PressThink. He outlines, point by point, how the GOP might counter (truthful) charges leveled by the Democrats. I'm following Jay Rosen on Twitter, too.

• Trying to find time to read more of Politico and Talking Points Memo. My favorite line of the day comes from a reader of Politico's Jonathan Martin in reference to Sarah Palin's (and Rudy Giuliani's) snide remarks about Barack Obama's years as a Chicago community organizers: "Someone should remind her that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

• Linda Grant (of The Thoughtful Dresser blog) offers an English perspective on Sarah Palin in this article in today's Guardian about "two hopelessly incompatible Americas."

• Speaking of thoughtful, James Fallows of the Atlantic (he and Andrew Sullivan are just about the only Atlantic contributors I can bear to read anymore) gives a well-reasoned analysis of Palin's acceptance speech.

One more: Listen to Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" interview with New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick, who has written a series of articles about John McCain and who wrote a book about the conservative Christian movement. Among other things, he points out that the "maverick" label was attached to John McCain relatively recently.

If you missed Sarah Palin's acceptance speech last night, you can watch it (and read the text) here. (Notice, in the text just above the boldface section, the helpful "new-clear" spelling. Previously, Palin has pronounced "nuclear" as noo-kyoo-ler.)

I'm taking the next few days off to attend a (nonpolitical) funeral. In the meantime, discuss: Have you seen or heard any particularly good campaign coverage lately?

Criteria

In an editorial today, "Senator McCain's Choice," the print edition of the New York Times included this passage:

Governor Palin’s lack of experience, especially in national security and foreign affairs, raises immediate questions about how prepared she is to potentially succeed to the presidency. That really is the only criteria for judging a candidate for vice president.

It's criterion, the singular form of this Greek noun. Phenomenon is another singular noun that's often erroneously mixed up with its plural, phenomena.

The Times's error was corrected in the online edition.

___

By the way, the "split infinitive" in the editorial--to potentially succeed--is perfectly acceptable. See this Language Log post for more about that hoary grammatical fallacy.

Cross Words

It pains me to report that Ron Rosenbaum, a writer whom I admire very much, has come down on the wrong side of a subject I care deeply about: crossword puzzles.

Well, maybe not "deeply." But I do enjoy crosswords and other solitary word games, and Rosenbaum's recent article for Slate, "Crossword, Sudoku Plague Threatens America!", almost succeeds in making me feel ashamed.

Rosenbaum claims to bear no ill will toward Scrabble (another of my cherished pastimes), because it's a social game. It's the solipsism, the escapism, the anal-retentiveness (I'm paraphrasing) of newspaper puzzles that pushes his buttons:

I know that I'm a partisan divider, but to me it seems that puzzle people are fleeing from real puzzles—fleeing the complexity, the fear of the unknown, fleeing from the messiness of life that cannot be contained in a box, fleeing to an illusion of mastery and control. They're control freaks seeking control of something worthless: "I can fill in a bunch of boxes with letters!"

Those little crossword-puzzle boxes serve as the fragile containment structures for their darker fears, cells they lock themselves into in order to hide from the world. Hide from the fact that there are so many things they will never find answers for. There are so many things that will never be solved. But 21 Down—got that covered!

What's more, Rosenbaum fumes, puzzle solvers are diddling when they could be actually reading:

[S]omehow crossword types think that their addiction to this sad form of mental self-abuse somehow makes them "literary." Sorry: Doing puzzles reflects not an elevated literary sensibility but a degraded letter-ary sensibility, one that demonstrates an inability to find pleasure in reading. Otherwise, why choose the wan, sterile satisfactions of crosswords over the far more robust full-blooded pleasures of books?

Could it be he's just a teensy bit jealous? I mean, I can do the Sunday New York Times puzzle in about 40 minutes--an activity that requires me to think metaphorically, dredge up half-forgotten knowledge about Humphrey Bogart movies, and make connections between homophones--and still have time to read the Week in Review, the Ethicist, and all the wedding announcements. A morning well spent, I say.

However, Rosenbaum gets no argument from me on the second part of his thesis:

Sudoku has been turning ordinary humans into pod people for less than a decade. It's grown so fast its depredations have flown beneath the radar of economic indices—its matrix has escaped our metrics—but I think a serious case can be made that the decline in the American economy can be blamed on the sapping of the mental energy and productivity of the American workforce that sudoku addiction alone has wrought. It's a terrible thing to behold: on commuter trains, in Starbucks, in offices, the Slaves of Sudoku hunched over their puzzle books, addicted to the mind-numbing hillbilly heroin of the white-collar class. 

I probably would have chosen something slightly gentler than "mind-numbing hillbilly heroin of the white-collar class," but like Rosenbaum I find sudoku an utter bafflement. Putting numbers in boxes--what's the appeal? Where are the laughs?

Putting letters in boxes, though--that's a whole different story. Well, my story, anyway. And I'm sticking to it.

Needless Neologisms

I'm fine with SoHo for South of Houston and TriBeCa for Triangle Below Canal (street). Let Manhattanites have their fun, I say. But Tony Bennett never left his heart in "San Fran," and as far as I know nobody has ever used this confounding contraction to refer to one of San Francisco's oldest neighborhoods:

Notice that it requires a second sign to explain that ridiculous "Tel-Hi," which begs to be pronounced tel-high. Which makes no sense at all. 

Speaking of portmanteau words nobody asked for, Time magazine tells us about a recent real estate phenomenon:

This is the story of friends--just friends--who buy houses together because they are young and don't have a lot of money but smell opportunity in a soft real estate market and want to start building equity ASAP, even if it comes before the wife¹, kids and golden retriever.

Given real estate's penchant for shorthand (think condo, co-op, comps and COFI), we should add a term for friends who buy houses together. Let's call them communal homeowners. Co-hos.

Oh, please--let's not. I'm already picturing a hookers' collective, or maybe an Alaskan salmon that swims upstream to a streetlamp and croons huskily, "Looking for a good time, sailor?"

(Hat tip for the co-ho story: MJF.)

___

¹ Detect a certain gender bias here? God, Time can be irritating. 

Out of Africa

Was anyone else bothered by this passage in Tom (no relation) Friedman's op-ed column in yesterday's New York Times? The dateline was Beijing; the headline was "Melting Pot Meets Great Wall." Here's what I'm talking about:

Walking through the Olympic Village the other day, here’s what struck me most: the Russian team all looks Russian; the African team all looks African; the Chinese team all looks Chinese; and the American team looks like all of them.

Say what?

Let's leave aside the probability that a Moscow native would probably find plenty of diversity in the facial features, stature, and skin colors of his compatriots. Likewise a native of Beijing. What really bugs me is the reference to "the African team"—as though there were only one.

Last time I checked, Africa was a continent (the world's second largest), with 53 countries and seven dependencies. Most of those countries sent teams to the Olympic Games. And in no way were the members of those teams homogeneous in appearance, language, politics, or culture. To cite just some of the most obvious examples: Ous Meloulli of Tunisia, who snatched a breathtaking win in the 1600-meter freestyle from the favorite, Australia's Grant Hackett, could pass for Syrian or Palestinian; he looks nothing at all like blonde swimmer Kirsty Coventry, who won all of Zimbabwe's medals. And neither of them resembles Togo's first-ever Olympic medalist, the kayaker Benjamin Boukpeti, or men's marathon winner Samuel Wanjiru of Kenya.

Even if Tom Friedman had intended to write "African teams," his statement is ridiculous—and embarrassing for a writer who has built his reputation on globalism (see The World Is Flat). 

Unfortunately, Friedman is far from the only American with a huge blind spot about everything south of Gibraltar. During the opening ceremonies of this year's Olympic Games, NBC's Matt Lauer (or was it Bob Costas?) seemed bemused when the small contingent from Central African Republic entered the stadium. "Well, as I said four years ago," Lauer/Costas said with a chuckle, "I can tell you that Central African Republic is a republic. In central Africa."

Time to get a clue, media people. Right now a guy named Obama is about to accept his party's nomination for president of the United States. His father was from Kenya. That's a country. In Africa.