Fritinancy

Talking Politics

In my latest column for Visual Thesaurus, published today, I take a look as some of the lingo that's been coined during the current presidential campaign, such as Bittergate, under the bus, and this:

Shoulder-pad feminists: "Some women in their 30s, 40s and early-50s who favor Barack Obama have a phrase to describe what they don't like about Hillary Clinton: Shoulder-pad feminism." So wrote Maureen Dowd in a March 5 New York Times op-ed column that went on to define the phrase as symbolizing the "men-are-pigs, woe-is-me, sisters-must-stick-together, pantsuits-are-powerful era that Hillary's campaign has lately revived with a vengeance." The phrase—and the rest of Dowd's column about racism and sexism—struck a tender nerve among many readers. Shoulder pads make an interesting metaphor: out of fashion in women's clothing for more than a decade, they suggest both historic achievement and sartorial not-with-it-ness. The image of broadened shoulders also evokes football-like aggression and unwelcome pushiness. Feminist has also become a highly charged word: for many young women, it seems to carry no positive implications at all (such as equal pay for equal work), but only stridency, man-hating, and—those shoulder pads again—bad fashion choices.

Full access is restricted to subscribers, but a year's subscription is only $19.95 and well worth it, if you ask this biased observer. The new "executive producer" of VT--that's apparently what they call an editor nowadays-- is Ben Zimmer, formerly of Oxford University Press, and he's got some great ideas about VT's future. Read here about how VT enlisted the help of opera singers to record the pronunications of 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database. Ben is also writing a new column, Word Routes, available to nonsubscribers (although you have to subscribe to leave a comment). And his two-part interview with New York Times columnist William Safire, whose revised Safire's Political Dictionary was just published, is full of insights from a long career in words and writing. 

Oh, and don't forget the main attraction: the visual thesaurus itself. Type in a word and watch a constellation of synonyms bloom around your entry, then click on any word in the constellation to generate still more synonyms. Available in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish! 

Why Obama's Speech Worked

Roy Peter Clark analyzes the rhetorical effectiveness of Barack Obama's speech on race in America:

Much has been said about the power and brilliance of Barack Obama's March 18 speech on race, even by some of his detractors. The focus has been on the orator's willingness to say things in public about race that are rarely spoken at all, even in private, and his expressed desire to move the country to a new and better place. There has also been attention to the immediate purpose of the speech, which was to reassure white voters that they had nothing to fear from the congregant of a fiery African-American pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. 

Amid all the commentary, I have yet to see an X-Ray reading of the text that would make visible the rhetorical strategies that the orator and authors used so effectively. When received in the ear, these effects breeze through us like a harmonious song. When inspected with the eye, these moves become more apparent, like reading a piece of sheet music for a difficult song and finally recognizing the chord changes.

Clark examines "four related rhetorical strategies" that account for the speech's success:

1.  The power of allusion and its patriotic associations.

2.  The oratorical resonance of parallel constructions.

3.  The "two-ness" of the texture, to use [the black scholar and journalist W.E.B.] DuBois's useful term.

4.  His ability to include himself as a character in a narrative about race.

Regardless of what you think of Obama the candidate, you can learn a lot from his oratory and from Clark's thoughtful parsing. And regardless of whether you write speeches, annual reports, or novels, your writing will be stronger if you write to be heard as well as read.

Here's a link to the text of Obama's speech, accompanied by a video of his delivery.

P.S. Roy Peter Clark  is one of my favorite virtual mentors. His book, Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, is indispensable (and fun to read!).

Coveting Kindred Caliber (and Other Spitzerian Language Notes)

Josh Levin--yes, the very same Josh Levin! what a busy guy!--does some explication du texte on the peculiar prose of EmperorsClubVIP.com, the escort service used by disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer:

"Catering to the most financially elite social circles in the entire world," the site's welcome page begins, "Emperors Club is the elite recreation venue and private club for those accustomed to excellence." Apparently, those accustomed to excellence do not, as you might expect, demand copy written by native English speakers. ("When seeking an evening date, a weekend travel companion, or a friend to accompany you to your next business or social event, our Icon Models are paramount preference.")

I followed the link myself and found this amusing bit of New Age-y blather:

Emperors’ Club is a positive force, intensely committed to serving our customers honestly and discreetly. Our goal is to make life more peaceful, balanced, beautiful and meaningful. We honor commitment to our clients and members as we covet long-term relationships of trust and mutual benefit.

Covet seems a bit Biblical here--and not in a redemptive way.

But I absolutely loved this:

Each of our Icon Models is a gorgeous woman of kindred caliber with whom you can enjoy every moment.

Kindred caliber is so piquant, so alliterative, so ... utterly bizarre. I plan to drop it into casual conversation at the soonest opportunity. And I was moved almost to tears by the correct use of whom.

When I found my monogrammed hankie and dried my eyes, it occurred to me to be curious about that business name. Emperors' Club--plural!--evokes a forum of toga-wearing, laurel-wreathed patricians declaiming to friends and countrymen, "My empire is bigger than your empire!" (If the phrase "diddling while Rome burns" has popped into your head, you are forgiven.) On second thought, maybe they aren't wearing togas after all. The Emperors' Club has no clothes!

Then there's that "VIP" attached to the domain name, as though "emperor" weren't quite grand enough. Seems just a bit overcompensating, don't you think?

Meanwhile, Martha Brockenbaugh muses on other Spitzer-related vocabulary:

The whole dirty business did get us wondering about the difference between a prostitute and a call-girl. The Oxford English Dictionary comes to our rescue, once again, explaining that a call-girl is a prostitute who makes appointments by telephone.

So it seems we need a new term for one who is summoned by e-mail, text message, or Web form. iGirl? WWWgirl? Dot-ho?

I can think of a term that's pertinent to this sorry episode of "Sex and the City." How about schadenfräulein?

P.S. Quote of the week, from Alessandra Stanley's New York Times review of TV talk-show coverage of the Eliot Mess:

“Aren’t you sick of men?” Joy Behar, one of the hosts [of "The View"], said. “Viagra is destroying our government.”

"The Wire": The End

The best show on television ends its five-year run on Sunday evening. (Unlike the rest of this season's episodes, the finale is not available for download in advance.) Brian Cook, writing for In These Times, defends the show against the minority of critics who find it "bleak," "nihilistic," or "grim":

Taken as a whole, “The Wire” has made several arguments about the direction of American society over the last three decades. Among them: the “drug war” has not only been futile, but devastating to the black underclass; the government has essentially abandoned the working class in post-industrial America; the defunding of our public institutions has had disastrous consequences, most conspicuously for our education system; and when the demands of profit have become so all-consuming that notions like “the public good” are cast aside as quaint, something valuable is lost. 

Despite these themes, "The Wire" is "an absolute joy to watch," Cook says:

Its plotting is intricately structured, with themes and subthemes playing symphonically throughout the series. It also provides all the thrilling twists and turns of any great serial. Its characters are almost lovingly drawn: complex, sympathetic, flawed, human. The dialogue is not only painstakingly realistic, but often wildly funny. The performances—from an ensemble cast of more than 70 actors—are uniformly excellent. In this way, “The Wire” suggests an answer to the intractable social problems it details: If we approached those problems with the same care, attention to detail, passion, intelligence and love as its creators collectively bring to the show, the world would be a better place.

What really got my attention in Clark's story was his lead paragraph:

In a recent story in The Nation, Chris Hayes used 2,200-plus words to argue why progressives should back Sen. Barack Obama. I’ll use only seven: Obama’s favorite TV show is “The Wire.” It’s certainly true, as Hayes noted, that Obama, like every presidential candidate, won’t be saying one word about the prison-industrial complex or the disastrous consequences of the “war on drugs.” But it’s heartening to think that at least he’s tuning in to one of the few public forums that fiercely drags such issues into our consciousness.

And speaking of Obama and social context, here's a surprising endorsement from Marc Andreessen. The co-founder of Netscape and founder of Ning--and past donor to Republican Mitt Romney's campaign--spent an hour and a half with Obama in early 2007. He now writes:

Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run one of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president -- completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradition to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.

That ought to make the technosphere's Ron Paul fans sit up and take notice.

(Hat tip to John McGrath. Like John, I avoid writing about politics unless there's a language or branding angle. But, also like John, I found Marc Andreessen's post too interesting not to share.)

Which Candidate Can Make America a Likable Brand Again?

"There's no way to put this delicately, so I won't," writes consumer trendspotter Jeff Yang in Salon: "America's global image is in the crapper." Which means the 2008 presidential election is "something like an ad agency review -- a chance to put a set of potential stewards for 'Brand America' through their paces, to see the creative and strategic directions in which they'd take our product."

Yang analyzes the brand messages of each of the four remaining candidates: Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama. If Clinton were a brand, he writes, she'd be Microsoft-meets-Martha Stewart Living; her underlying values are "competence, experience, professionalism." Huckabee is Applebee's and Yoo-Hoo chocolate beverage; his message is "earthiness, populism, humility." McCain--"resilience, candor, courage"--is a blend of Hummer and Winston cigarettes (ouch!). And Obama--"inspiration, inclusion, iconoclasm"--is represented by Apple and Nike.

Keith Reinhard, chairman of the second-largest ad agency in the world, DDB Worldwide, told Yang, "Brand America needs a relaunch. And this year, this election, is the best opportunity we're going to get. ... The bottom line is that we need a world that likes America."

So which candidate represents the best rebranding opportunity? Read the article; get the answer.

Encyclopedia Baracktannica

Obamamentum is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to neologisms coined from Barack Obama's name. Chris Wilson of Slate presents the Encyclopedia Baracktannica, a random Obamalingo generator available as a widget. Smith writes:

It's hard to imagine that Barack Obama would be as big of a phenomenon if his name were, say, Tom Smith. As numerous fans, detractors, reporters, and bloggers have demonstrated, it's a name that lends itself to neologisms—everything from Barackstar to Obamania to Omentum.

I especially like obamanomenon, obamalaise ("the hangover resulting from repeated listenings to the 'Yes We Can' montages"), and Barack to the Future ("2008 film in which Barack Obama uses the flux capacitor to defy traditional partisan politics, race, gender, the 'Clinton Attack Machine,' and the space-time contiuum"--thanks to Timothy O'Brien for that humdinger!).

And yes--as Orange pointed out in a comment on my previous post, and as Dr. James Peykanu informed Slate--omentum is the anatomical term for a "big membrane in the belly that serves as the root by which the blood to the intestines flows."

No Commentum

Language guy Mark Peters writes in the Boston Globe about "-mentum," the political suffix du jour, especially in reference to Barack Obama:

Perhaps it bodes well for Barack Obama that his momentum has so many names: Barack-mentum, Mo-bama-mentum, Obama-mentum, Obama-rama-mentum, Oba-mentum, and O-mentum have all been used. O-mentum is a particularly delicious word: it rhymes with momentum, while bringing to mind Oprah, Obama's most famous supporter.

Earlier coinages have included Joementum (during the momentum-challenged 2004 Joe Lieberman presidential campaign) and Met-mentum, seen in New York in 2000.

Peters speculates that no-mentum, used as candidates drop out of the race,"may be a word with a future, since it could be applied to so many subjects besides politics. And a new, less catchy, addition to the -mentum lexicon emerged recently when no-mentum gained a semi-synonym: mutnemom, or reverse momentum, which Slate blogger Mickey Kaus coined to describe Hillary Clinton's sudden deceleration."

There's also faux-mentum, as in "nothing going on after all."

Thinking about -mentum got my name-mentum going. How about...

D'oh!mentum: Homer Simpson can't stop doing one stupid thing after another.

Eskimomentum: Global warming accelerates; Aleuts and Inuits step up their protests.

MoMAmentum: Museum fundraising exceeds goals!

Pianissimomentum: It's growing, but very, very quietly.

Mentosmentum: Ten million people want to see an eruption caused by dropping a lot of candy into a lot of Coke.

Yo-mentum: Use of a a gender-neutral pronoun first heard in Baltimore catches on nationwide.

Hey, it's monumentumous!

February Linkfest

In honor of leap year, an extra helping of links:

Real people are dreaming about presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And they're sharing their dreams on a couple of blogs known as I Dream of Hillary / I Dream of Barack. "A Christian Clinton-Hater" writes: We were in a car going somewhere. As we talked and things unfolded, I found myself liking her. By the end of the dream, I actually found her desirable. (Via Murketing.) (P.S. Does anyone else remember all the sexual dreams people--OK, women--reported having about Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign? They were collected in a book, Dreams of Bill, now available online for as little as 20 cents.)

The Dictionary of Newfoundland English presents "the regional lexicon of one of the oldest overseas communities of the English-speaking world." As you might expect, it includes plenty of seafaring terms as well as holdovers from earlier British dialectical items such as droke, dwy, fadge, frore, keecorn, linny, nish, and suant. (Via Errata.)

"Sure as eggs," "get the chop, "up the gum tree": the British expatriate and Florida resident who blogs at A Gentleman's Domain explains those expressions and ten others in "13 British Idioms That I Have Never Heard in North America."

You too can possess a richer, more colorful vocabulary for insulting your enemies! Simply transport yourself to Wikipedia's Pejorative Terms for People, a compilation that includes macacawitz, jíbaro, and shoobie (a New Jersey insult applied to people from Philadelphia). (Hat tip: qwghlm.)

Jay Garmon at TechRepublic has compiled a list of 75 words every sci-fi fan should know. I recognized, um, about seven of them.

Here's how The Ad Generator explains itself: "Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed to generate invented slogans, which are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby creating fake advertisements on the fly." Provocative, beautiful, unsettling. (Via Verbatim.)

The Dictionary of American Regional English--known to fans as DARE--is nearing completion; the final volume will be published next year. In the meantime, you can visit the DARE website and take some quizzes on DARE terms. (Use the left-hand navigation.) Crimmy? Feest? Kiss-me-quick? Good luck! (Via Mike Pope.)

More on Dunkin' Donuts Democrats

Last week I couldn't find any hits for DDD, and now I'm tripping over them. The term has even crossed the pond: I discovered a rather pompous analysis in--of all places--The Times (UK) Online. Columnist Gerard Baker, the paper's United States editor, wrote on Feb. 8 about the U.S. presidential primary:

The reason the race is so close has nothing to do with policy differences. I'd wager that not one voter in a hundred could name with any confidence a single difference between the two candidates' stances on the war in Iraq, healthcare, taxes, public spending, abortion or anything else. That's because there isn't one. ...

The saliency of economics then, is crucial. Those who said the economy was the important issue facing the country went for Mrs Clinton by 20 points. Those who thought Iraq was the main issue chose Mr Obama by five points.

This is where coffee preferences come in. Among voters whose voting choice is not based on identity politics, Mr Obama's supporters are the latte liberals. These are the people for whom Starbucks, with its $5 cups of coffee and fancy bakeries, is not just a consumer choice but a lifestyle. They not only have the money. They share the values.

They live by all those little quotes on the side of Starbucks cups about community service and global warming. They embrace the Obama candidacy because to them he transcends traditional class and economic divides. He is a transformative political figure - potentially the first black man to be president - and is seen as the one to revive America's faith in itself and restore America's status in the world. For these voters the defining emotion is hope.

Mrs Clinton is the candidate of what might be called Dunkin' Donut Democrats. They do not have money to waste on multiple-hyphenated coffee drinks - double-top, no-foam, non-fat lattes and the like. Not for them the bran muffins or the biscotti. They are the 75-cent coffee and doughnut crowd. For them caffeine choice doesn't correlate with their values but simply represents a means of keeping them going through their challenging day.

Though they don't doubt that global warming is important, they think it can wait. They want to make sure first they can pay the heating bills. They're not in favour of the Iraq war but neither are they so focused on restoring America's image in the world. They're not necessarily racist, it's just that they're not especially animated by the idealism represented by the first black president. For them anxiety, not aspiration is the defining factor.

And it turns out that political-satiricial blogger Howard (Extreme) Mortman has had his sugar-dusted finger on this particular pulse for a while. Nearly a year ago he wrote three posts about the political power of doughnuts (or donuts). Most relevantly, he cited Hillary Clinton's February 2007 promise to a New Hampshire crowd: “The only thing I will try to do differently from my husband is not to make so many Dunkin’ Donuts stops. Bill gained about 20 pounds in the New Hampshire primary and I cannot afford that.”

Well, you know about politicians and their promises. Where did Hillary, radiant with victory, stop for a post-primary quaff in Concord, N.H., on Jan. 8, 2008? That's right: Dunkin' Donuts.

Update: Obama's into doughnuts, too.

Doughnut Democrats

Before there were Dunkin' Donuts Democrats there were "Doughnut Democrats," as identified in the headline of this 2005 Wall Street Journal article, cited in The Radical Centrist.  The subhed: "Whatever happened to the party's middle?"

Thanks to brother David for forwarding the link.