Last week wine distributor Lot18 and MGM – producer of the Hulu streaming series The Handmaid’s Tale – announced one of the more harebrained merchandising collabs of recent years: three wines named after the show’s most prominent characters, Offred, Ofglen, and Serena Joy. It went about as badly as you might expect, and within 24 hours the wines had disappeared from the Lot18 website.
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On Wednesday, Valentine’s Day 2018, a 19-year-old armed with an AR-15 assault rifle entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and opened fire. By the time he dumped his rifle and attempted to flee, he’d killed 17 people, mostly teenagers, and injured more than a dozen.
Mass shootings are shockingly common in the U.S.: there have been at least 146 in the last half-century, and the rate of their occurrence has tripled since 2011. School shootings, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in The New Yorker in 2015, are a modern phenomenon; they mostly involve young white men like Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter.
How do Americans respond to random, recurring massacres? In Congress and the White House, by offering trite, ineffectual words: “thoughts and prayers.” On social media, though, a different word has surfaced repeatedly, aimed in anger and frustration at those very officials: craven.
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On Friday President Trump signed an executive order – written by one or both of his strategists named Steve – that restricts immigration from seven majority Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days, and excludes all Syrian refugees indefinitely. (Not included in the list of restricted countries: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, all countries in which the Trump Organization has business dealings.) The order was popular among Trump’s rapidly dwindling fan base – his approval rating last week, which Gallup placed at 42 percent and Quinnipiac at 36 percent, is the lowest in modern times for an incoming president – and vehemently opposed not only by Democrats but also by several prominent members of the party Trump claims to represent.
Monday’s Wall Street Journal carries an editorial headlined “Trump’s Refugee Bonfire” that called the executive order “no doubt legal” but took issue with its implementation. (Experts cited by the New York Times say the ban is unlikely to be effective in curbing terrorism. The Times’s editorial board called it “cowardly and dangerous.”) The WSJ editorial uses a quaint term, blunderbuss, to describe the ban:
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise of “extreme vetting” for refugees from countries with a history of terrorism, and his focus on protecting Americans has popular support. But his refugee ban is so blunderbuss and broad, and so poorly explained and prepared for, that it has produced confusion and fear at airports, an immediate legal defeat, and political fury at home and abroad. Governing is more complicated than a campaign rally.
17th-century wheellock blunderbuss. Source.
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Jeans-maker Wrangler doesn’t want you to go Wrongler.
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Canadian retailer Kit and Ace – see my post about the company name here – is adding coffee shops to its boutiques: The first Sorry Coffee opens tomorrow in Toronto. “Sorry” can mean “worthless” or “inferior,” but here it’s “an attempt to poke fun at Canadians — a winking nod to the quick-to-apologize stereotype,” co-founder J.J. Wilson told the Star. Be sure to pronounce it the Canadian way: SORE-ee.
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My January column for the Visual Thesaurus looks at how smart came to be attached to so many inanimate objects, from phones to skin lotion, from bombs to highways, from quotation marks to fabric. Along the way, I consider the multiple senses of this very old word, which can mean “stylish,” “cheeky,” or “to cause pain,” as well as “witty” or “intelligent.”
No subscription needed to view the column this month (not always the case!). Here’s a taste:
The sense of smart = shrewd extends to the slangy smart-ass, which first appeared in print in 1951 in an American detective novel. (OED on smart-ass: “orig. and chiefly U.S.; characterized by an overly clever or smug display of intelligence or [esp. professional] knowledge.”) The term’s mild vulgarity might seem to preclude its incorporation into branding and advertising, but that’s not the case at all.
The Big Ass Fans company (whose logo depicts a donkey’s derrière) used smart-ass in a full-page ad in 2013; the term was a jocular reference to the product’s electronic workings. The company later filed for trademark protection for “Smart Ass Fan.”
Blog extra: A smart gun is one that uses biometrics to recognize its user. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote about one such gun for the January 18, 2015, Sunday Review:
Doesn’t it seem odd that your cellphone can be set up to require a PIN or a fingerprint, but there’s no such option for a gun?
Which brings us to Kai Kloepfer, a lanky 17-year-old high school senior in Boulder, Colo. After the cinema shooting in nearby Aurora, Kloepfer decided that for a science fair project he would engineer a “smart gun” that could be fired only by an authorized user.
“I started with iris recognition, and that seemed a good idea until you realize that many people firing guns wear sunglasses,” Kloepfer recalls. “So I moved on to fingerprints.”
Smart guns are “smart” in at least two senses of the word: clever and connected. And yet, Kristof writes, “The National Rifle Association seems set against smart guns, apparently fearing that they might become mandatory.”
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From A-bomb to to zoom: the Weed Blog’s extensive—indeed, staggering—lexicon of slang terms for marijuana. (I discussed one of those terms, 420, in a post published earlier this week.)
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Speaking of specialized lexicons, check out The D.C. Manual of Style and Usage, Washington City Paper’s entertainingly written and copiously illustrated guide. One of my favorite entries: “Blelvis: A portmanteau of ‘black’ and ‘Elvis.’ Refers exclusively to D.C.’s mostly elusive, semifamous busker; he likely never uses the words ‘portmanteau’ and ‘busker,’ but he can sing every song in the Elvis Presley catalog.” Also: “Hipster. A term that is somehow both loaded and meaningless. If you feel compelled to use it, talk to an editor.”
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The new first-person-shooter game Destiny, released in September, features a huge arsenal of weapons, and I can only imagine the brainstorming sessions that produced names like Praedyth’s Revenge, Pocket Infinity, Strange Suspect, and the excellent Doctor Nope. The Australian game-review site Kotaku provides a ranking of all 74 names. (Via Our Bold Hero.) IGN lists the weapons by category (pulse rifles, fusion rifles, rocket launchers, etc.).
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An “ally” is what British soldiers in Afghanistan call “a battlefield fashionista--desirables include having a beard, using a different rifle, carrying vast amounts of ammunition, being dusty and having obscene amounts of tattoos and hair.” A “crow” is a new soldier recently out of training. From a guide to Afghanistan battlefield slang published by BBC News. (Via Language Hat.)
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You had me at “you had me at”: Ben Yagoda on the post-Jerry Maguire life of a meme.
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If you’re curious about the origins of Toyota model names, this CarScoops explainer is a reasonable starting point. The Camry got its name from Japanese kanmuri, meaning “crown”; the Supra is a direct borrowing from Latin (“above”). But this story about the Yaris made me wonder: “Yaris is an amalgamation of words from Greek mythology and German. In Greek mythology, ‘Charis’ was a symbol of beauty and elegance. Toyota swapped the ‘Ch’ with ‘Ya’ – German for ‘yes’ – to symbolise the perceived reaction of European markets to the car’s styling.”
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The predictably zany stories of how some British ad agencies—Doofer, tenthree, A Large Evil Corporation, and others got their names.
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Tom Magliozzi, co-host of NPR’s long-running “Car Talk,” died November 3 at 77. In his honor, here’s a link to one of my favorite features of the show: the punny staff credits, from sculling coach Rose Dior to assistant disciplinarian Joaquin D’Planque. (Via Henry Fuhrmann.)
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Cherpumple? So 2010. A Houston bakery’s pumpecapple piecake (pumpkin + pecan + apple) is this year’s turducken of desserts. (Via Barry Popik.)
Image via Houston Eater.
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Five contemporary authors tell how they titled their books. (My own semi-facetious take on book titling here.)
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And speaking of novels: “Can’t get a deal for that novel manuscript? Try ad agencies. Young & Rubicam commissioned Booker award-nominated novelist William Boyd to tell any story he wanted as long as it featured a Land Rover vehicle.” By Ad Broad, who calls herself “the oldest working writer in advertising.”
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From veteran name developer David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, some tips to help startups avoid making naming mistakes. First piece of advice: The name “doesn’t have to be clever. It just has to communicate.” And, adds Placek, stop it already with the -ly names. Yep.
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Ammosexual: A person who exhibits an extreme love of firearms, possibly to the point of fetishization. Coined from ammunition and sexual, with sonic overtones of homosexual.
On June 6, 2014, Bill Maher, comedian and host of the late-night talk show “Real Time,” derided proponents of “open carry” laws that would permit guns to be taken into all public spaces, including restaurants and places of worship.
Daily Kos has the transcript, which reads in part:
Guns aren’t just a tool of last resort. They’re awesome. That’s why people stroke them. And name them, and take pictures with them. You guys aren’t just firearm enthusiasts — you’re ammosexuals. (audience laughter and applause)
And before you try and deny you have some sort of unnatural romantic relationship with your gun, consider this. You’re taking it out to dinner! (hysterical audience laughter) Because it completes you. Get a room.
Maher did not coin the term, which had appeared a couple of weeks earlier in an Americans Against the Tea Party post headlined “Meet the Dangerous Ammosexuals and Gun-Fetishists That Invaded Chipotle with Their Blessing.” (“Their” apparently refers to Chipotle management.)
A search of #ammosexual on Twitter reveals even earlier appearances, including one dated April 25. There’s an even earlier tweet from July 2012:
OK, I get it gun nut...you love hunting, and the deer population is out of control. Now, could you explain your erection? #ammosexual
— Seth M Peck (@sethmpeck) July 26, 2012
And Urban Dictionary has an entry dated October 21, 2009, that doesn’t use “gun” or “ammunition” but seems to making a similar point.
My informal audit shows that “ammosexual” is usually a term of contempt. But as with gundamentalist, which has similar origins but with religious rather than sexual overtones, ammosexual has been appropriated by some of the people it’s meant to shame.
Here, for example, is a tweet from “Gun Rights Across America” that also appropriates “pride” as used by LGBT-rights organizations:
Proud to be an #Ammosexualpic.twitter.com/sRfbXDzNiZ
— GunRightsAcrAmerica (@GRAAmerica) July 15, 2014
In fact, some professed ammosexuals have taken an “oppressed minority” stance. This decal is sold by an organization called Cold Dead Hands (a reference to Charlton Heston’s famous rallying cry):
From the website:
We’ve all heard the phrase by now... Ammosexual! I’m here to say: “I’m out of the closet! I am an Ammosexual, and I’m proud!” It’s time the liberal gun grabbers start recognizing our rights as law abiding gun owners, and quit discriminating against us. Stand united... stand proud... and post a decal that tells them how you feel.
For a possibly unwitting display of ammosexualism, see My Parents Open Carry, by Brian Jeffs, “a wholesome family book that reflects the views of the majority of the American people.” (Gun advocates are able to view themselves as both the majority and the minority.) The father in the story is named Richard Strong (nickname Dick?). Alexandra Petri’s sardonic review in the Washington Post is excerpted unironically on Amazon; here it is in context:
Thank heavens! I frequently lament how closeted gun owners are, and how I seldom hear from them. “You know who I wish we got to listen to more often?” everyone whispers and murmurs. “Gun rights advocates. Especially I wish they addressed the kids more.”
The Amazon customer reviews of the book are … well, on target. Many of the recent ones refer to the fatal shooting last week of am Arizona gun-range instructor by the 9-year-old he was teaching to fire an Uzi.
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Gundamentalist: A person who goes beyond the language of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and takes his or her unrestricted right to bear arms as a tenet of religious or quasi-religious faith. A portmanteau of “gun” and “fundamentalist.”
Jay Heinrichs, a rhetorician and author of books and a blog about figures of speech, used gundamentalist in his response to the mass shooting of children last Friday in Newtown, Connecticut. In his post, “It’s Not a Tragedy” (“‘Tragedy’ implies an act of the gods, something terribly sad but inevitable. Instead, call it a massacre”), Heinrichs wrote:
Keep the focus on the children. This was a massacre of children. Gundamentalists will try to focus on the shooter. That allows them to make a reasonable-sounding case for school prayer: As our morals deteriorate, more sick people will do horrible things. Frame the issue around making it harder to massacre children. You can’t pray away legally acquired assault weapons and large-capacity ammo clips.
In a comment, Heinrichs defined “gundamentalists” as “gun-loving fundamentalists with an unusual interpretation of Jesus’ peace message.”
Heinrichs didn’t coin “gundamentalist”; in fact, the word has been around for more than 80 years. I found a citation in the July 31, 1926, issue of The New Yorker in the “Of All Things” column, an un-bylined collection of news items (paywalled):
Down in Texas the shouting Baptist has evolved into the shooting Baptist. Rev. J. Frank Norris has now reached the position of America’s leading gundamentalist.
(Some context: In her 2006 book Rethinking Zion: How the Print Media Placed Fundamentalism in the South, Mary Beth Swetnam Matthews identifies Edgar W. Knight, a professor of education at the University of North Carolina, as the person who pinned the “gundamentalist” nickname on Norris, a flamboyant preacher who assailed alcohol, Catholics, Communists, and “that hell-born, Bible-destroying, deity-of-Christ-denying, German rationalism known as evolution.” In July 1926, Norris shot and killed an unarmed man in his church office. He was tried for murder and acquitted on grounds of self-defense, although no gun had been found on his victim or presented as evidence in the trial.)
“Gundamentalist” lay dormant and possibly forgotten for many decades. Then, about five years ago, it began appearing again – this time in connection with groups, not individuals, and with a new shade of meaning: not necessarily a religious fundamentalist who pulls a trigger but any person who venerates guns.
In 2007, Reverend Rachel Smith, founder of the God Not Guns Initiative, wrote in “A Meditation for God Not Guns Sabbath” that “Gundamentalism” was “a spiritual problem”:
Gundamentalism is a spiritual movement without spiritual grounding. It is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.
Gundamentalism willfully ignores the loss of nearly 30,000 lives each year to gun suicide and gun homicide. The mantra, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” is a magnificent half-truth that attempts to absolve gundamentalism of responsibility for the uniquely American epidemic of gun violence.
Smith has also written of gundamentalism:
Its adherents believe that nothing is as important as the right to own a gun. Or many guns. Or many kinds of guns.
In 2008, Washington Post religion reporter David Waters wrote about a Baptist church in Oklahoma City that planned to give away a gun at an annual youth conference. Waters concluded:
I see people who are products of our gundamentalist culture, people who drape the cross with a flag, people who believe the Second Amendment should be one of the Ten Commandments, people who seem to have more trust in guns than in God.
“Gundamentalist” has occasionally been claimed with pride by those it’s meant to shame:
Today I was called a Gundamentalist.
I think it was meant to be insulting or belittling. The more I think about it, the more I find it charming. – We the Armed, 2009.Oh and I love the term “gundamentalist.” I’m so stealing that. – The Truth About Guns, 2011
For more on America’s veneration of guns, see “Our Moloch,” Garry Wills’s December 15 essay in the New York Review of Books.
And for additional context, see Pro Publica’s roundup of “The Best Reporting on Guns in America,” originally published in July 2012.
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The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by a lawyer and a former New York Times reporter. “For much of its history,” writes Jill Lepore in the April 23 issue of the New Yorker, “the N.R.A. was chiefly a sporting and hunting association” that supported many gun-control measures. “In 1957, when the N.R.A. moved into new headquarters,” Lepore writes, “its motto, at the building’s entrance, read, ‘Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.’ It didn’t say anything about freedom, or self-defense, or rights.”
That motto was changed in 1977 to the one the N.R.A. still uses: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.” The motto is an excerpt from the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; the amendment reads in full: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The difference between 1957 and 1977, Lepore writes, was the “rights revolution”—a liberal, not a conservative, movement that sought to pursue civil rights through the courts:
In the nineteen-sixties, gun ownership as a constitutional right was less the agenda of the N.R.A. than of black nationalists. In a 1964 speech, Malcolm X said, “Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.” Establishing a constitutional right to carry a gun for the purpose of self-defense was part of the mission of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was founded in 1966. “Black People can develop Self-Defense Power by arming themselves from house to house, block to block, community to community throughout the nation,” Huey Newton said.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that the N.R.A. “began advancing the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a gun, rather than the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense,” and describing gun-safety legislation as an attack on a constitutional right.
Read the rest of Lepore’s article, “Battleground America.”
And for additional insight into America’s obsession with guns, read “New Fashion Wrinkle: Hiding the Gun” (New York Times), about the rise of “covert fashion” designed to conceal weapons.
UPDATE: See also my posts on gundamentalist and ammosexual.
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