Fifty years ago this month, seven Chicago-area women were arrested and jailed on eleven counts of performing abortions and “conspiracy to commit abortion.“ They were members of a clandestine feminist network known as “Jane” that, for four years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the US, helped women terminate their pregnancies. Their story—more relevant than ever, now that Roe’s protections are in imminent peril—is told in a new documentary, The Janes, that will premiere on HBO on June 8. But The Janes isn’t the first telling of the story. In 1995, a former Jane member, Laura Kaplan, published a history of the group, The Story of Jane: The Legendary Feminist Abortion Service. I read it a couple of weeks ago and recommend it to you. (I found it in my local public library.) Here’s a passage that could have been written today: “Women are being reduced, once again, to the incubators of future generations with total responsibility but no power. That is the same oppressive view that the women’s movement sought to challenge. It is not just abortion, but women’s power to control their destinies that is at stake.”
Today I’m at Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing, with a post about merkin, the medieval pubic wig that still plays a role in our cultural life. Merkin was originally a nickname for a woman or girl; it’s an unrelated surname, too, and I write about that as well.
My favorite bit of research involved discovering Make a Merkin Great Again, a 2019 political art project by Diane Bush (yes, that’s her name). Here are two of the art merkins Bush created from cat fur (yes, cat fur).
“Companies change their slogans and catchphrases all the time to keep themselves fresh in customers’ minds. But DiGiorno might be the only one that has kept the same catchphrase, but changed the implication.” (Eater)
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“Sometimes I look at license plates for new prefix ideas. Sometimes I borrow from the names of cats or dogs.” How two women in Chicago create all those names for generic prescription drugs. (David Lazarus for Los Angeles Times; via MJF)*
Hotels.com registered the longest URL in internet history “to prove it has more than hotels.” (Adweek)
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“One very recent scandal in immigration politics in Britain was, improbably, named after a ship that sank decades ago.” (Lingua Franca) .
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Kim Kardashian’s decision to name her new lingerie line “Kimono Intimates” has provoked charges of cultural appropriation. But all Jezebel– and I – could think of was a 30-year-old condom brand.
The perfectly calibrated insult is a rara avis nowadays – ass- and douche- compounds don’t really count – so when someone resurrects an elegant 16th-century epithet, attention must be paid.
So: Scaramucci will be fine working with Reince. Even if Reince continues to loathe the popinjay.
The reference is, of course, to the former hedge-fund manager (andformer supporter of liberal causes like gun control) Anthony Scaramucci, who last week was appointed White House communications director despite, or because of, having no experience with media or communications other than having granted interviews to reporters. He’s known familiarly, if not always approvingly, as “the Mooch.” “Reince” is White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, formerly the chair of the Republican National Committee.
Anthony Scaramucci, July 21, 2017: “I love the president and I’m very, very loyal to the president.” In 2015 he called Trump a “hack” and a “bully.” Via Business Insider.
Popinjay is a wonderful old word and a memorable descriptor for the slick, effusive Scaramucci. For the last 500 years or so it’s meant “a vain, conceited, shallow, talkative person,” although its original definition was neutral and zoological.
Your counterintuitively spelled business name of the month is QuiQui.me. It’s so bad, writes Domain Name Wire, that “the company includes the pronunciation in its logo.” Reminds me of Nyoombl.
Are city slogans obsolete? Cleveland, Ohio, recently announced that it would phase out its famous slogan, “Cleveland Rocks,” in favor of “This Is Cleveland”—which isn’t a slogan at all, its creators insist, but rather “a repository” and “a collection of stories.”
My new column for the Visual Thesaurus, “The Slogans That Never Sleep: How to Brand a City,” reviews the history of city slogans, which traditionally have served to boost tourism and rally civic spirit, and explains the distinctions between city slogans, city mottoes (like London’s Domine dirige nos—“God direct us”), and city nicknames (like New York’s “The City That Never Sleeps” and “The Big Apple”).
Full access is restricted to subscribers (just $19.95 a year!). Here’s an excerpt:
In the past, cities and towns (or the largest employer therein) often sponsored civic slogan contests. In a 1911 contest, Modesto, California, chose an immodest but lyrical city slogan: “Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health.” (The prize: $3.) That slogan, now considered unofficial, still adorns a downtown arch. A 1929 contest produced “The Biggest Little City in the World,” the long-lasting slogan of Reno, Nevada. (The winner, one G.A. Burns of Sacramento, received $100.) That slogan, too, appears on a downtown arch.
Real-estate developers tried their hand at sloganeering as well. In 1925 Jacob Ruppert, who owned the New York Yankees from 1915 to 1939, bought a swath of swampy real estate in Florida adjoining the team’s spring-training field. He dubbed the property Ruppert Beach and gave it the long-winded slogan “Where Every Breath Brings Added Health and Every Moment Pleasure.” Unfortunately, in September 1926 a massive hurricane struck the region. Ruppert Beach was never built.
Urban Renewal (on the Twin Cities’ “More to Life” and Las Vegas’s “Your Vegas Is Showing”)
World Capitals (on California cities that call themselves “The __ Capital of the World”)
Tales of the Cities (one of my earliest posts, published in June 2006, about the focus-group death of an Indianapolis city slogan)
And if it’s state tourism slogans that interest you, the New York Times’s Gail Collins devoted a column to them yesterday. Idaho, for example, recently dropped its “Great Potatoes” in favor of “Adventures in Living” after conducting some “attitude research.” Collins observes: “Well yeah, when you hire people to do a marketing survey, they are not going to come back with a root vegetable.” Check the comments for readers’ contributions (example: “New Orleans: We’re Here Because We’re Not All There”).
Grant Barrett, co-host of public radio’s “A Way with Words,” alerted me to a new name that’s provoking howls among some baseball fans: the El Paso Chihuahuas.
Logo by San Diego design agency Brandiose, which specializes in sports-team identities.
The team is the Triple-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres; under new ownership by the MountainStar Sports Group, the team is moving to El Paso in 2014 after three seasons as the Tucson Padres.
The smallest of the world’s dog breeds was chosen over four other finalists in a “Name The Team” contest that garnered over 5,000 submissions, triumphing over Aardvarks, Buckaroos, Desert Gators and Sun Dogs. …
El Paso general manager Brad Taylor said Chihuahuas was chosen as the team name because they “represent fun and are fiercely loyal.” The region’s fans were able to submit names through the team’s website. The list was narrowed based on creativity, marketability, fun, relevance to El Paso’s unique character and the ability to trademark the name.
“El Pasoans played a significant role in identifying our new team name – they attended focus groups, suggested several hundred different names, and voted in record numbers for all the names,” said Alan Ledford, president of MountainStar Sports Group.
¡Ay, chihuahua! Just because they crowdsourced the name doesn’t mean the whole crowd approves. “What a complete slap in the face to all of us El Pasoans!!!” lamented Scott Ziegler in a comment to the MiLB article. “#Padres must be thinking it will motivate players to get to the Majors quickly,” tweet-snorted Kenneth Dame. As of yesterday afternoon, more than 8,000 people had signed a Change.org petition asking MountainStar Sports Group to “not only strongly reconsider the name of our city's baseball team, but allow our taxpayers to vote on the final name, not just simply ‘recommend’ ideas for the name.”
Here’s my own dos pesos: A polarizing name—even a negative name—can make a strong brand. And “Chihuahuas” scores well compared to some other baseball-team names. Padres? Sexist and faithist! Indians? Racist! Two major-league teams are named for socks. Socks! (I do, however, tip my cap to the Amsterdam-Gloversville-Johnstown Hyphens.) By contrast, the association of Chihuahuas with “small and feisty”—feisty comes from feist, “a small, belligerent dog”—seems appropriate and engaging.
“A Meticulous Metric of Team Names.” Embiggen (and order the poster.)
Then there’s the international-friendship potential: Why couldn’t the city of Chihuahua, Mexico, name its baseball team the El Pasos?
909er: A resident of Southern California’s Inland Empire, classified by the U.S. Census Bureau as the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area. The numeral refers to one of the region’s area codes; in 2004, the western part of Riverside County was split off and assigned a new area code, 951.
Southern California area-code map via Wikipedia. The area labeled “3” comprises Los Angeles’s 323 and 310 213 area codes.
For years, a stubborn divide between youth in Orange County's beach communities and those who visit from the inland has been summed up in the term ‘909ers,’ a less-than-flattering reference to an Inland Empire area code that — in beach slang — has come to mean anybody east of the county line.
Its popularity has waxed and waned but resurfaced with a vengeance in the aftermath of the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach in July.
When the weeklong event ended in a chaotic night of broken windows, street fights and a mess of tossed food, word that 909ers were to blame spread quickly among locals, despite the fact that only three of the 12 adults arrested were from the Inland Empire. The rest were from Orange County, San Gabriel Valley and Ventura.
The 909 area code was created in 1992 and “quickly gained a negative reputation,” according to the Times’s Paloma Esquivel: “ ‘The 909’ was used on TV shows and by comedians as shorthand for a low-class community.”
Area-code shorthand is popular in Southern California and can mystify outsiders. Times reporter Esquivel interviewed one 43-year-old man who hadn’t quite assimilated:
He said he moved to Huntington Beach from Las Vegas and was perplexed by the way locals use ‘909ers.’
“Area codes — I’m new to that,” he said. “It’s so weird in California you’re defined by the area code you’re from. It’s ridiculous.”
The earliest Urban Dictionary citation for “909er” is from 2003; it says, succinctly: “trashy riverside [sic] people.” Other Urban Dictionary definitions include “white trash,” “hayseeds,” and “worthless idiots, pure and simple.” As with many terms originally intended as slurs, the “909er” label can also be worn with pride, as in this UD counter-definition: “A Term Used By Snobby Little White Kids To Describe Us Good Ghetto Folk.”
Numerical-code branding has been used to more positive effect in Chicago, which earlier this year renamed a public walkway “The 606,” from the first three digits of Chicago’s ZIP codes. [Thanks to commenter David for the correction.]
Similar in sound but unrelated etymologically to “909er” (although in some cases there may be overlap): “99ers”—people who have exhausted their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits.
