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Archive for the 'Language' Category

The Earliest Known Fisking?

Published by William Beutler on December 8, 2008 in 9/11 Attacks, Language, Rhetoric, Warblogging and William Beutler. 1 Comment

The word “fisking” — originating in the blogosphere ca. 2001 — has fallen somewhat into disuse in recent years, especially as the ’sphere has expanded to include many who weren’t around back in its earliest days.

For the uninitiated, it refers to a point-by-point refutation of an odious written work, often with an acidic or sardonic tone. The referent is one Robert Fisk, a British columnist whose absurdly self-abegnating columns from Afghanistan made him a pariah, at least until he was forgotten. Forceful responses from bloggers such as Andrew Sullivan gave rise to the term itself.

But this eponym is worth keeping around, and it’s up to armchair cultural anthropologists like yours truly to point out earlier examples of the form where they find them.

Which brings us to the once-popular and still-familiar 1936 book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. I picked up a copy from Amazon recently, and have been reading it on the Metro to work. In one early chapter, Carnegie explains how persuasion is best accomplished by appealing to your persuadee’s self-interest, and as a counter-example reprints a letter from an officious adman and intersperses it with his own commentary. Carnegie introduces the section thus:

This letter was sent to the managers of local radio stations throughout the country. (I have set down, in brackets, my reactions to each paragraph.)

And here, for your reading interest, is a partial reproduction:

Mr. John Blank,
Blankville,
Indiana
Dear Mr. Blank:

   The —— company desires to retain its position in advertising agency leadership in the radio field.

[Who cares what your company desires? I am worried about my own problems. The bank is foreclosing on my house, the bugs are destroying the hollyhocks, the stuck market tumbled yesterday. I missed the eight-fifteen this morning, I wasn't invited to the Jones's dance last night, the doctor tells me I have high blood pressure and neuritis and dandruff. And then what happens? I come down to the office this morning worried, open my mail and here is some little whippersnapper off in New York yapping about what his company wants. Bah! If he only realized what sort of impression his letter makes, he would get out of the advertising business and start manufacturing sheep dip.]

   This agency’s national advertising accounts were the bulwark of the network. Our subsequent clearances of station time have kept us at the top of agencies year after year.

[You are big and rich and right at the top, are you? So what? I don't give two whoops in Hades if you are as big as General Motors and General Electric and the General Staff of the U.S. Army all combined. If you had as much sense as a half-witted hummingbird, you would realize that I am interested in how big I am--not how big you are. All this talk about your enormous success makes me feel small and unimportant.]

   We desire to service our accounts with the last word on radio station information.

[You desire! You desire. You unmitigated ass. I'm not interested in what you desire or what the President of the United States desires. Let me tell you once and for all that I am interested in what I desire--and you haven't said a word about that yet in this absurd letter of yours.]

Zing! Dale Carnegie wasn’t warblogger, but he certainly could have fit in with those whippersnappers.

Red States and Blue States: Why the Vice Versa Could Never Be

Published by William Beutler on September 23, 2007 in Charts and Graphs, Democrats, George W. Bush, Howard Dean, Language, MSM, National Politics, RedState, Republicans, Rhetoric and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Here’s a thought that’s been kicking around the back of my head for awhile: the assignment of “red” and “blue” to describe right-leaning and left-leaning political factions in the United States has stuck in part because it contradicts these two colors’ previous connotations, and to the benefit of the left and right alike.

Red States and Blue States reversed... just looks wrong, doesn't it?Ahead of me already?

For most of the 20th century, the color red was associated with Communism, and for reasons that scarcely need explaining, it carried a decidedly negative association in the West: Better dead than red, after all. The American left certainly had its share of Stalinists, and anti-Communists on the right didn’t hesitate in extending the term. When I lived in Eugene, Oregon, the town daily Register-Guard was sometimes referred to as the Red Guard.

Likewise, the color blue is sometimes associated with nobility in Europe and the upper class in America, particularly in the Northeast — I refer to the term blue blood. The stereotype of rich, right-wing industrialists who cannot identify with regular Americans has probably been used against every Republican candidate since Lincoln. The recognition that this can be a political liability is what led Mike Huckabee to recently descrbe himself as “a blue-collar Republican, not a blueblood Republican.”

Meanwhile, witness the rapid adoption of the terminology. One of the rightosphere’s best-known websites is RedState; an online political firm founded by former Howard Dean staffers is called Blue State Digital.

It’s worth remembering that in elections prior to 2000, the colors were not standardized across the television networks, and they also switched colors between the parties. In 2000, chance might have had red assigned to Democrats and blue to Republicans. The prolonged attention to the electoral map might have given rise to opposite definitions for the terms, but would they have stuck?

I don’t think so. The vice versa could never have become political shorthand in this country because neither side would allow it. Reversed, the colors would draw attention to negative aspects of each party’s intellectual and sociological histories.

Therefore, the switch is serendipitous — by adopting the other side’s derogatory colors, each cancels out the other, and in the 21st century can accrue all-new (and perhaps more positive) political connotations.

Is Our Campaign Flacks Learning?

Published by William Beutler on June 2, 2007 in DNC, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Language, Metapost and RNC. Closed

If you read the Drudge Report or watch cable news, you couldn’t have missed the spelling error that (literally) hung over Hillary Clinton’s speech to Silicon Valley bigwigs this week:

Hillary campaign misspells "tomorrow"

Whoops! But wait, have you checked the front page of the RNC’s website, GOP.com, today?

GOP.com misspells "strengthen"

To be fair, a website is not a high profile media event. On the other hand, it is the party’s official site, and the rightosphere certainly notices the DNC’s page, Democrats.org, when they make mistakes.

The Clinton team’s error strikes me as a full-fledged spelling error — “tomorrow” is frequently included in lists of commonly misspelled words. The RNC’s error appears to be a case of typing too fast — look at your keyboard: the letters G, H and T are pretty much all in the same place.

I don’t know what it all means, but I do know I checked this post for typos before publishing.

Meme, Ho!: Among the Nappy-Minded Bloggers

Published by William Beutler on April 17, 2007 in Blogs vs. MSM, Entertainment and Language. 4 Comments

Don Imus gets fired. Don Ho passes away. For one, media overkill; the other, next to nothing. Bloggers have noticed. Blog P.I. documents the phenomenon:

Don Imus Killed Don Ho
     –Smile Keith

P.S. Anyone else find it eerie that DON Imus got fired for calling people HOs, and then Don Ho died?
     –Tennboy

Now that Don Imus has lost his radio show, he won’t have to face additional criticism for reporting the death of Don Ho.
     –Lisa De Pasquale

Don Ho, Don Imus, Nappy-Headed Hos (Don Ho)Don Ho, the legendary Hawaiian crooner died of heart failure Saturday morning. Unfortunately not so many people heard the sad news because nobody in the media dared say his last name anymore.
     –Pedro Jokes

51 percent of American think Don Imus shoulda been fired, 45% thought the pollsters were making an inappropriate joke about the late, beloved Don Ho.
     –Lisa De Pasquale

Don Ho, the legendary Hawaiian crooner died of heart failure Saturday morning. Unfortunately not so many people heard the sad news because nobody in the media dared say his last name anymore.
     –Pedro Jokes

51 percent of American think Don Imus shoulda been fired, 45% thought the pollsters were making an inappropriate joke about the late, beloved Don Ho.
     –Wonkette

DON Imus gets in deep shit for using the word “HO.” Days later, Don HO dies. Hmm. I’m just saying.
     –XMASTIME

For Don Ho to die just so that I could joke that the name is now available for Don Imus to use. I met Mr. Ho in 1974. Nice guy.
     –Protein Wisdom

Don Ho, Don Imus, Nappy-Headed Hos (Don Imus)Let me get this straight: Don Imus drops a comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team being a bunch of “nappy-headed ho’s,” and the mediasphere goes berzerk. But nappy-headed Hawaiin icon Don Ho dies, and you can almost hear crickets chirping out there. Coincidence or conspiracy? Discuss.
     –Charleston City Paper

No Relation to Imus
“Don Ho Dies”–headline, Pacific Business News (Honolulu), April 14
     –James Taranto

Don Imus called you “nappy-headed.”
Not very kind of him.
I’m glad he got fired.
Aloha.
     –The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

Ah, that Bubbly-headed Ho. I apologise to Don Imus but I just couldn’t resist.
     –Victoria Ponders

In conclusion… er… beats me. But the English major in me is intrigued.

Update: Lest we forget –

If my name was taken in vain all over the news for 2 weeks straight, I’d give up too.

Sorry, Mr. Ho! R.I.P. I still remember your ABC daytime show from my childhood. My very, very early childhood. I was like an embryo, allegedly.
     –Jim Treacher

Via the comments.

Stylebook Over Substance

Published by William Beutler on March 3, 2007 in Academic Blogging, Language, MSM vs. Blogs and Netroots. 1 Comment

The week before last, a front-page Washington Post story detailed the pressure currently being applied by the online left to Rep. Ellen Tauscher, a moderate Democrat from Northern California. In all it was well-researched and informative — though you can’t tell from reading the Ellen Tauscher Weekly that it’s written by erstwhile BlogPAC operative Bob Brigham, this story tells you — but it also made two errors I found a little puzzling. See if you can tell from the opening graf:

The Democratic majority was only three weeks old, but by Jan. 26, the grass-roots and Net-roots activists of the party’s left wing had already settled on their new enemy: Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), the outspoken chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition.

Or the tenth:

Democratic leaders want their activists to focus on beating Republicans. But the grass roots and Net roots believe the political tide is shifting their way, and they can provide the money, ground troops and buzz to challenge Democratic incumbents they don’t like. MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. “Absolutely, we could take her out,” said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga — better known as Kos — the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site.

See it? Since when is the “netroots” the “Net-roots” or the “Net roots”? And need it even be “Netroots”? Not to mention “grass-roots” and “grass roots.” Odd. Newspapers are given to preferring capitalization of recent coinages and separating new compound words, but even that was rendered here inconsistently. I decided to contact Michael Grunwald, who co-wrote the story and last July was the agreeable subject of a slightly critical post here, also pertaining to the use of language. Just as he did then, Grunwald got back to me quickly:

I wrote the story and I wrote “netroots.” I was surprised to see that someone changed it to “Net roots”; I think it makes us look like we’ve just discovered them there Internets.

Quite. Grunwald said he would find out what the Post stylebook called for and, in contrast to the week and a half it took me to get this post on the web, he had the answer in twenty minutes:

So: I spoke to the head of our copy desk: Net roots is one of the latest additions to our stylebook. He says “we’re conservative on the onewordlowercase-ization thing.” For example, Post style is Web site, not website. He also points out that Post style is grass roots, not grassroots — which is what I wrote — so at least we’re consistent.

Consistently preposterous, in my opinion — Web site? — but there you have it.

Incidentally, for all our conservatism on the onewordlowercase-ization thing, Post style is stylebook, not style book.

There you have it. “Net roots” is the Post’s peculiar preference, and the rest are typos. Yet this is not applied evenly across the website: at The Fix, Chris Cillizza gets away with plain old “netroots,” and in the news pages, Charles Babington got away with the same, so long as he threw “scare quotes” around it (even in quotation).

The online and dead tree bureaus of the WaPoCo are separate entities and so maintain separate policies, and this is surely one of them. I won’t go so far as to say this is a reason why newspapers are losing out to the web, but by refusing to acknowledge political phrases as they are actually used, the Post’s editors are undercutting the credibility of their own reporters. Consistency is good, but being consistently correct is better.

When IC is Just PC

Published by William Beutler on February 11, 2007 in Democrats, Language, Republicans and Rhetoric. 2 Comments

As both a political junkie and the recipient of a degreee in English, I’ve been a longtime observer of the Republican tendency to use the noun “Democrat” as an adjective, as President Bush recently caught flak for doing in (what was supposed to be) a conciliatory State of the Union address.

In almost every case, it’s not a mere courtesy to append an -ic to the end of the word — it’s proper English. But Arnold Zwicky at Language Log points out one case where the Democratic usage is probably something besides good grammar. From the Feb. 6 New York Times:

Politicians are weighing in on the subject as never before, especially with the advent of a Democratic-led Congress.

Upon which Zwicky went to work:

My first reaction was that with “Democratic-led” the paper was bending over backward in its attempt to avoid things like “the Democrat Party” for “the Democratic Party” (a Republican practice we’ve commented on a number of times on Language Log, most recently here). And maybe it is. But “Democratic-led” actually beats out “Democrat-led” by a fair margin, despite the fact that “X-led” ‘led by X(s)’ normally requires a noun in the X slot (as do “X-V-ed” ‘V-ed by X’ compounds in general). So if this is a formation motivated by political politeness, there’s a lot of politeness going around.

Zwicky goes on to demonstrate what he means by “X-led” and the like, with the parties Democrat, Republican and Labour as examples — handy not just for language geeks but for partisans familiar with the practice but unfamiliar with the functional linguistic differences between those party names.

I certainly try to keep my “Democrat” and “Democratic” usage in order, although in speech I sometimes get it wrong. On the other hand, a few times I’ve been called out for what I believed was correct usage — so I find Zwicky’s post is all the more interesting. And woe to the commenter at a liberal blog who accidentally types “Democrat Party” in the middle of a thread.

But there is no doubt that the Republicans who would rather antagonize their loyal opposition rather than express themselves correctly have won this one, much as they have persuaded liberals that they should call themselves “progressive” instead. Not only do Democrats have to nitpick a matter of linguistics, but they’re reduced to asserting themselves as an adjective rather than as a noun. That might seem an esoteric distinction, but in politics even subtle suggestions and inchoate feelings have an impact on voters.

If I didn’t know better, I would wonder what Frank Luntz would say about that. But late last month, in (what was supposed to be) a conciliatory entry at the Huffington Post, the Republican wordsmith deployed “Democrat” as an adjective, and much like with the president, the usage was like nails on a chalkboard to Democratic ears.

Whoops! Maybe using the phrase “Democrat Party” doesn’t always redound to the benefit of conservatives.

Great Minds Think Alike

Published by William Beutler on October 21, 2006 in Asymmetrical Media, Elections, George Allen, Lamont v. Lieberman, Language, MSM vs. Blogs and Seriously. 3 Comments

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece “Arcadia” reminds us that the important discoveries and great achievements of human history are not uniquely occurring circumstances. If lost, they are never misplaced for long:

THOMASINA: [T]he enemy … burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! — can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschlylus, Sophocles, Euripides — thousands of poems — Aristotle’s own library brought to Egypt by the noodle’s [Cleopatra's] ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?

In the meantime, we have ample evidence that mere cliché will be repeated often and unembarrassedly as long as it remains useful. Illustrations below the fold:

Continue reading ‘Great Minds Think Alike’

A Shot from the Cheap Seats

Published by Not Paul Begala on October 12, 2006 in Guest Bloggers, Language, Republicans and Seriously. Closed

Surely everyone who’s been to a sporting event can appreciate the occasional shot at the opposing team’s players. One of my favorite childhood memories was the first hockey game I ever attended, where one particularly clever fan would yell, in between swigs of beer, “Hey Gretzky, hit him with your purse!”

I was reminded of this today by a digital dig from the cheap seats, posted to the comment section following this post from the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire:

WSJ blog Hastert comment

Everybody always picks on the fat kid.

Not Black Like I’m Not Either

Published by William Beutler on August 2, 2006 in Blog Fights, Comment Sections, Lamont v. Lieberman, Language and Midterms '06. 3 Comments

Note: Post updated below.

Today James Taranto and Michelle Malkin caught Jane Hamsher attaching to her Huffington Post column a Photoshop job of Bill Clinton standing a Joe Lieberman in blackface. Taranto: “Are there no limits to the racism of the ‘progressive’ left?” Malkin: “I am so sure the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP and the civil rights brigade will be protesting this disgusting use of blackface in political discourse.” Mark Coffey has an open letter to Arianna.

So then: The picture disappeared from the site within hours, and the comments — many, but not all sent by Mr. Taranto and Ms. Malkin — filled up with comments critical, sarcastic, but you wouldn’t say abusive. And yet, every single comment was flagged abusive, even: “Good post—and right on target. But the picture isn’t helpful, though God knows Holy Joe would put on blackface if it pleased Bush.” Not to mention: “There should be a feature that would let us flag this article as abusive.”

Tonight, if you go to Firedoglake right now, the top post, “About That Graphic…” begins:

I sincerely apologize to anyone who was genuinely offended by the choice of images accompanying my blog post today on the Huffington Post. It’s also important to note that I do not, nor have I ever worked for Ned Lamont’s campaign. However, at their request, I removed the image earlier today.

Unfortunately, Senator Lieberman’s campaign has used this in attempt to hurt Ned and score political points, mustering their own faux indignation in attempt to further distract from the issues important to the voters of Connecticut.”

She rejects “absurd charges of racism,” but then she also concedes: “I regret it and I invite them to take it up with the person who did it, namely me.” It’s not quite a Mel Gibson apology, but at least she didn’t call on Malkin and the Lieberdems to meet with her and help her to heal. I digress.

It’s unfortunate, inasmuch as the actual bloggers in Connecticut have been helping make this race the most exciting of the year. And not just their blogging, but also their extensive use of YouTube.

A couple days ago I explained how foolhardy was the NRSC’s attempt to tarnish Jon Tester by association with a troll at Daily Kos. It’s not always fair to use bloggers in campaigns, but Hamsher is not a nobody, even if she sometimes sounds like a troll.

If nothing else, the artwork sure was a non sequitur: Yes, the column is about old Joementum, but the point of contention was Wal-Mart, not race. The only hint that is still available on the site is the credit to somone named Darkblack who appears to be a regular contributor of artwork to Firedoglake; one of FDL’s distinctive features is the submitted artwork, including plenty of Photoshop work. (Plus, this HuffPo column also appears to largely be a quotation from Digby, but that might just be the sponsored ad mucking up the layout.)

I’m no fan of Ms. Hamsher’s Coulter-left (or Malkin-left) style, but I think at least this time she realizes her HuffPo photo was the kind of thing she herself would have seized on and flogged mercilessely if the blackface was on the other site*.

Update: The Courant gives it a few column inches; Dan Balz gives it a few more.

TPM Muckraker’s headline — “Lieberman Attacks Blogger Over Blackface Pic” — gets it exactly backward. Matt Stoller thinks the best term for Hamsher’s graphical selection is “edgy.”

Filling in for Reynolds, Ann Althouse pegs it as a “sorry if you were offended form of apology with the extra oomph of implying that a lot of the offense was bogus and an immediate descent into justification for giving offense.” TPM and Stoller are just glad to help.

The pro-Lamont bloggers actually based in Connecticut are sticking to the program, at least on the page. Yet independent Genghis Conn, on the other hand, catches Lamont going from “I’m very appreciative of the blogs.” to “I don’t know anything about the blogs.” Ouch. One Jane Hamsher comes along, and this is the thanks you get?

[Update: Jump removed to accomodate updates.]

*Actually, the one place where it is still up is Malkin’s blog.

Update: Only now, Slate is using it to accompany Dickerson’s take on the “bizarre Lieberman blackface scandal,” quoth the editors. Actually, so is Football Fans For Truth. Malkin has not just the blackface picture, but Steve Gilliard’s “Sambo” photo, a Tim Kaine had to extricate himself from late in the 2005 VA GOV campaign. So I’m just asking here, when is it considered outrage, and when is it evidence? So I understand it that Hamsher and Huffington are not allowed to post it — so what rules apply to others? Is it robbed of its power because it’s already been held out for criticism?

Nothing out there about Slate’s usage just yet. Will there be an email campaign to Jacob Weisberg?

P.S. Dales is right to point out the blackface photo is still up on Firedoglake, insofar as it’s still in a public folder. Of course, what’s important to remember is that it was there in the first place.

English 101

Published by William Beutler on July 26, 2006 in Democrats, Language and MSM. 3 Comments

Via Skippy, this AP report by Susan Haigh leads me to wonder if Eric Alterman wasn’t onto something:

Some Democrats, however, said privately Monday that a Lamont primary win could help the other Democrat candidates. They speculated that Lamont could help drive turnout and enthusiasm on Election Day should he defeat Lieberman on Aug. 8.

Since when did the AP start using the noun “Democrat” for the adjective “Democratic”?