Number 86
By now, you probably know about the sensitivity of our presidential hopefuls and aides, but just in case, I'll refresh your memory.
First, Kerry said at a minority journalists' convention on August 5, "I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history."
Almost immediately afterward, Cheney responded in Dayton by saying, "America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed."
He may have forgotten that earlier this month, W had said, "We need to be very sensitive" about gathering intelligence against potential terrorists.
Kerry deserves to be laughed at for the phrase "more sensitive war on terror" and also for "proactive," no matter that some people complained that Cheney took his words out of context. When did just plain "active" become insufficient to our needs? And which nations was he talking about? We're reaching out rather vigorously, not to say pre-emptively, to Iraq right now.
Cheney reminds me of Colin Powell's line during the 1990 war: "First we're going to cut them off, then we're going to kill them." An impressively direct and simple objective coming from a general; less so from a man who with maybe five deferments during the Vietnam conflict later said that he "had other priorities in the 60's than military service."
As for W . . . oh well, let's just turn to yourDictionary.com, which says sensitivity is, among other things, "the capacity of an organ or organism to respond to stimulation." We can all agree, regardless of party affiliation, that sensitivity is invaluable in war and peace. But keep in mind this unattributed quote from Lucky Jim, a hilarious book by Kingsley Amis: "A stimulus cannot be received by the mind unless it serves some need of the organism." Different organisms, different needs.
Politics ~ it puts the "fun" in "fun-duh-mentally ill" (thanks, Fred).
This Thursday at 8:00 p.m. ET on cable Discovery Times Channel there's a documentary on four Scrabble champions. All four are rather eccentric, as you can see from the video clips on the web site, in case you miss the show. One of them, Marlon Hill, was featured in the August 15 USA Weekend magazine. He's 39, unemployed, lives with his mom, and has a love-hate relationship with standard English as opposed to "Ebonics" (which is an English dialect, folks, not a language in itself). When asked by USA Weekend, "Why don't you think speaking standard English is important?", Hill said, "It's important to this extent ~ if you think of language as a reflection of the people that speak it."
I would add, "If you think of language as a way for people of the same nation to communicate."
One's mother tongue, whatever it is, is important. Slang, which revives the language daily, also reinforces the identity of a sub-culture, whether that sub-culture is the young, a racial or ethnic group, or a profession, while shutting others out by confusing or veiling meaning. As many as 40% of twins are said to invent private languages, known as cryptophasia or idioglossia. The "idio" of the latter word comes from a Greek word meaning "private" or "one's own," as in idiosyncrasy and idiomatic. "Idiot" comes from the same root, meaning a private person, private in the sense of "layman" and therefore ignorant. So we can make idiots of those who aren't clued in to our private language or slang.
Recent media culls:
I heard a faintly pre-hysterical woman call into a radio talk-show with several concerns, one of which was her proposal to pass a law saying that no judge would be allowed to distort the English language by using a word in any way other than its accepted dictionary definition. If only it were that easy to make sure that truth prevails. I expect she's never looked into a big dictionary, much. I'd write my own dictionary and pass a law about it, if I thought it would help.
I had to admire the poor woman's technique, though. When the talk-show host (who was quite annoying in his own right; it's a job requirement) began to get impatient with her, she hastily interposed, apropos of nothing, "You've got a real good voice."
Dan, whose dad was a truck driver, sent me this regarding the possibly anachronistic term, "fifth wheel" (PO 83):
"There actually is a nineteenth wheel on a tractor-trailer rig, and it is, in fact, called the fifth wheel. It serves the same purpose for the trailer as the one described on the carriage in your definition. It is the horizontal plate of the tractor on which the trailer bears; it carries the weight of the front of the trailer and helps to prevent it from tipping while the tractor-trailer is turning."
He sent it "in case I didn't know" ~ as if.
I never seem to finish with icons. P. J. O'Rourke says in the postscript of his book, Peace Kills: "The word 'icon,' blunted with use, can be applied precisely to the picture of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi."
He is referring to the famous photo by Abe Rosenthal of Marines raising a flag on Iwo Jima in World War II. Note that he says the word is "blunted with use"; if not with use, with misuse or watered-down use.
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