Today marks the inaugural Contratimes awards celebration. It will be a quirky celebration; there might be nothing at all suggestive of consistency or decorum or excellence. Perhaps the awards will even wallow in mediocrity. Maybe I will fête the fetid and turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the truly glorious. I do not know, for this is all much more whimsical than it is analytical. I choose from the gut; I intuit rather than reason my way to these finalists: my viscera is far more active here than my cerebrum. And surely my vision will be sorely limited, as I can only see so far.
Note that I shall recognize the winners over a period of days.
At the end of 2006, I heard a radio personality calling out for listeners' nominees for "Jerk of the Year" awards. I found the category thoroughly cruel. And I did not wait to hear what listeners offered as viable winners. But if I choose to ignore "Jerk of the Year" categories, can I at least have something pejorative? How about "The Most Misplaced Scoffers of the Year"? How about the "We Are So Smart We're Dumb" award for 2006? Are these too harsh?
Well, for 2006, the winners -- because we can't name just one -- of the Soggy Turnip Award for Grotesque Prejudice belongs to those folks who don't know English as well as they might claim. These folks have even managed to create a small industry around their colossal ignorance, and they are totally blind to the irony of their actions.
You see, in mid-April 2006, President George W. Bush said the following during a press conference (read CNN's aptly titled article here):
"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." [emphasis added]
One would think that President Bush might be derided for admitting that he hears voices. Alas, if it only were that easy. But rather than leaping on the President for his clairvoyance, critics leapt on his much greater offense: He used the word, "decider." Immediately the scoffers raised their voices, and the great thinkers among us set out to prove to the world -- once again -- that Bush was an aphasiac, anomic idiot. Bloggers' fingers were set to typing damnation with great speed; and T-Shirt makers and peddlers of bumper stickers hawked their wares: "I'm The Decider!" almost became a Democratic Party slogan. Not a few voters in this area of New Hampshire had their bumper stickers placed 'just so' in time for the November elections; and even an online linguist analyzed Mr. Bush's anomia, finding Bush's "locution" inexplicably bizarre (and the linguist never notes the following fact).
Of course, reality is glorious: "decider," in case you did not know, is a thoroughly normal English word. In fact, its first known literary usage dates back to 1593, or so reports the Oxford English Dictionary. It is not one whit aberrant, nor did President Bush use it in an odd way. I readily admit that it sounded odd, but that has everything to do with frequency rather than diction or syntax. We all hear new words every day: some are used correctly, others are not. Rarely is a word invented; and even words that are used correctly can sound strange in certain contexts. But "decider" is not even close to being anachronistic, since I can instantly find it in the 2004 dictionary installed on this fine computer.
Hence, the Soggy Turnip for Grotesque Prejudice goes to all those intellectuals out there who did not know that "decider" is as common a word as chooser, picker, and pedantic.
(For a more complete essay on my thoughts regarding sundry Bushisms, see "The Seinfeld Administration".)
Peace, somewhere, if but for a moment.
(PS. Please see the first comment in the comments thread below. Thanks. BG)
©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Showing posts with label Decider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Decider. Show all posts
Friday, January 12, 2007
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
The Seinfeld Administration
I wonder if readers can guess where I might be going with this essay merely by its title. My guess is that a good number of you can.
The incredible TV show, Seinfeld, was a cornucopia brimming with pop-culture gifts for the tongue: Soup Nazi, shrinkage, regifting, hand, marble rye, Hennigan's, preemptive breakup, low talker, close talker, "quone", the Bro (or manssier), bubble boy, pigman. These delights fall off the tongue, they spill over merry lips; at least they do for those of us who have watched the show (and there are many of us). We get these terms; they make sense of certain things that ordinary words fail to describe. They give us the giggles; they are part of our laughing lexicon. Even the name "Seinfeld" has been incorporated into pop-speech, e.g. "This is a real Seinfeld" (or "Seinfeld moment"). The show shaped pop-culture, and we let it, with delight.
As I've mentioned several times at Contratimes, language is not static; a dictionary is not a law book, it is but a guide. It tells us merely how words are used; it does not insist that words MUST be used certain ways, nor does it prevent new meanings, even new words, from taking form.
How is it then that so many critics of George Bush's language skills don't see their own linguistic foolishness? When Bush "invents" the word "decider"†, how is it that his critics suddenly act as if A) they don't know what he means; B) there is a law that prevents new words from existing in a fluid or dynamic state; C) the new word makes no sense in context; and D) Bush is stupid? When he says that terrorist leaders have sent "suiciders" to terrorize normal folk -- no doubt a word that conflates suicide and bombers into one neat word -- why is that snickered at as dopish? Is it not a perfectly good word even if it is a gaffe? Is it not perfectly descriptive; is it not a good alternate?
Ironically, Bush's gaffes are finding longevity in the marketplace of ideas and the public square because his critics are breathing life into them. Sarcastic commentators use the words every day; bloggers love to describe his penchant for malapropisms, while others have given Bush himself a new name in light of his linguistic liberty ("Bumbleshrub" is one such name given by blogger Just Ain't Right). The irony is simply lost on these critics; and what is also lost on them is that when Bush invents a word (many educators actually encourage children to use inventive spelling when young) his readers and listeners STILL understand what he is saying.
Hey, I am something of a word guy, so surely you would think his tongue-stumbles would bother me. Perhaps they do. But he has coined some very useful words, like "misunderestimated" (which makes perfect sense), "decider" (not really coined, see note below), "suicider" and so on. Why is he not therefore perceived as a creative genius; why is he not seen as the architect of new ideas and concepts? Why is he at least not loved as an entertainer, or as a half-idiot savant seated in high office (like Being There's Chauncy Gardiner)?
You see, this stuff is to political language what Seinfeld was to breakroom badinage: it is the stuff that entertains (and it is stuff that makes us pay attention in a weirdly earnest way). By comparison, the Clinton Administration was a veritable word wasteland, a linguistic Death Valley. What pop phrase pops into your mind from those eight years, those tarpits of tongue? Merely the lone and meager mindbender, the "definition of IS is" foolishness. Bush, on the other hand, will no doubt impact every English dictionary: his malapropisms have life. We all get them.
Speaking of Mr. Clinton, I recall listening to him answer a question posed by NPR's Terry Gross in 2004. His answer was so prolix that even Deep Blue could not have deciphered it. And his reply was without a single mispronounced word. I scratch my head wondering how a man who speaks smoothly yet makes no sense is preferred over a man who brandishes an unruly tongue and yet is understood at every turn. Are Americans really too stupid to get the beauty of "misunderestimated"? Do they have no capacity for the truly incisive "suiciders"?
Only the bushleagured dolts who mock him would tire of his malappropriateness or his diseloquence. Unlike them, I am enlivened knowing that language is not stuck in the leaden lexicons of Bush's critics who abhor linguistic dynamism. They are so many malcontentious verbaphobes. To give them heed would be misattention on our part. But I truly delight in the fact that Bush's critics are the ones who will be responsible for ensuring his blunders last in lexicons in perpetuity.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†Please note that this word is a legitimate English word, by the way; a fact which should have been mentioned when I first penned this. In haste, I failed to make note that this word appears in literary usage as early as 1593 (according the Oxford English Dictionary). [This addendum added January 12, 2007. See comment at the end of this 2007 post.]
For a related essay, go here.
Technorati tags: Seinfeld, Bush, Language, Malapropisms, Decider, Suiciders
The incredible TV show, Seinfeld, was a cornucopia brimming with pop-culture gifts for the tongue: Soup Nazi, shrinkage, regifting, hand, marble rye, Hennigan's, preemptive breakup, low talker, close talker, "quone", the Bro (or manssier), bubble boy, pigman. These delights fall off the tongue, they spill over merry lips; at least they do for those of us who have watched the show (and there are many of us). We get these terms; they make sense of certain things that ordinary words fail to describe. They give us the giggles; they are part of our laughing lexicon. Even the name "Seinfeld" has been incorporated into pop-speech, e.g. "This is a real Seinfeld" (or "Seinfeld moment"). The show shaped pop-culture, and we let it, with delight.
As I've mentioned several times at Contratimes, language is not static; a dictionary is not a law book, it is but a guide. It tells us merely how words are used; it does not insist that words MUST be used certain ways, nor does it prevent new meanings, even new words, from taking form.
How is it then that so many critics of George Bush's language skills don't see their own linguistic foolishness? When Bush "invents" the word "decider"†, how is it that his critics suddenly act as if A) they don't know what he means; B) there is a law that prevents new words from existing in a fluid or dynamic state; C) the new word makes no sense in context; and D) Bush is stupid? When he says that terrorist leaders have sent "suiciders" to terrorize normal folk -- no doubt a word that conflates suicide and bombers into one neat word -- why is that snickered at as dopish? Is it not a perfectly good word even if it is a gaffe? Is it not perfectly descriptive; is it not a good alternate?
Ironically, Bush's gaffes are finding longevity in the marketplace of ideas and the public square because his critics are breathing life into them. Sarcastic commentators use the words every day; bloggers love to describe his penchant for malapropisms, while others have given Bush himself a new name in light of his linguistic liberty ("Bumbleshrub" is one such name given by blogger Just Ain't Right). The irony is simply lost on these critics; and what is also lost on them is that when Bush invents a word (many educators actually encourage children to use inventive spelling when young) his readers and listeners STILL understand what he is saying.
Hey, I am something of a word guy, so surely you would think his tongue-stumbles would bother me. Perhaps they do. But he has coined some very useful words, like "misunderestimated" (which makes perfect sense), "decider" (not really coined, see note below), "suicider" and so on. Why is he not therefore perceived as a creative genius; why is he not seen as the architect of new ideas and concepts? Why is he at least not loved as an entertainer, or as a half-idiot savant seated in high office (like Being There's Chauncy Gardiner)?
You see, this stuff is to political language what Seinfeld was to breakroom badinage: it is the stuff that entertains (and it is stuff that makes us pay attention in a weirdly earnest way). By comparison, the Clinton Administration was a veritable word wasteland, a linguistic Death Valley. What pop phrase pops into your mind from those eight years, those tarpits of tongue? Merely the lone and meager mindbender, the "definition of IS is" foolishness. Bush, on the other hand, will no doubt impact every English dictionary: his malapropisms have life. We all get them.
Speaking of Mr. Clinton, I recall listening to him answer a question posed by NPR's Terry Gross in 2004. His answer was so prolix that even Deep Blue could not have deciphered it. And his reply was without a single mispronounced word. I scratch my head wondering how a man who speaks smoothly yet makes no sense is preferred over a man who brandishes an unruly tongue and yet is understood at every turn. Are Americans really too stupid to get the beauty of "misunderestimated"? Do they have no capacity for the truly incisive "suiciders"?
Only the bushleagured dolts who mock him would tire of his malappropriateness or his diseloquence. Unlike them, I am enlivened knowing that language is not stuck in the leaden lexicons of Bush's critics who abhor linguistic dynamism. They are so many malcontentious verbaphobes. To give them heed would be misattention on our part. But I truly delight in the fact that Bush's critics are the ones who will be responsible for ensuring his blunders last in lexicons in perpetuity.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
†Please note that this word is a legitimate English word, by the way; a fact which should have been mentioned when I first penned this. In haste, I failed to make note that this word appears in literary usage as early as 1593 (according the Oxford English Dictionary). [This addendum added January 12, 2007. See comment at the end of this 2007 post.]
For a related essay, go here.
Technorati tags: Seinfeld, Bush, Language, Malapropisms, Decider, Suiciders
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