"There is the surge of interest in cults, likely driven by the fact that for four years America was run by a sociopathic con man with a dark magnetism..."

"... who enveloped a huge part of the country in a dangerous alternative reality. And there’s a broader drive in American culture to expose iniquitous power relations and re-evaluate revered historical figures. Viewed through a contemporary, secular lens, a community built around a charismatic founder and dedicated to the lionization of suffering and the annihilation of female selfhood doesn’t seem blessed and ethereal. It seems sinister." 

From "Was Mother Teresa a Cult Leader?" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT)(drawing attention to a new podcast, "The Turning," that portrays Mother Teresa in a negative light).

Viewed through a contemporary, secular lens, is anything blessed and ethereal?

This "surge of interest in cults" — if you want me to take it seriously — needs also to include looking inward, at yourself. What cults do you belong to? I ask this of Goldberg and of everyone who's choosing to characterize other people as belonging to cults. Some people — notably Rose McGowan — say the Democratic Party is a cult. But Goldberg, unsurprisingly, brings up Trumpsters as the cult here in America as she critiques a woman in a culture that is foreign to her.

What's the difference between "cult" and "culture"? Whether you look at other people through your "lens" and react to them as alien and defective? To be a serious thinker, you must critique your own lens. 

FOOTNOTE: According to the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for "cult":

1610s, "worship, homage" (a sense now obsolete); 1670s, "a particular form or system of worship;" from French culte (17c.), from Latin cultus "care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence," originally "tended, cultivated," past participle of colere "to till" (see colony).

The word was rare after 17c., but it was revived mid-19c. (sometimes in French form culte) with reference to ancient or primitive systems of religious belief and worship, especially the rites and ceremonies employed in such worship. Extended meaning "devoted attention to a particular person or thing" is from 1829.

Cult. An organized group of people, religious or not, with whom you disagree. [Hugh Rawson, "Wicked Words," 1993]

Cult is a term which, as we value exactness, we can ill do without, seeing how completely religion has lost its original signification. Fitzedward Hall, "Modern English," 1873]

Here's the entry for "culture," which comes from the same Latin root and originally referred to cultivating the land and growing crops.

The figurative sense of "cultivation through education, systematic improvement and refinement of the mind" is attested by c. 1500; Century Dictionary writes that it was, "Not common before the nineteenth century, except with strong consciousness of the metaphor involved, though used in Latin by Cicero." Meaning "learning and taste, the intellectual side of civilization" is by 1805; the closely related sense of "collective customs and achievements of a people, a particular form of collective intellectual development" is by 1867.

For without culture or holiness, which are always the gift of a very few, a man may renounce wealth or any other external thing, but he cannot renounce hatred, envy, jealousy, revenge. Culture is the sanctity of the intellect. [William Butler Yeats, journal, 7 March, 1909]

"Where have all our heavyweight snobs gone?"

Asks Camilla Long in the London Times. 

I’m not sure I can survive on Keir Starmer secretly blanching at the thought of “thick” Angela Rayner’s vulgar wardrobe, a collection of vegan-friendly “stomper” boots and leopard-print that she wore on campaigns. Why didn’t he just tell her her clothes looked as though they’d been rescued from a flash fire in a Sicilian brothel, before giving the seditious moaner the boot?

I don't know who these people are, but I like the general idea of harsher, meaner insults aimed at powerful individuals. I looked up Angela Rayner and I'm more confused and amused, because she is — according to Wikipedia — "Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work... and Shadow First Secretary of State, Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Labour Part." 

Back to Long:

Is there anything more snobby than two Labour MPs demanding a northern seat be served by a “working-class” candidate who is also preferably a key worker from the local area, as they did last week? What else do they want? For the candidate to be gay, female, a retired miner, a ferret-loving “local hero” and salt-of-the-earth sharpshooter who won’t tell Starmer he’s a prat, a gender-fluid teen mum?

Long links to this Times article from a few days ago: "Are you posh? I might be, according to this list/A new survey reveals age-old clichés about how the other half supposedly lives." There are 40 items on the list, including calling your parents "Mummy and Daddy" (when you are an adult), calling dinner “supper,” calling everyone “darling,” calling champagne “champers,” having shelves full of books, saying “napkin” instead of “serviette,” and laughing very loudly. 

We Americans are in no danger of calling a napkin a "serviette," so if we cared about seeming "posh" — we don't — we could get a head start on that laughing very loudly. Darling.

In case the idea of Don Lemon leaving CNN is distressing you, Don Lemon says "Relax! I'm not leaving," smiles a charming smile, and says he'll explain everything on Monday.

Hey everyone. Not what you think. I’m not leaving CNN. Tune in for the handoff on Monday at 10pE and I’ll explain. pic.twitter.com/oOwDferY2i

— Don Lemon (@donlemon) May 15, 2021

Okay. That's what I got from clicking on the Twitter sidebar. Here's the NY Post article on the subject:

Lemon shocked viewers by ending his news show Friday with... “It’s been really, really great. This is the last night that will be ‘CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.'” he said. “So, I appreciate all the years of ‘CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,’ but changes are coming, and I will fill you in.”

No NYT article yet, but I see something there from a month ago: "CNN Is in a Post-Trump Slump. What Does That Mean for Don Lemon?/The prime-time host on the future of cable news, the urgency of conversations about race and whether CNN is a boys’ club." It's a podcast interview. Excerpt: 

kara swisherYeah. I want to talk about CNN and the future of the network and cable in general. Because I’ve had Jason Kilar on, the head of Warner, so your boss’s boss. And he talked about making —

don lemonHe’s my boss. Nice guy.

kara swisherI’m sorry? Yeah, he is.

don lemonAnd very handsome, by the way.

kara swisherHe’s a very handsome man.

don lemonI know that’s weird, that’s going to be weird. [LAUGHTER]

kara swisherSaid a very handsome man about a very handsome man.

don lemon I said who is — This is our new boss, hm, interesting.

kara swisherO.K. All right, let’s move along. I’m going to get you out of the jam here.

don lemonThat’s gonna get me in trouble.

kara swisherIt is indeed. I’m going to move you out of a jam before you move along further. All right. There are a number of threats to the business. He and I talked about it a lot. Declining ratings, changing of the guard, diversity challenges. So now that Trump’s out of the White House, cable news viewership all over has been down. Fox’s particularly — prime-time viewership 32 percent from the last quarter. CNN has done better. Still lost 16 percent of prime-time viewers. So are you worried about — Trump always said, “I’m good for cable.” And so cable, people who run cable. Are you worried about the viewership fizzle? So what does it mean you have to do now?

don lemon No. I’m not worried about it. I just keep doing what I do. I’ve always been nimble and malleable and whatever comes next I’ll be ready for it. The reason I’m not worried about it is because it beats the alternative. The alternative of him being in there and us having to figure out how we deal with lies, and bigotry, and hate, and the toxicity that was the Trump administration. Which has nothing for me to do with my ideology or politics. Because people have accused me of being conservative. It has nothing to do with politics. Trump was a horrible person. And he was terrible for the country. And it is better for all — for the world that he is no longer the President of the United States. So if that means that cable news ratings go down? Aww. So I’m not really that concerned about it. I would prefer that my ratings go down and Trump not be in office than my ratings be sky-high and him be there. That’s the honest truth.

I had to look up what was going on with Lemon's ratings. Ah, I see, it's his show that is getting challenged by Fox's new Greg Gutfeld show. In the ratings that came out yesterday, Greg leads in his hour with 409,000 and Lemon has 206,000 in the 25-54 demographic and 1,771,000 to 697,000 for total viewers.

ADDED: "I’ve always been nimble and malleable...." He means nimble and flexible or adaptable. That's the trouble with displaying a big vocabulary. You have to know the shades of meaning. At least he didn't say "manipulable." 

The root of "malleable" is the same as the root of "mallet." We're talking about susceptibility to hammering and to maintaining the hammered-into shape after the hammerer is finished. From Etymonline:

late 14c., "capable of being shaped or extended by hammering or rolling," from Old French malleable and directly from Medieval Latin malleabilis, from malleare "to beat with a hammer," from Latin malleus "hammer" (from PIE root *mele- "to crush, grind"). Figurative sense, of persons, "capable of being adapted by outside influence" is recorded from 1610s.

Clearly, it's not a good brag to call yourself "malleable"! You want to be the hammer wielder, not the hammered one. Here's the non-figurative concept:

Gazumping.

I learned a new word just now. Seeing it in a headline — "Clooneys gazumped me for French vineyard, rival buyer says" (London Times) — I thought it might be a made-up word. But the OED identifies it as a slang word that goes back to 1928:

1928 Daily Express 19 Dec. 2/7 ‘Gazoomphing the sarker’ is a method of parting a rich man from his money. An article is auctioned over and over again, and the money bid each time is added to it. ...

1934 P. Allingham Cheapjack xv. 189 Grafters speak a language comprised of every possible type of slang... Quite a number of words are Yiddish. These include ‘gezumph’, which means to cheat or to overcharge. 

1971 Guardian 8 Nov. 13/2 ‘Gazumping’—a system of profiteering by double selling and pushing prices up—is creeping into the property market... The word is car trade slang for selling to one buyer and then, as values rise, to a second buyer.

It means "To swindle; spec. to act improperly in the sale of houses, etc."

As the Times article notes, gazumping violates French law.

Guy Azzari, the buyer’s lawyer, alleges his client had agreed a price of €6 million (£5.14 million) in August for the six-bedroom 18th-century bastide set in 172 hectares that include woodland, an olive grove, a vineyard and an ornamental lake.

The seller is accused of raising the price after the offer was accepted, and it says here that there's "no suggestion that the Clooneys did anything unlawful, or indeed knew of the alleged gazumping." 

"Gazumping" should not be confused with "galumphing," which is one of the many words coined by Lewis Carroll in "Jabberwocky." "Galumphing" is clumsy, heavy walking. And we know the dashing George and the lovely Amal would never do that.

He left it dead, and with its head/He went galumphing back....

That's got nothing to do with celebs attaching their names to the trendiness of rosé wine.

Cheney defiant.

There's only one word for it — defiant. 

The word "defiant" is based on the root "fi" — which means "faith." The oldest meaning has to do with renouncing faith — such as renouncing allegiance to the king and declaring hostility or a state of war. But it's long meant to challenge and resist power openly. 

In the Liz Cheney situation, she's losing her own position of leadership as the group chooses a different leader. I don't think complaining about losing the support of the group is defiance. The group always had power to pick the leadership it wants, so the allegiance remains the same, to a process of choosing leadership. Is Cheney saying there's something wrong with that? She just thinks they're making the wrong choice. 

It's funny that all the press outlets are choosing the same word, "defiant," when it's not the right word. I understand that the word is often used loosely, just to mean staunch and feisty, but when everyone picks the same loosely applicable word, there's something fishy. 

But what's fishy? I think it's a desire on the part of the press to imbue Cheney with some sort of righteous entitlement to leadership. They have allegiance to her. They feel defiant. By rights, she ought to lead the Republicans. That's not factually true, of course. I'm spelling this out to expose it as ridiculous.

ADDED: "No one outside of Wyoming, except Peggy Noonan, cares a whit about Liz Cheney. The question is whether the NeverTrumpers, abetted by the Democrats, can kill Trump’s chances of a political resurrection" — writes Conrad Black, in "Liz Cheney and the ‘Big Lie’/When the No. 3 House Republican gets the high jump this week, the real loser will be the attempt to suppress any real examination of what happened in the last election" (American Greatness.)

Black Obsidian Sound System (BOSS) — a collective of "queer, trans and non-binary Black and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism" — critiques the art industry that nominated it for the Turner Prize.

The London Times reports in "Turner Prize nominee paints Tate and awards culture as villains":  

It said the art industry failed to financially reward collectives, had an “in-built reverence” towards individuals, and regarded “black, brown working class, disabled and queer bodies [as] desirable, quickly dispensable, but never sustainably cared for.”...

In a statement released this week BOSS said that while arts institutions were “enamoured by collective and social practices” they were not “properly equipped or resourced to deal with the realities that shape our lives and work.”...

The Turner Prize jury were passionate about the work of all the collectives they shortlisted, recognising that these collaborative practices reflected the solidarity and community demonstrated across the UK in response to the pandemic....

I'm enamored by this phrase "an 'in-built reverence' towards individuals." I know it's meant as a criticism, but it seems like a good thing — an in-built reverence towards individuals. "In-built" sounds like a synonym — a good substitute — for "systemic." And I like "in-built" better than "built-in." I would have written "built-in," but it's perfectly easy to understand "in-built," and it feels like the familiar English words "inborn" and "inset."

I wonder if the criticism makes BOSS more likely or less likely to get the award. It sounds like the jury wanted credit for nominating a collective and the collective called bullshit on using them that way. It's not an honor just to be nominated.

The de-normalization of "normal."

I'm reading "Maker of Dove Soap Will Drop the Word ‘Normal’ From Beauty Products/Unilever.... said a study had found that the word 'normal' makes most people feel excluded" (NYT).

The study found that 56 percent of participants thought that the beauty industry could make people feel excluded, and that as many as seven in 10 people agreed that the word “normal” on products and in advertising had negative effects. That figure rose to eight in 10 for people between the ages of 18 and 35.... 

The changes were long overdue and “completely necessary” after last year’s worldwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations, said Ateh Jewel, a beauty journalist and an advisory board member of the British Beauty Council, an organization that represents the British beauty industry. “Saying the word ‘normal’ has been used to set you apart,” Ms. Jewel said. “I am normal. My dark skin is normal. My juicy West African curvy body is normal. Everything about me is normal.... Words are powerful and we’re so used to having this unconscious bias.... It just washes over us. We don’t even realize what we’re saying because we’ve been spoon-fed racism."

In this light, "normal" is not a bad word, to be avoided. It's a concept that demands more attention. If the position in the middle is called "normal," then it makes it sound as though the other positions on the continuum are defective. Even if the other positions are less healthy — such as oily or dry skin compared to "normal" skin — why be unpleasant about it by creating the inference that they are abnormal? 

It's pretty normal to have dry skin or oily skin and actually unusual to think you have normal skin! I can remember shopping for some skin product and having the sales person ask me if I had dry or oily skin and when I answered "normal," she rejected the answer. It just didn't compute. Surely, I lean one way or the other. Or maybe I have "combination" skin with a "T-zone." 

If I understand Ateh Jewel correctly, she would like to free up the word "normal" so it can be used across a wider array of possibilities. But what word do you use for the middle position? 

By the way, in the OED, the 4th meaning for "normal" is "Heterosexual." Examples:

1914 E. M. Forster Maurice (1971) xxii. 106 Against my will I have become normal. I cannot help it.

1972 T. Keneally Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith v. 38 Of course, Jimmie knew, Farrell was not normal and had once begun to caress him.

1990 Lesbian & Gay Pride 11/4 Back west in a long standing ‘normal’ society like old Blighty, many lesbian or gay teachers go in fear of exposure.

"But Biden, so far, has been impregnable. The voice is too bland and devoid of obvious quirks..."

"... and beyond the occasional 'C’mon, man,' his conversational manner too muted and self-effacing, to give the parodists much to work with. Trump supporters and Fox News pundits would undoubtedly attribute this to the media’s liberal bias. And to be sure, Trump was viewed by the (mostly liberal) satirists not just as an irresistible comic target but also as a dire threat to the nation. Biden’s pleasantly boring presidency has been a welcome return to normality — but hardly great material for parody."

I picked that quote from WaPo's "Comedians are struggling to parody Biden/Let’s hope this doesn’t last" because the word "impregnable" caught my eye. 

I realize it's not meant as a pregnancy metaphor and we're supposed to think more in terms of a fortress. It's not normal to say that sterile women are "impregnable." The original meaning of the word is (from the OED): "Of a fortress or stronghold: That cannot be taken by arms; incapable of being reduced by force; capable of holding out against all attacks." Then there's the figurative meaning: "That cannot be overcome or vanquished; invincible, unconquerable, proof against attack." 

So the assertion here is that Biden is so neutral and featureless that an impersonator has nowhere to go. He's like a giant wall with no footholds. What can you do?! He's normal, so pleasantly boring. This is why I don't watch "Saturday Night Live" anymore. They're too lazy! Trump was ridiculously easy. I guess they loved not being challenged.

How about observing Biden and finding what is distinct and capable of mockery? I think the problem is really that they don't want to expose his flaws, that they're committed to the idea that he's normal and pleasant. But they ought to see this as a fantastic opportunity. The best presidential impersonation in this history of "SNL" was Dana Carvey's George H.W. Bush, and H.W. had the same problem of superficial ordinariness.

"Pepe [Le Pew] was set to appear in a black-and-white Casablanca-like Rick’s Cafe sequence. Pepe, playing a bartender, starts hitting on a woman at the bar..."

"He begins kissing her arm, which she pulls back, then slamming Pepe into the chair next to hers. She then pours her drink on Pepe, and slaps him hard, sending him spinning in a stool, which is then stopped by LeBron James’ hand. James and Bugs Bunny are looking for Lola, and Pepe knows her whereabouts. Pepe then tells the guys that Penelope cat has filed a restraining order against him. James makes a remark in the script that Pepe can’t grab other Tunes without their consent...." 

From "Pepe Le Pew Won’t Be Appearing In Warner Bros’ ‘Space Jam’ Sequel" (Deadline Hollywood). 

The actress, Greice Santo, is unhappy to have her big scene cut: "Even though Pepe is a cartoon character, if anyone was going to slap a sexual harasser like him, Greice wished it would be her. Now... she doesn’t have that power to influence the world through younger generations who’ll be watching Space Jam 2, to let younger girls and younger boys know that Pepe’s behavior is unacceptable."

If I remember the old cartoons correctly, the other cartoon characters always let Pepe know his behavior was unacceptable... though I think that was mainly because they were cats and he was a skunk.

I don't know if that read as racism — Was the problem that he was a different species? —  or were we to think their objection was simply that he smelled bad — which really was, I think, an insult intentionally directed at the French.  

As for this new movie, maybe instruction about sexual harassment didn't fit the mood of whatever the story was or maybe LeBron James doesn't have the acting chops to pull off a sincere warning against sexual misdeeds.

From the Wikipedia article on Pepe Le Pew, under the subheading "Reputation":

Pepé's reputation suffered in later years. Comedian Dave Chappelle, in his 2000 stand-up film Killin' Them Softly, called him a rapist. In a 2021 column in The New York Times, Charles M. Blow wrote that Pepé "normalized rape culture". Amber E. George, in her essay "Pride or Prejudice? Exploring Issues of Queerness, Speciesism, and Disability in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes", characterized Pepé's actions towards Penelope Pussycat as "sexual harassment, stalking, and abuse" and noted that Pepé's qualities mock the French people and their culture. On March 7, 2021, it was announced Pepé Le Pew have been removed from Space Jam: A New Legacy.

If you're interested in reading that Amber E. George essay, it's in "The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-ability, Justice, and Liberation." That will cost you $73 even just to download it in Kindle!

As for Charles Blow, the Le Pew bit is just a line in his column about the Dr. Seuss problem: "Six Seuss Books Bore a Bias/Racism must be exorcised from culture, including, or maybe especially, from children’s culture."

Racism must be exorcised from culture, including, or maybe especially, from children’s culture. Teaching a child to hate or be ashamed of themselves is a sin against their innocence and a weight against their possibilities.

Exorcised?! I think the word he was looking for the word "excised." Or are we possessed by an evil spirit that can be driven out by performing some ritual? If you're talking about editing things out of the culture — which is what is really going on — the word is"excised."

"Did people stop saying 'fragility' in the past year? I feel like I used to see it on almost a daily basis..."

"... but I can’t remember seeing it for a while now. (And I deliberately say 'see' it instead of 'hear' it because I’ve only ever seen it written, never heard it out loud.) Could it be that the word started to seem out of touch because we’ve been realizing how fragile we all are?" 

Writes my son John on Facebook, and I think he's suggesting something about our heightened awareness of death and illness during the pandemic. 

I responded over there:

Based on my search for "white fragility" in the NYT, with the results ordered newest first, I'd say it was very common up through October. Since October, there's only one appearance, in a little thing in December about what books New Yorkers read in the past year: "As nationwide discussions erupted over the summer around race and racism, demand for books on the subjects surged across the country, a trend reflected in the city’s libraries. Titles like 'White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism' by Robin DiAngelo were among the most popular in some boroughs." What changed after October? To ask the question is to make the answer obvious.

Before that December item, there were articles containing the term "white fragility" on October 29, October 22, October 6, September 27, September 17, September 6, September 1, August 31, August 11... You get the picture. 

But "fragility" was a vogue word before last year's obsession with Robin DiAngelo's book. Even if the election — the answer I thought was obvious — explains the disappearance of "white fragility," we might also be seeing a disappearance of interest in "fragility" as used in the book "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. If so, I'm inclined to guess that the over-prominence of DiAngelo's concept tired us all out. 

And that's the irony of being fragile about fragility that John was musing about.

"I admit to having a complicated relationship with Aunt Jemima... For a period of time in the late 1940s and early 1950s, my grandmother, Ione Brown..."

"... was part of an army of women who worked as traveling Aunt Jemimas, visiting small-town fairs and rotary-club breakfasts to conduct pancake-making demonstrations at a time when the notion of ready-mix convenience cooking was new. I never knew about my grandmother’s work until long after she died... [W]hile researching a family memoir... I learned that she made good money and covered a region including Iowa, the Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. She was often treated like a celebrity in small towns, but could not stay in local hotels. She kept an eye out for houses that had a small sign in the window that said 'TOURIST,' a code for homes that provided lodging and meals to black people.... As a family, we are offended by the caricature that Aunt Jemima represents, but deeply proud of the way my grandmother used the stage that was available to lift herself up. You see, in those days Aunt Jemima didn’t look like the lady you see on the box today. She was a slave woman, and Ione was expected to act and talk like a slave woman, using the kind of broken patois that blighted the full-page ads in magazines like Women’s Day and Life.... One of the things that irks me most about the Jemima brand is the way the mammy stereotype hijacked what should be an endearing image for black America and tried to turn it into something toxic. Most of us have someone in our family with fleshy arms and a loving smile who serves up cherished advice along with delicious food. They are our aunts and mothers and grandmothers. Our godmothers. Our queens.
You tried to make us ashamed of what Aunt Jemima stood for."

From "Why did it take so long to set Aunt Jemima free?" by Michele L. Norris (WaPo). (Quaker Foods announced that it is retiring the Aunt Jemima brand because to "make progress toward racial equality.")

ADDED: At the NY Post, I'm seeing "After Aunt Jemima, people call to cancel Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s." I understand about Uncle Ben, but Mrs. Butterworth? I've never perceived Mrs. Butterworth as black.

The syrup, sold in a matronly woman-shaped bottle, is accused of being rooted in mammy culture and was modeled after the body of Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, the black actress who played Prissy in “Gone With The Wind.” The Jim Crow-era “mammy” character was often used to show that black women were happy working in white households....

That's news to me. I looked up Mrs. Butterworth on Wikipedia and it did not contain that information. I did learn that the voice for the character was done by Mary Kay Bergman, who looked like this:

"Her parents were Jewish," and she died by suicide at the age of 38 in 1999. She was the original lead female voice on "South Park."

Her characters included Liane Cartman, Sheila Broflovski, Shelly Marsh, Sharon Marsh, Carol McCormick and Wendy Testaburger.... Bergman credited South Park for pulling her out of a typecasting rut. 'I'm known for these sweet, cute little characters,' she said, noting her roles in various Disney films. "So I've been doing them forever. My agents were trying to submit me on shows that are edgy, and they're laughing, 'Mary Kay, are you kidding? No way!'" After Bergman's death, the two episodes "Starvin' Marvin in Space" (the final episode for which she recorded original dialogue) and "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics" (the final episode in which her voice was used via archive footage) were dedicated in her memory.

No comment on the role of Starvin' Marvin and Mr. Hankey in the quest for progress toward racial equality. RIP Mary Kay Bergman. Watch this (it's phenomenal):



Mrs. Butterworth voice at 1:11.

ADDED: Norris writes that her grandmother, in the role of Aunt Jemima had to use a "kind of broken patois." And I see in the comments that David Begley is asking, "Just asking, but isn’t 'broken patois' the language of today’s rap music?" Which makes me wonder, what's wrong with a patois? To answer my own question, I naturally look up "patois" in the OED.

I see that it's "dialect spoken by the people of a particular region (esp. of France or French-speaking Switzerland), and differing substantially from the standard written language of the country" or — and this is "frequently depreciative" — "a regional dialect; a variety of language specific to a particular area, nationality, etc., which is considered to differ from the standard or orthodox version."

I was intrigued by this example from "The Sheltering Sky" by Paul Bowles (who was born in New York City):

Then he remembered having heard that Americans did not speak English in any case, that they had a patois which only they could understand among themselves. The most unpleasant part of the situation to him was the fact that he would be in bed, while the American would be free to roam about the room, would enjoy all the advantages, physical and moral.

An extremely light diversion: 4 completely different songs titled — variously spelled — "La Dee Dah"

The most familiar one to me is this — on the first 4 Seasons album. Much as I've loved the 4 Seasons in my time, I've got to promote the Billy and Lillie version from 1958:



This is a silly song, with lyrics that include: "La dee dah, oh boy/Let's go/Cha, cha, cha/I feel so fine/Now that you are mine...." Excellent candy.

I'm not sure if I remember the Ringo song "La De Da" — spelled like that. This is from 1998, from his 11th album:



This too is pretty silly, with lyrics like "La la de da, like que sera sera/Whatever la de da, la de da/All you got to say is la de da." Okay. Ringo. It's Ringo. What can you say? It's easiest to quietly love him.

Then there's a Foo Fighters song from 2017. The spelling here spelled "La Dee Da." This lacks the la-dee-dah feeling of Billy and Lillie and Ringo, with lyrics like: "Hate if I want to, hate/Psychic Television and Death in June/Jim Jones painting in a blue bedroom." Listen to it here if you like. Whatever their problem is. I choose to pass that one by.

But the really striking la-dee-dah song is "Lah-Di-Dah" — and let me say, that's my favorite spelling — by this English guy Jake Thackray, whom I had never heard of:



I hope you made it past his long introduction! Wikipedia says: "John Philip "Jake" Thackray (27 February 1938 – 24 December 2002) was an English singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. Best known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his topical comedy songs performed on British television, his work ranged from satirical to bawdy to sentimental to pastoral, with a strong emphasis on storytelling, making him difficult to categorise."

This "Lah-Di-Dah" is an elaborately written song about loving a woman enough to put up with her awful family. The lyrics include:

I'll be nice to your mother
I'll come all over lah-di-dah
Although she always gets up me nose
I love you very much
And so I'll smile and I'll acquiesce
When she invites me to caress
Her scabby cat
I'll sit still while she knits
And witters, cross my heart
And I shan't lay a finger on the crabby old batface

That's one of 5 verses. I had to look up "witters." It's Scottish dialect, and it means "To chatter or mutter; to grumble; to speak with annoying lengthiness on trivial matters." What a useful word!

Anyway, what blew my mind is that it was covered as a duet by Petula Clark — who has a lovely voice — and Rod McKuen — who just really isn't even a singer:



I can see that there are clearly at least 2 completely different meanings for "la-di-da." I know that's another spelling, but I'm looking it up in the OED now, where it says the word is onomatopoeic, ridiculing the "swell" manner of speech. It's a "A derisive term for one who affects gentility." The British also say "lardy-dardy." This is the meaning I grew up with, except that I encountered it as an adjective. It meant pretentiously fancy. So I was confused by the usage in the movie "Annie Hall":



There, you see it's a mild, almost meaningless interjection — similar to "oh, my" or "gosh" — basically, ah, well, what are you going to do. I think you can put Ringo, Billy and Lillie, and Foo Fighters in the "Annie Hall" category. Only Jake Thackray has the OED meaning.

Well, enough of that. I hope you enjoyed being distracted from the troubles of this crazy world for a few minutes. Here, I'll let you vote on your favorite la-di-da:

Please listen first, then pick one:

4 Seasons

Billy and Lillie

Ringo

Foo Fighters

Jake Thackray

Petula Clark and Rod McKuen

 

pollcode.com free polls

We're told not to take "defund the police" and "abolish the police" literally.

In this WaPo op-ed — "Defund the police? Here’s what that really means." — by Christy E. Lopez, who is a a Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law School where she co-directs the Innovative Policing Program. She tells us not to be "afraid" because it's "not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds."

We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety. 

Defunding and abolition probably mean something different from what you are thinking. For most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean zeroing out budgets for public safety, and police abolition does not mean that police will disappear overnight — or perhaps ever. Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs....

Why not use words that people can understand and that convey the meaning you want to put in our head? If your idea is so reasonable, why not use words that are effective in making people who care about peace and harmony agree with you?

Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety....

Now, that's just confusing! You said "reducing" but then you said "eliminating."

The “abolition” language is important because it reminds us that policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery.

But the slavery abolition movement was not about reducing our reliance on slavery! Why take such an important word and undermine what it means? If you successfully "remind us" of the evils of slavery, you are making us think you are saying the police are an evil, like slavery, that must be entirely eradicated.

"A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council pledged on Sunday to dismantle the city’s Police Department."

The NYT reports.

Saying that the city’s current policing system could not be reformed, the council members stood before hundreds of people who gathered late in the day on a grassy hill, and signed a pledge to begin the process of taking apart the Police Department as it now exists.

I don't see how this can possibly be done. It sounds like madness. There is some ray of rationality in "to begin the process" and "taking apart the Police Department as it now exists."

Maybe it's a slow process and they take it apart but they put it back together again in a form that's just different from the way it now exists. Maybe it's just a new way to say reform.

Council members said in interviews on Sunday that they did not have specific plans to announce for what a new public safety system for the city would look like. They promised to develop plans by working with the community, and said they would draw on past studies, consent decrees and reforms to policing across the nation and the world.

So they have no plan or even a general idea of what it is, but they pledge to do it. I imagine a lot of Minneapolis people are alarmed and anxious but won't say too much about all this.

ADDED: "Dismantle" is an interesting word. Especially in this context, it makes me think of the famous essay title "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House." And did you know that the original meaning of the word is "to divest of a mantle or cloak; to uncloak" (OED)? The extended meaning is "To render (fortifications, or the like) useless for their purpose; to pull down, take to pieces, destroy, raze."

"JK Rowling faces backlash for comments on the phrase ‘people who menstruate.'"

"... Rowling said she believed that the headline should refer to women instead. Her comment was seen as transphobic, as transgender men can still menstruate."

Twitter reports on a Twitter trend that started here:

‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate https://t.co/cVpZxG7gaA

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020

She followed up with:

If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.

The idea that women like me, who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because they’re vulnerable in the same way as women - ie, to male violence - ‘hate’ trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense.

I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.

Just because you're empathetic doesn't mean that other people will be empathetic toward you. In fact, they may see you as a mark from whom more empathy can always be demanded. It's like the way they keep giving more work to the busiest person.

At the Verticality Café...

... it's time for the late-morning snack, third breakfast, or early lunch, if you will. Never brunch, not unless you're a breakfast skipper. Breakfast skipper — that sounds like another name for Cap'n Crunch. The term "brunch" goes back to 1895, according to the OED, which finds it first here:

1895 Independent 22 Aug. 2/1 Breakfast is ‘brekker’ in the Oxford tongue; when a man makes lunch his first meal of the day it becomes ‘brunch’: and a tea-dinner at the Union Club is a ‘smug’.

A smug, eh? That never made it into the OED as a definition of "smug," but I think a tea-dinner at the Union Club sounds really nice. You'll have to wait a few hours for that, and you'll have to come up with your own notion of the "Union Club" — which was a "gentleman's club" in London from 1800 to 1949.

"Is it OK to rail against fat discrimination but still want to lose weight? Or does that make her part of the problem?"

"'I’ve had people question whether I truly love myself if I want to be thinner,' [said Anne Coleman, who weighs 200 pounds and considers herself to be 'body positive'].... 'I kind of feel stuck between people bashing me for having obesity and telling me I should lose weight, and the other half that says you should love yourself and that means you shouldn’t lose weight,' said Sarah Bramblette, 42, of Miami. 'I’m bad for wanting to lose weight, and I’m bad for not losing weight.'... Molly Carmel, 42, understands the conflict between wanting to be thinner and wanting to rebel against cultural norms. At her heaviest, she weighed 350. She lost 170 pounds from 'gastric bypass surgery and bulimia,' as she put it. Then she founded The Beacon Program, an eating disorder center in Manhattan. While she does weigh clients, she doesn’t let them see the number. 'I’m not saying to get into this skinny mini body... But when you’re eating in a way that’s supporting a really heavy body, it’s arguable that that’s self-love. When I weighed 325 pounds, I couldn’t get into the shower. My underwear stopped fitting. That girl deserves to release weight if she wants to, culture or no culture.'"

From "Fighting Fat Discrimination, but Still Wanting to Lose Weight/Is it OK to be 'body positive' while striving to be thinner?" (NYT).

That's an interesting expression: "release weight." It replaces "lose weight." It suggests the weight would like to go, and you're letting it, rather than that you're somehow oblivious and dropping it somewhere.

Is this language change being promoted? I'm not seeing much of it on the web, though I did find this article at a website called Wholistically You:

Years ago, my Wing Chun Sufi taught me that “we do not lose weight, we release weight”. At first I didn’t quite understand what he was saying, until he explained that whenever you lose something our instinctual nature as humans, is to find it or want it back. He went further to explain that if we truly wanted to lose something, or to give something up, then we needed to release it....

I adopted the language, understood the power behind what I was saying and watched as it manifested in my life, and in my lovely body. The results I have garnered have been life altering....

We do not achieve results. We garner them.

The NYT is so hard up for sports news, that it's got a story about a man running a lot of miles on his treadmill.

The headline tries to jazz it up, but come on, this is just a man on his treadmill: "Run 100 Miles, 100 Times, in 100 Weeks. Now in a Brooklyn Apartment/With ultramarathons across the country canceled, Michael Ortiz has continued his quest to run 100 100-mile races in 100 consecutive weeks — on a treadmill."

Quest! It's a quest! A quest is just "A search or pursuit in order to find something; the action of searching" (OED). What is the something here? If you run 100 miles instead of 10 miles, have you found anything?

"Quest" is also a grand word because in chivalric or Arthurian romance it is "an expedition or search undertaken by a knight or group of knights to obtain some thing or achieve some exploit."

▸ a1470 T. Malory Morte Darthur (Winch. Coll.) 966 They supposed that he was one of the knyghtes of the Rounde Table that was in the queste of the Sankegreall.

Is the logging of 100 miles a hundred times within a 100-day time frame anything like the Holy Grail?

President Trump doesn't want to "cast any dispersions" on China.

I saw it in the transcript — "dispersions" for "aspersions" — but checked the video before believing he said it:



It's not a transcription error. He said "I don’t want to cast any dispersions."

But enough of that. Let's consider what he was invited to cast aspersions on China about and whether he did, in fact, refrain from.... Or do you want to keep talking about "dispersions"? Maybe you are champing — or chomping — at the bit to defend your President. What are "aspersions" anyway? And it's not as though "dispersions" isn't a word. Is there some requirement that a speaker use the most obvious cliché? Does "cast" demand "aspersions" the way "scantily" demands "clad"? But you can choose to say "scantily dressed" — it's not wrong — so why not say "cast dispersions"?!

To "disperse" is to throw things about, and to "asperse" is to sprinkle things. "Dispersion" is the act of throwing things about, and "aspersion" is the act of sprinkling things about. To "cast" is to throw, so it might look as though we're dealing with a redundancy, but the word "aspersion" also means that which is sprinkled. So to "cast aspersions" is to throw the things that are thrown. But "dispersion" is not defined (in dictionaries that I looked at) as both the throwing of things and the things that are thrown. That's why "casting dispersions" sounds wrong. You're saying throwing the act of throwing.

If I wanted to defend Trump here, I'd try to find a dictionary that gave the necessary other meaning to "dispersion" and, failing that, I'd say that "dispersion" is easily understood to mean, in context, that which is dispersed and, as such, "casting dispersions" makes just as much sense as "casting aspersions," and the people who want to hear the most predictable combinations of words are very boring.

Now, on to the substance. From the transcript of yesterday's Coronavirus Briefing:

Speaker 2: Mr. President, you have said that China is doing everything they can to make sure you don’t get reelected. What specifically are they doing?

Donald Trump: Well, China doesn’t want to see me elected and the reason is that we’re getting billions and billions of dollars, many billions of dollars a month from China. China never gave our country anything. China gave us nothing, not 25 cents. And whether it was Biden in charge of China, which was a joke because they ripped off our country for eight years. And in all fairness to Biden and Obama, this went on long before they got into office. And you can go through many administrations until I came along. Then we signed a trade deal where they’re supposed to buy, and they’ve been buying a lot actually, but that now becomes secondary to what took place with the virus. The virus situation is just not acceptable.

Speaker 2: Do you think that withholding information about the virus is related to them trying to undermine your reelection?

Donald Trump: I don’t want to cast any dispersions. I just will tell you that China would like to see sleepy Joe Biden. They would take this country for a ride like you’ve never seen before.

"Both waiters and customers wear masks. Diners can remove them to eat and drink..."

"... tucking them safely into an envelope the restaurant provides. Every surface is sanitized every half-hour. Customers have accepted the protocols, [one restaurateur] said. They’ve had to turn away only one for having a slight fever, and sent off a grumpy party of six that wanted to sit together. 'People are honestly much more understanding about everything now,' she said. 'They’re grateful they can go out and feel comfortable.... If you’ve managed to build a brand and built and cultivated integrity, people will trust you when you are allowed to open the door again.'... Is the urge to sit in a restaurant so great that customers will endure an experience that is more like a trip to the dental hygienist? Will they risk infection, even in a place with the safest protocols?... 'At the end of the day, we’re problem solvers and we will find a way to do this,' [said another restaurateur]. 'The restaurant industry is about constant chaos and writing a ballet out of that chaos. We’ve spent all of our careers preparing for this moment.'"

From "Safe Dining? Hard to Imagine, but Many Restaurants Are Trying/Though widespread reopenings may be a long way off, chefs and health officials have begun studying how a post-pandemic restaurant might look" (NYT).

Health has always been something restaurants have had to worry about getting right. Whenever we've gone to a restaurant, we've trusted the place not to damage our health. They make substances in the back room that we inject* into our body. The servers go to the bathroom and we've been trusting that they wash their hands thoroughly. We're more alert now and paying attention. There's a specific new danger on the list of things that could find their way into your body from a restaurant.

Restaurants get to earn our trust all over again, and we get to think carefully about how much we're going to put our lives in their (presumably washed) hands. Some of us, I think, have developed stronger feelings about how much restaurants mean to us, and others are more wary than ever about the agents of disease that lurk there. We all change and adapt. I'd like to think that makes us better and stronger.

___________________

* I'm just needling you. "Inject" means "To drive or force (a fluid, etc.) into a passage or cavity, as by means of a syringe, or by some impulsive power; said esp. of the introduction of medicines or other preparations into the cavities or tissues of the body" (OED). I don't really think "inject" is an accurate way to describe eating (unless it's something like the way geese eat in the production of foie gras).

BUT: Etymologically, the original meaning of "inject" is to throw in. We do speak of throwing back a few drinks.

AND: We do speak of injecting a little humor. We might say that Trump was injecting a little humor when he (lyingly) claimed to have been using sarcasm when words ejected from him that seemed to suggest that disinfectant of the sort that you'd use to wipe down a tabletop could be injected into the human body.