My favorite malapropism at this moment comes from a recent personal tussle with a manufacturer. Long story short: Said manufacturer’s product Did Not Work; said manufacturer offered multiple troubleshooting suggestions but declined to replace the product; yours truly fumed via both email and telephone until the customer service rep finally caved in, refusing to acknowledge that the product Did Not Work, but offering to replace it with a different model, because he was, as he phrased it so exquisitely in an email, a “customer abdicate.”
Radio air personality Gary Burbank often referred to himself as a pronounsker—of course the reference was tongue-in-cheek (as an aside, “tongue-in-cheek” is good attitudinal form but bad physical form for a radio comedian).
Gary used the word so often that when I wrote comedy bits for him, I typed “Pronounsker:” to introduce the lines to be spoken by an announcer in, say, a fake commercial or in a wildly concocted routine about a blue-collar worker most familiar with clogged drain traps suddenly tapped as a journalist to report on the sadly enduring Mideast conflict. After a time, I embellished the word pronounsker, whimsically ballooning it to Pronounskiator at one point, and then taking it even ridiculously further to Pronounskiationist.
Oh, wait, I didn’t concoct the above-mentioned routine about drain-trap man, wildly or otherwise. History concocted it.
Drain-trap man is the McCain-campaign-annointed Joe the Plumber, who was recently hired by some website or another to cover the recent turmoil in the Gaza Strip. When asked by Fox Gnus about how he had prepared for the assignment, Joe said that one of his biggest challenges was to learn how to pronounciate the names related to the conflict.
Pronounciate? Maybe Gary and I wildly concocted Joe the Plumber after all. And if we didn’t, at least we created Joe the Plumbinatiationizerist Enunskiationizingmeistererer.
Following is an ad that appeared on one of my Yahoo emailbox web pages. I have no idea what the ad is for. And I will do nothing to find out—in particular, I refuse to click on the damn thing. FUBAR may be a product, may be a slogan, may be an unfortunate acronym for the Federation of Ultimate Bastions of Altruistic Reward. I doubt it, as I know the actual origin of the word fubar*. That origin coupled with the spammish illiteracy of “a insider” have Fouled Up Bill’s Attitudinal Response.
(* Fubar is an acronym of “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition,” in case you haven’t encountered it—with Fouled generally considered to be another word in the F-initial family, one that I hesitate to use only because it’s the holiday season and I’m feeling double-F family-friendly.)
The Ridger weighs in with a great comment on my post yesterday about the potential eponym value of Madoff-pronounced-MadeOff:
It’s considerably more Dickensian than Blagojevich, that’s for sure. Kathleen Parker said in the Washington Post last Wednesday:
Among his other activities, Blagojevich — whose Dickensian name rings nearly eponymous — allegedly has been busy trying to get certain members of the Tribune’s editorial board fired by threatening to withhold state assistance for the financing or sale of Wrigley Field (Tribune also owns the Chicago Cubs).
I’m REALLY not sure what she means by “rings nearly eponymous”.
Agreed, Ridger. One characteristic of eponyms we use today—boycott, bowdlerize, maverick, as examples—are (like, oh, at least a handful of words in the language) pronounceable. Machiavellian and Celsius give us a challenge, yes, but we can still get them out of our mouths without counting the syllables and mentally watching where our tongues go as we slog through the syllables in slow motion, as we would do with Dag-nab-o-glitch, or however it’s pronounced. I believe we should all pronounce the eventual near-eponym with a Jerry Lewis jabber, the way Jon Stewart does.
And what would a Dag-nab-o-glitch be, anyway? Someone who tries to sell political appointments? Someone who attempts outrageous indiscretions and denies them equally outrageously? A hairstyle that protects your face like an awning?
I would suggest that we brohaugh the notion (mock with silly suggestions), except for that little pronounceability factor . . . and the fact that the meaning wouldn’t be significantly different from “stewarting the notion.”
Let me use this as a jumping-off point for some verbal silliness on The Daily Show last week. Stewart shows a clip of an unnamed reporter referring to the DagwoodSand-o-Wich affair as:
This political drama played out on the national stage is much more than that. It’s human soap opera, as a matter of fact.
Stewart responds, “I see. So this would be like a soap opera except—and this would be the twist—with human roles.” As a matter of fact.
As a capper, the unnamed reporter is jabbering over a display of the words “GOVERNOR’S FAMILY FUED.”
Check out the episode of the Daily Show, enjoy this and some other wordplay there (the czar schtick is fun), and then join me in wondering: What the hell does “nearly eponymous” mean?
Klaatu Barada Nikto is not the name of the president-elect (though when I Google “Klaatu Obama,” I get a few hundred pun-intended returns). Instead, these words compose what Frederick S. Clarke of Cinefantastique magazine called “the most famous phrase ever spoken by an extraterrestrial.” (This was some time before “E.T. phone home.”) They are spoken in the 1951 original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (though apparently not, I note in my third parenthetical in this paragraph, in the 2008 remake I’m in no rush to see, and not in “Farewell to the Master,” the Harry Bates short story that serves as source material).
It’s a phrase so famous that the “In Popular Culture” section of its Wokkawokkapedia entry contains dozens of references, including one of my favorites: “klaatu barada necktie” in Army of Darkness. Here’s one to add to the section: “Klaatu barada stinko,” in the headline of Alonso Duralde’s msnbc.com panning of the 2008 revisit.
No great art to that pun, but I like it, particularly because it so accurately reflects Mr. Duralde’s snarky slapdown of the film. And because it’s Sunday, and I’m lazy, I’ll leave all snarkdom to Mr. Duralde today. Believe me, he’s doing a good job. Here’s my favorite line from the review, as it touches on things linguistic:
The new “Day” can’t be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season’s biggest laughs. My personal favorite? Astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) takes alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to see a Nobel Prize–winning scientist and notes that her colleague was honored “for his work in biological altruism.” What would that entail, exactly? Helping frogs cross the street?
Some years ago, a local TV station fired a popular weathercaster because he was “just” an announcer. He held no meteorology degree . . . the faker!. This was at the forefront (and the coldfront) of general TV news departments deciding that weathercasters needed degrees so that they could entertain us with adiabatic lapse rates and slipstreams and other meteorological minutia, perhaps trying to imply to us that said weathercasters used El Niño prevailing breezes to scientifically and naturally blow-dry that hair. Put it in simple English! Leave the test tubes back at the lab and tell us if it’s gonna rain tomorrow.
At the time, I was writing for a Cincinnati radio personality, and I composed a comedy bit in which said TV station next demanded that its news anchor have a Ph.D in current events, the economics reporter be a former Secretary of the Treasury, and the sportscaster have a Masters in statistics and Euclidean geometry.
It seems that I have, after all these years, finally gotten my “put it in simple English” request. Driving home last night, listening to the weather report on the radio, I heard this (exact quote as best as I can remember):
Temperatures will hit the 40s tomorrow, but over the weekend, it’s back to the 30s. And that means colder temperatures.
All the following is said because I cherish words, and the wonderful freedom to use them:
In a previous post, I wrote about the familial heirs to the name “Maverick,” one of the surnames that have led to now-common English eponyms—that is, words resulting from proper names. Modern-day Mavericks (the ones legally named, in upper-case letters) have chafed against McCain/Palin stealing an important part of the Mavericks’ proud family history for political purposes.
Even though the Mavericks aren’t “the mainstream media,” Sarah Palin probably considers their vocal disdain as suppression of Palin’s own freedom of speech. Their opinions, you see, apparently violate her First Amendment rights.
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
Gov. Palin obviously has not read the Bill of Rights, you betcha.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Questioning is not abridgement. Opinions are not abridgement. Dictionaries aren’t scarce (nor is the text of the Constitution inaccessible).
So, please, Gov. Palin, do not consider my questioning your negative campaigning against the Constitution as eroding the First Amendment; instead view it as my celebrating it, exercising it, wallowing joyfully in the freedom of it. There are nations where the government can coerce the press to shut up. America is not one of them. Perhaps you can look such facts up on Wikipedia.
Though I wish I could say that Gov. Palin was correct in her self-characterization as maverick, at least in the context of her interpretations of the Constitution, such interpretations seem to be very much following the branded-cattle path established by the Cheney-Bush Orwellian disregard for our most important treasure (quick example, “Wiretapping Is Freedom”).
Thus, because of the McCain/Palin abuse of the word maverick and because of Palin’s desire to continue the Bush Administration’s degradation of the Constitution, I would be pleased if the word lovers and freedom lovers who visit this space go to the polls Nov. 4, and substitute the eponym maverick with a stronger eponym—the one taken from Capt. Charles Cunningham Boycott—and captain-charles their candidacy.
When asked whether she and her husband had any more unusual names up their sleeves, the politician [Sarah Palin] said: ‘We did. We never got to get our Zamboni in. I always wanted a son named Zamboni.’
Her husband Todd, however, seemed less than impressed with the suggestion. ‘I don’t think that would have flied,’ he said.
What wouldn’t have “flied”? Zamboni the name or Zamboni the machine? This sounds a bit like Henry Ford naming his son after a car—the Edsel. (Yes, I know it was the opposite—Edsel the human came before the premiere of My Son the Car starring Jerry Van Dyke, or something like that.)
I’ll give Palin the gov a pass on the Zamboni name claim—it was probably a joke. (On the other hand, she characterized as a joke her comment in the pre-VP-selection days that someone would have to tell her what the vice president does—then subsequently proved that she really didn’t know in her odd description of job duties to young Brandon Garcia. So maybe we can anticipate a grandchild named Zamboni or John Deere or Ski-Doo at some point.)
But Todd, man! First dude! Get yer grammar on! Your grammar done slud off the trail!
On the other hand . . . What does a vice president do? “Not only are they there to support the president . . . ”
The vice president they? Plural? Is Sarah including Todd as part of the office, the way she included Todd in her Alaskan administration? We saw how well that little singular/plural misconception flied, now didn’t we?
OK, it’s the economy that’s collapsing. Not the language. But the language is taking some major hits in all of this mess. If I had a nickel for every time someone said “I’ll invest a dollar for you in the stock market . . .” Oh, wait. I do have a nickel for every dollar invested in the stock market.
More to the point, a couple of instances of word-spotting:
1) Have a fiscal policy that creates immense deficits in good times and bad, burdening America’s posterity with staggering burdens of repaying the debt.
Burdening with burdens is both fiscally and redundantly irresponsible.
Then, of course, there’s the thrill ride known as a Sarah Palin “sentence.” In Slate Kitty Burns Florey writes about Joe Sixpack eloquence (because much of Palin’s grammar sounds like something someone says after enjoying said sixpack—my observation, not Florey’s) and the difficulty of diagramming a Palin sentence.
From the Charlie Gibson interview:
I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people.
I didn’t stop to marvel at the mad thrusting of that pet political watchword “families” into the text. I just rolled up my sleeves and attempted to bring order out of the chaos:
I had to give up. This sentence is not for diagramming lightweights. If there’s anyone out there who can kick this sucker into line, I’d be delighted to hear from you. To me, it’s not English—it’s a collection of words strung together to elicit a reaction, floating ands and prepositional phrases (”with that vote of the American people”) be damned. It requires not a diagram but a selection of push buttons.
And such sentences come from Palin even though she boasts of graduating from journalism school while grumbling about the “media elite” in almost the same breath. (Able to complete a sentence = media elite.) Well, as John McCain said, maybe about “gotcha journalists” but applicable here nonetheless, “you don’t know the context of the conversation, grab a phrase.”
Excuse me while I crawl into Jonathan Swiftian “infusion of Enthusiastick jargon” depression mode. Here’s a brief quote from an online chat I was privvy to recently. Among the noncapitalization, the elipses longer than the Panama Canal, the fact that someone thinks Deep Space Nine is entertaining, and the misspelling, note the irony of the quickly following self-correction (which was apparently the subject of some thought) contrasted with the beginning of the original post.
DisguisedName: lol im watching the funniest episode of deep space 9 ever lol…………..ferengi thinking they are commandoes DisguisedName: commando’s
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