Words Are Fun

Moe Dowd starts our word fun today, using "distaff" as a noun for womenfolk.  Following up smartly with the loaded phrase "passing strange" to describe the behavior of our semi-black president.  Clever girl. Next she throws caution to the wind with Archie Bunker's old favorite, "high toned."  I can't help but wonder if Rush would have gotten away with that one.
Distaff, I learned, is a device used in making cloth, which as we all know is women's work.  See Norma Jean.  It has also been used as an adjective to describe something as feminine.  Up til now.  Maureen has nominalized distaff as her very own esoteric reference to women.  Good for her!

 

Passing strange is riskier territory.  Moe is not talking about the rock band.  Passing strange refers to folks, usually African-Americans, who "pass" as a race different than the one assigned to them by their state.  Maureen uses it differently,  or metaphorically, to point out the difference between Obama's election base of women, blacks, and Latinos and his senior appointments of white, male establishment types.  I'm not sure if she thinks Obama belongs among the former group while trying to pass as a member of the latter, or the other way around.  The bottom line is that she doesn't like it one bit.

BTW, Maureen capitalizes "Latino" but not "black" or "women."  Why is that? Apparently this is an ongoing debate among style manuals.  Now that's exciting word news!

"High toned" is next. OMG! I really cannot believe that she used it.  Does she think it helps her liberal and feminist cause? If so, I expect she is wrong.  Of course, high toned indicates moral superiority, or at least a tone of moral superiority, or something that's just classy as hell. 

But, and this is a big but, it is a loaded term in reference to African-Americans, referring either to black people with light skin color, or slaves who accepted their masters' values and were dutifully loyal. Or just black folks who are classy as hell.

Just for good measure, Dowd also tosses in "kerfuffle" and "oldfangled."

 

On the serious side of the page we find gloomy Paul Krugman explaining why the world can't get out of the recession.  Blah blah blah.  He ascribes our political leaders' stupendous incompetence to a "dismal orthodoxy."  Hah! As you all know, economics is known as the dismal science.  Love it!

Good old naive Paul Krugman.  He still believes that if politicians knew the right answer they would act accordingly.  He just cannot accept that they simply don't care.

Pajama Man's Random Thoughts and Vocabulary

Nothing about Wall Street here today!

Sarah Palin and I differ in at least one important respect. I almost never read newspapers anymore. I read newspaper websites. Mostly the New York Times, because it's free, and because I like their columnists. "Like" may be a strong word for some of them, especially Kristol.
But, I must give props to the San Jose Mercury News, which was one of the very first newspapers to have a free on-line edition back in the mid 90's. It's hard to realize now that the internet used to be largely free of business sites and advertising.

Back to the NYT, it is with the NYT columnists or pundits or whatever they call themselves these days that I sort of enjoy a love-annoyance relationship because of their obvious, intentional affection for injecting esoteric words into their columns. Love, because it is fun to look up words and learn something. Sometimes it's a word that I've heard for years and maybe even used myself, without knowing exactly what it really meant. Other times it's something completely new. Annoyance, because having to stop and look up a word interrupts the flow of reading the column and the thought process of absorbing it.

I look them up on Merriam-Webster.com, because it, also, is free.

Here are some recent samples. First, from David Brooks, yesterday, describing members of Congress who voted No on you-know-what.

nihilist - a doctrine or belief that conditions in the social organization are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake independent of any constructive program or possibility

And here's one from Moe Dowd, describing William F. Buckley, a brilliant and gentlemanly conservative that liberals, like me, could not help but like.

sesquipedalian - given to or characterized by the use of long words

William F. Buckley - 1965

Moving on - Fall is Here!

Reflections on the water like shadows in my mind

Speak to me of passing days and nights and passing time

The falling leaves are whispering winters on its way

I close my eyes remembering the warmth of yesterday

It seems a shame to see September swallowed by the winter

And more than that its oh so sad to see the summer end

And though the changing colors are a lovely thing to see

If it were mine to make the change I'd let it be

But I dont remember hearing anybody asking me

Well it's time to make seasonal adjustments. For me, that means pajamas, aka pyjamas. Which I wear. Almost every night. In the winter I wear flannel pajamas. That's cotton flannel, which I know is technically flannelette, but who really cares. My wife buys me one new pair each year to wear on Christmas Eve. And, since I tend to save my clothes for a very long time, I have about ten pairs of flannel pajamas now. They take up a lot of drawer space. But they never seem to wear out. And boy are they comfortable.

Even in the summer I will wear light weight cotton pajama bottoms with a tee shirt. Often the tee shirt is an actual undershirt. I favor white V-necks, slightly large and loose fitting.

Growing up in the 1970's I rarely wore pajamas. They were viewed as goofily out of style. Reminiscent of Fred MacMurray in a full robe and slippers get-up, smoking a pipe or heating a glass of pre-bedtime warm milk on the stove. Nothing so stuffy for us cool kids at the tail end of 60's hipness or the dawning blow-dried 70's. PJ's were out. They did not seem to be something that real people, or at least real men, really wore.

So, what did one wear to bed? Ann Landers famously pronounced that it was perfectly respectable to sleep in the nude. She further delared that wearing underwear beneath pajamas was silly. So, sleeping au naturel became a cool, albeit private, fashion statement to publicly declare, whether true or not. It conveyed a sense, not of a tight clothing budget or questionable hygeine or a lack of air conditioning, but rather a sense of sophistication and self confidence that one was comfortable in their own skin. And not afraid to be seen in it.

Me, I dressed for comfort. During the high energy costs of the late 70's and early 80's I slept in as little as possible in my un-air conditioned, sweltering quarters during the hot months, and bundled up in sweat pants, turtle necks, and wool socks during the cold winter months. Now, with oil DOWN to $95 a barrel today, those days of bundling up may just be coming back.

Flannel Pajamas are almost always plaid

Really, those days weren't so bad. We managed to have a lot of fun. And snuggling up in a warm bed on a cold day can feel positively luxurious.

Grammer question for today: Is the plural of pair "pairs" or "pair?"

Word of the Day - Mau Maued

Ahhh. Maureen Dowd. NYT's resident bitchy vixen, has managed to use the term Mau Mau in relation to Barack Obama. I'm not sure how many main stream media types would dare to do this. There is absolutely no way this was a mistake. She's playing with fire, teasing all the conservative writers who would get pilloried for such cutesiness with racially charged terms.

Here's the quote from Sunday's column:

"It’s hard to fathom why Obama should be mau-maued into paying off the debt that Hillary and Bill accrued attacking and undermining him, while mismanaging the campaign and their nearly quarter-billion-dollar war chest so horribly that one Hillaryland insider told The New Republic that it bordered on fraud."

Redheaded Seductress Maureen Dowd

Excellent point! Especially given that about $12MM of Hillary's $22MM campaign debt is owed to Hillary herself, and another $6MM is owed to the hateful and rightfully despised Mark Penn. Take those two out of the mix and I'll send in $100. I don't even mind paying Hillary back, but as long as Mark Penn is in the mix, fuggedaboutit.

So, unless you're as old as John McCain, you're probably wondering, "What the hell is a Mau-Mau?" Some kind of chocolate-coconut candy from Hawaii? Well, no.

The Mau Maus were a group of African revolutionaries in Kenya in the 1940's and 1950's, fighting English imperial rule. They used protests, strikes, and terrorism to fight the English. Of course they were also black, and so even scarier than the Irish Catholics. The Mau Mau lost, but their cause ultimately prevailed.

Kenyan Mau-Maus

And their name has stuck around. Tom Wolfe used it in a hip book from the 1970's. (Isn't it funny that Tom Wolfe used to be hip?) As a verb, it means to strong arm someone, which is a form of "unarmed" (hah hah!) robbery. Basically to bully someone into doing something or giving up something.

But, it also is used, rarely, as a racial pejorative for black people, implying that they are criminals or violent. When I say rarely, I'd say not as rarely as "Macaca," which I had not heard used as an epithet prior to Senator George Allen's famous blurtation.

So, for context, I've included this song from Hair! which includes the use of Mau-Mau (I know I'm being inconsistent with the hyphens) among a litany of racially derogatory pronouns. It's also a pretty snappy tune. But don't sing it at work.

I'm not typing or saying the name of this song.

So, what do you think? Will Maureen catch any flak? Should there be fallout? Will anyone even notice? If nobody notices, is that even worse for Maureen? And finally, what is she up to with this?

Reading Books Is Hard

"The president mentioned in his speech yesterday that he was reading history, and he has been summoning historians and theologians to the White House for discussions on the fate of Iraq and the nature of good and evil."

Good idea. Of course, most people do this sort of thing in college. Maybe Harvard and Yale need to beef up their curriculum. Or maybe Tom Friedman could have suggested that W bone up on Iraqi history before invading.

In the words of John Blutarsky, W's favorite historical figure and role model at college, "Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps."