Language Follies 19 (Tell it like it isn't)

We start off today rather liquidy as we gaze upon the walls of sports arenas. At one venue the host soccer team advises us that it has an “Official Water Technology Partner.” At another British site, we discover a company called “Victorian Plumbing.” But I guess if you had to wet your whistle there’s always “Pipeline Punch.”

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Call Me By My Rightful Name (Or Not) Dept.

The shameful messes that control European football (i. e., soccer) (UEFA) and world football (FIFA) impose a strict censorship over product mentions during competition broadcasts. That goes as far as preventing announcers from correctly naming the venue if the stadium’s naming rights conflict with a competition sponsor. An example of this took place this past week when Arsenal hosted Shakhtar Donetsk in the UEFA Champions League. Arsenal’s stadium in North London is named after Emirates Airlines, but because of a conflict with a UEFA sponsor (Qatar Airways), the television announcer was made to call the venue “London Stadium.” One big, stupid problem: There is a London Stadium; it is the home field of West Ham United Football Club.

Of course, all this is minor compared to the use of euphemism that seriously undermines political reality. Here’s George Orwell in his essay “Politics and the English Language” 1946:

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. (1)

Whitney Darrow, Jr. contributed this two decades later:

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While we’re on the truth front, here’s J. D. Vance about his involvement in the Haitians' eating cats lies:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” (2)

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Here from The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 1968, about Alabama's racist governor:

One thousand three hundred and twenty-four innocent citizens were recently cornered by employees of Louis Harris seeking their opinions on the third-party candidate for President, and, according to the results, which were published on September 30th, eighty-six per cent, or one thousand one hundred and thirty-eight and sixty-four hundredths, of those consulted claimed to admire George Wallace for his"courage to say what he really thinks.”

 

And here from a recent Los Angeles Times story:

Donald Trump’s supporters often say they admire him because he always speaks his mind. (3)

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“Zero-morpheme growth” is the term used to describe the metamorphosing of one part of speech into another without a change in form. Because English does not have the complicated case endings that many other languages have, it is easy for English speakers to turn nouns into verbs or adjectives into nouns, for example. Of course, this can lead to some people pulling out their hair. Anyway, here are some recent examples:

“Let’s find your rich”;

“Our goal is to give every kid incredible”;

“A new way to cloud”;

“No one Carolinas like we do”;

“How to business differently.”

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Need a lawyer? How about the firm that calls itself “The Unicorn of Injury Law”?

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Or perhaps you’d like grandma’s noodle kugel recipe—straight from the old world, one suspects, if the old world is South East Asia:

 

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Headline in The Atlantic:

TRUMP: ‘I NEED THE KIND OF GENERALS THAT HITLER HAD’(4)

MEMO: To Donald J. Trump 

Hitler’s generals tried to kill him. (5)

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(1) https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/

(2) https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/vance-immigrants-pets-springfield-ohio-cnntv/index.html

(3) https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-05-27/column-trump-has-a-reputation-as-refreshingly-plainspoken-on-some-subjects-hes-anything-but

(4) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-military-generals-hitler/680327/

(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot 

Shut Up!

Juror 5 works in education and is from Harlem. She said she tries to avoid political conversations and doesn’t care for news. She said that she appreciates Mr. Trump’s candor. “President Trump speaks his mind,” she said.(1)

If there is one thing that I have hated, at least since my college days, is the excusing of stupid, irrational, racist, misogynistic, conspiratorial, etc. bullshit spewing from people’s mouths as the action of merely “speaking their minds” or “expressing themselves.”(2)

When people speak, I want reasonable, logical, factual discourse. 

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One thing I discovered today is that the American Legion considers me a “Patriotic American.” As such, I received a questionnaire that the AL has loaded with leading questions. 

Take the title question about protecting “American Values.” How can one answer “No”? Of course the phrase “American Values” is question-begging. What are “American Values”? How are they defined? And perhaps, more importantly, who has the right to define them?

The first question really gives the lie to any possibility of objectivity. Calling the flag “Old Glory” lays on the patriotic schmaltz pretty thick. 

The second question hauls in the ACLU as, one imagines, a boogie man. We all know that that organization’s activities are iffy, right? And here they are acting against “religious symbols.”

The third, fifth, and eighth questions veer away from so-called values. The third is another question-begging question. The other two are just banging you over the head with feel-bad information.

Questions six, thirteen, and fourteen are the red-meat American Legion questions. Question six drags in “traditions” (a question-begging word) to nudge a positive response to dragooning students into “reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem.” 

Questions thirteen and fourteen drag religion and God into the mix. I think it’s clear what “values” the Legion is trying to get us to reflex approval of.

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Now, I’ve written about the Pledge of Allegiance before(3), so I don’t have to go through the same ideas again. However, let me bring in one new thought: What is accomplished by having six- and seven-year-olds mumble off by rote the P of A, when they have no idea what the words mean? 

“What is ‘allegiance,’ Bobby?” “I don’t know, Miss Brown.” 

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Recently, I received a mail ballot for the election of fire commissioners for the part of the township I reside in. Wondering what exactly the commissioners did and who I should vote for, I accessed the Board of Fire Commissioners website and located the minutes of a recent meeting. Here’s what I found:

BOARD OF FIRE COMMISSIONERS MEETING

ORDER OF BUSINESS

REGULAR MEETING: October 2, 2023 / 2000 Hours

The regular meeting of the BOFC of the 7th Fire District was called to order at 20:00

hours by President Brian Henry, notice of the meeting was published in the Home News

Tribune and Star Ledger and posted in the Fords Library and on the Commissioners’

bulletin board.

Roll Call: All commissioners were present.

The Pledge of Allegiance . . .was given.

The guys whose job it is to fight arsonists start off their meeting with a recital of the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, what in hell does reciting the Pledge have to do with snuffing out brushfires or rescuing cats from trees? Unless it is make sure that none of the elected commissioners have defected to the maple leaf flag or El Tri, leaving the district vulnerable to a towering inferno. 

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(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/nyregion/trump-trial-jury-hush-money.html

(2) See: https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2012/04/whisper-of-muse.html

(3) https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2019/06/ive-pledged-already-thank-you.html