Parapraxis or Sheer Stupidity?: You Be the Judge!

Fosco understands that people--including public figures--regularly misspeak. And I certainly don't want to ascribe deep meaning to every slip of the tongue (sorry, Uncle Freud). But sometimes, you just can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that the mis-speaker has unintentionally revealed something true.

From this article in the HuffPo, describing GW Bush's plans for his (not yet contracted) book:

"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said. [italics mine]

As a description of Bush's eventual book, I suspect this will be one hundred percent accurate. In fact, I think George just wrote the tagline for the jacket!

Smells Like A Steak, Governs.

Yesterday's online NY Times reports a new rhetorical strategy by Republican governors to make their jobs sound more "rugged." Here's the summary:

Just picture Texas Governor Rick Perry saying: "I'm not just the Governor--I'm the Governero." I actually think it's a pretty good strategy.

Of course, now I have in my head the Simpson's "Canyonero" jingle. So why shouldn't you?



Sing along with me: "Govern-ero! Governero!"

"Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious."

As Fosco has mentioned previously, Fosco Lives! gets a lot of traffic from the "playboy pubic shave"-loving perverts in Korea. But yesterday, he saw something in his Korea traffic he's never seen before:

That would be the "word" which follows the IP address. This is the place that, in Fosco's other traffic reports, the name of the Internet Service Provider (e.g., "comcast") appears. Apparently, that "word" is the name of an ISP.

Fosco's curiosity was piqued, so he had to do a Google search. Here's the result:

This isn't very illuminating. However, my favorite part is the "did you mean" recommendation here.

Any Fosco Lives! reader who can explain this "word" to Fosco (or who can pronounce it) will win a Fosco Lives! prize!

This Post Is So Gay

Fosco is no fan of the phrase "that's so gay" when it's used to mean "that's so stupid" or "that's so lame." After all, it's really just a simple matter of effective communication: the phrase "that's so gay" needs to be reserved for things like rainbow vinyl platform heels and Ryan Seacrest. To use the phrase for other purposes is only to diminish its potency.

Luckily, there are now PSAs to put a stop to that. At the site ThinkB4YouSpeak.com, you can read about the campaign to change unthinking linguistic homophobia:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens experience homophobic remarks and harassment throughout the school day, creating an atmosphere where they feel disrespected, unwanted and unsafe. Homophobic remarks such as “that’s so gay” are the most commonly heard; these slurs are often unintentional and a common part of teens’ vernacular. Most do not recognize the consequences, but the casual use of this language often carries over into more overt harassment.

Stopping harassment is a good thing, of course. And the posters for this campaign are actually pretty decent (as these things go):

Reminding teens (and college students) that they may be unintentionally hurting the feelings of their peers seems like a pretty reasonable approach here. After all, this is a campaign whose primary targets are well-meaning kids who don't know any better (as opposed to hard core, nasty homophobes).

But sadly, not all parts of the ThinkB4YouSpeak campaign are quite as well-designed. For one thing, there is this strange appeal to originality, encouraging kids to replace "that's so gay" with something more "original." As if the problem with "that's so gay" is really that it's a cliche. And of course, I think we can all imagine how this strategy could backfire:

BEFORE: That's so gay!
AFTER: That's as lame as anonymous bathhouse sex!
AFTER: That's so lispy!
AFTER: That's so Indigo Girls!

It turns out that originality may actually pose a bigger problem. (The last thing we need is more creative homophobic slurs.)

Even stranger as a tactic is the "Say What?" graphic on the left side of the ThinkB4YouSpeak.com site. The graphic offers a cluster of words that you can click on to learn each "true definition." But is the problem here really that kids don't know the "true" definition of the word "faggot" (you know: a bundle of sticks)? I don't see why learning that "true" definition will do anything to reduce the word's use as a slur. Fosco is even more puzzled by the inclusion of a word like "gay" on the "true definition" graphic. What good does it do to teach kids that "gay" used to mean "happy" when it just doesn't mean that anymore--and no one, especially not the gay community, would advocate that we stop using the word descriptively (as opposed to pejoratively)?

Even stranger is the inclusion of a word like "cougar" on the "Say What?" list. Sure, cougar is "supposed" to mean "a large, carniverous wildcat"; but isn't that partly the point of our current slang usage? The expansion of word meaning through metaphoric association is a common process in everyday English and "cougar" is a fine example of this. Methinks that the "definition police" are getting a little carried away here. Word acquire new definitions all of the time; the question we should care about isn't whether the new definition is "true," but rather whether the new definition is designed to be hurtful to a group of people. And by that standard, I really have to question whether "cougar" is really a slur on par with "faggot."

Trying to combat harassment through definitional authoritarianism? That's so gay.

Saturday Story Hour: Millhauser On Language

This, my friends, is what we call "Saturday Story Hour."

This week, Fosco has a real treat for you: a story from one of the NYTimes's ten best books of 2008. The story collection is Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser and it's absolutely amazing. Fosco devoured this book last week and, in his estimation, it is second only to Bolaño's 2666 as the best book of last year.

You may be familiar with Millhauser, who has written several thrilling collections previously. You've probably heard of his story "Eisenheim the Illusionist," which served as the inspiration for the film The Illusionist. You may recall his 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. And if you've never read Dressler's story "The Knife Thrower," you should find a way to read it ASAP.

The Times recommendation for Dangerous Laughter describes Millhauser as a

a master fabulist in the tradition of Poe and Nabo­kov [who] invents spookily plausible parallel universes in which the deepest human emotions and yearnings are transformed into their monstrous opposites.

Spooky is a good adjective here: I tend to read Millhauser short stories with a strange breathlessness.

It's hard to choose a story from Dangerous Laughter to recommend, because they're all so good. I love "The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman" and "The Tower" and "The Room in the Attic." The title story is also pretty amazing. But we are limited here, to an extent, by which stories are available in full text somewhere online. And so I'm linking you today to the story published in The New Yorker as "History of a Disturbance." It's a remarkable story about a businessman who begins to suspect the inadequacy of language in the face of actual experience. As the narrator notes, in an excellent line:

I began to wonder whether anything I had ever said was what I had wanted to say. I began to wonder whether anything I had ever written was what I had wanted to write, or whether what I had wanted to write was underneath, trying to push its way through.

Fosco often finds himself talking with his undergrads about the problems with language as a "medium." He is pleased to have this story to illustrate the point quite clearly.

Read the story and drop your comments here, if you like.

To grammatically write

Why did Chief Justice Bald Spot mess up Obama's oath of office? Was it to slightly spoil the Obama sound bite (that would otherwise be played ad nauseam for the rest of human history)? Was it to subtly draw people's attention to Article II of the Constitution (a passage that is sorely under-read by schoolchildren)? Or was it for some other nefarious purpose?

According to Harvard know-it-all Steven Pinker (incidentally, a man who looks like an old lesbian), Robert flubbed the oath because of his aversion to split verbs. Pinker notes that the oath, as written in the Constitution, splits the verb "will execute" by the addition of the word "faithfully." As Pinker notes:

Instead of having Barack Obama “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States,” Chief Justice Roberts had him “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” When Mr. Obama paused after “execute,” the chief justice prompted him to continue with “faithfully the office of president of the United States.”

Why did this happen? As Pinker points out, some legal style manuals tend to strictly adhere to a rule against split verbs. Presumably, Roberts's legal training has rendered him unable to read aloud bad grammar.

Except, Pinker also has some good news (especially for Fosco's students): split verbs are not bad grammar. In fact, they're often the best way to adequately express a thought:

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that [many split-verb] corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, “to say.” But in English, infinitives like “to go” and future-tense forms like “will go” are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Thank you, Steven Pinker. From now on, Fosco will happily split his verbs.

Extra Credit: Fosco intentionally used six split verbs in this post (not including the obviously awkward title). Did you notice them?

Extra Extra Credit: Identify every time Fosco UNintentionally splits a verb in any (or all!) of his previous posts.

Extra Extra Extra Credit: Buy Fosco a book. Right now, he could use pretty much any novel in French. Contact Todd for Fosco's address.

Conyers Announces "Noble Peace Prize" Winner

Fosco noted yesterday that Sanjay Gupta could be a dickish choice for Surgeon General. Today, US Representative John Conyers (D-MI) agrees. Unfortunately, Conyers's letter to that effect wasn't exactly proofread, as you can see here:

Please join me in signing a letter to President-Elect Barack Obama that Dr. Sunjay [sic] Gupta not be nominated for the post of Surgeon General.

I join in opposition with respected Noble [sic] Peace [sic] Prize award wining [sic] economist Paul Krugman, who has very serious concerns with having Dr. Gupta be the nation's Surgeon General.

For those of you who are counting, that's four errors/typos in two sentences. Well-played, Conyers.

While it's funny that the letter misspelled Gupta's first name, Fosco much prefers the clusterfuck of errors around Paul Krugman's recent award. For one thing, the Conyers letter seems to be suggesting that Krugman has been fermenting his prize and bottling it in order to produce a delicious libation that has been enjoyed for millions of years. Even more interesting is that Krugman's Nobel Prize for Economics has been morphed into the (more? less?) prestigious "Noble Peace Prize."

At this rate, it's only a matter of a few weeks until Paul Krugman wins an Oskar. And I have no doubt that his recent guest appearances on Rachel Maddow's show will garner him an Emme. Don't even ask him what he had to do to win his Pee Body.

Renaming New York's "Obesity Tax"

As the NYTimes notes,

New York Governor David Paterson is trying to reduce the size of the state budget by reducing the size of the average citizen. With obesity rates soaring, he has proposed an 18 per cent tax on non-diet sodas or sugary juice drinks. That’s a good idea for two reasons. It will raise money for health care. And it might lead consumers to drink healthier beverages.

Surprisingly, Fosco isn't opposed to such obvious social engineering through the tax code--after all, non-diet soda (and even, strangely enough, diet soda) are seriously damaging to public health. It's kinda like increasing taxes on cigarettes (which is also a good thing).

But, Fosco does have a problem calling such a move an "obesity tax." For one thing, it's more than a little misleading. After all, there are plenty of non-obesity-related health threats from the high-fructose corn syrup that is found in these beverages. In addition, the phrase "obesity tax" raises the possibility of future taxes and fees that are designed to single out obese people for punishment and ridicule. Once you start "taxing" obesity, eventually you're going to end up with world where fat people pay extra for basic health care, access to public space, and fundamental social services. And this is a problem.

So what if we stopped calling this an "obesity tax" and started calling it something more accurate: a diabetes-prevention tax. This would recognize the fact that, although obesity and diabetes are correlated, they are not the same thing (as Fosco's Uncle Dick--a life-long skinnybones and recent Type II diabetic--proves). I think that everyone can get behind a tax that tries to cut down on an expensive public health epidemic.

As for Fosco, he's been drinking sparkling mineral water in lieu of soda and fruit juice for three months now...

Incoherent Ravings of a Nazi (Not Tom Cruise!)

It's like that Paula Abdul reality show--Fosco knows he shouldn't pay attention, but he cannot look away. That's how he feels about the whole neo-Nazi cake imbroglio which is churning the blogosphere today (even here at Fosco Lives!). Obviously, it's just not reasonable to get upset and spill so much (virtual) ink whenever some white trash troglodyte does something half-witted. And yet, there is just something about this story that makes Fosco want to try to work through it (again and again...).

Well, things got even more inexplicable today as little Adolf Hitler's father spoke to the national press. Some highlights:

"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past."

"There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change."

"Yeah, they [the Nazis] were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They're not going to grow up like that."

"Other kids get their cake. I get a hard time. It's not fair to my children. How can a name be offensive?"

Maddening. I think it's pretty clear that this guy is not playing the same language game as the rest of us. I mean, there is absolutely no evidence of a semi-coherent worldview behind these statements. And by "semi-coherent worldview," I don't mean a logically-rigorous philosophy of life (who amongst us has that?); rather, I mean something more like an everyday understanding of reality. What is this guy? Some kind of schizophrenic? It's just so fascinating!

Quote of the Week: The Stanford Anus

Fosco doesn't always swoon for the cultural writing of critic Stanley Crouch, but he found a certain enjoyment in this passage from Crouch's piece on The Daily Beast:

Then there are men with the intelligence of Shelby Steele, who sits in a conservative think tank in the cultural and intellectual anus of the nation. Steele was surrounded by white people while writing that Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan had somehow "allowed" white people to feel free of their racism if they just embraced those outstanding individuals. Negro, please! I wonder if those white people who work with you and are your peers assume that they are not racists only because they know and like you. I hope it takes more than that.

The main thrill in this quote is the part where Crouch calls Stanford University the "cultural and intellectual anus of the nation." Teehee! It's funny because it's true.

"Admit you're wrong. Then we can talk."

Fosco was always a little suspicious of the previous Pope's zeal for "interreligious dialogue." Not that "interreligious dialogue" is a bad thing--Fosco heartily supports it, as long as it doesn't mean Catholics and Mormons teaming up to beat down the gays. Reasonable religious dialogue might be nice, actually. Heck, it could stop some killing. It's just that Fosco never believed that any "dialogue" is possible with a religion (like Catholicism) that axiomatically believes that every other faith is incorrect.

Of course, this was the problem that puzzled all the commentators when old Pope Droopy II used to hold all those Interfaith Clambakes. After all, how can the Pope talk to non-Christians when it is the Church's infallible teaching that Jesus alone leads to salvation and that other religions are "objectively speaking [...] in a gravely deficient situation" (emphasis in original).

Can you imagine the conversation?

[CATHOLIC CHURCH]: Do you believe in Jesus?
[ISLAM]: We are actually more interested in a God we call Allah.
[CATHOLIC CHURCH]: That is gravely deficient. Would you like a cannoli?

How's that for dialogue?

Well, as Pope Buckaroo XVI (pictured above) continues his sprightly little dance on the grave of Vatican II, it seems the idea of Catholic participation in "interreligious dialogue" has finally been admitted as a sham.

According to an article in the NYTimes, the Pope has written a letter to an author of a book on Christianity's salvific uniqueness, a letter in which

the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

I'm not sure the Pope needed to resort to tricky "theological terms" such as "in parentheses" to make his point here. The ground of any "dialogue" is the essential possibility that one's position may change when one listens to what the other person has to say. If you rule out that possibility from the start, there is no dialogue (rather, it's a double monologue or something--at any rate, it sounds exactly like Fosco's conversations with his father...).

In related news, Fosco would like a cannoli.

Bad Election Verbage [sic]

For those of us who care about words, it's time to dissect this interminable election. What are the worst words and phrases that you've heard during the campaign (from the media, from the candidates, from the voters)?

Glenn Greenwald kicks it off: the phrase "commander-in-chief" offends his progressive sympathies.

Fosco decided to make a list. And what better way to make a list than by using the Stephen Colbert "On Notice Board" Generator? Consider these phrases to be "On Notice" (i.e., Fosco never wants to hear any of them again--at least in connection to politics).

Join in, commenters!