Context Cluelessness

 “Certainly Mr. Trump’s fabled étourderie and his inability to staff a cabinet with qualified officials sympathetic to what was ostensibly his agenda are a part of the story.”

                    —“Biden’s First 100 Days Would Make Trump Jealous,” Matthew          Walther, New York Times, April 30, 2021.

For those of you who don’t speak/understand French [raises hand], Google Translate informs us that the fifth word in that sentence translates to “thoughtlessness.” Another translation site suggests “blundering,” which seems more apropos, given the former guy’s propensity for, well, blundering. The point of today’s entry, though, is not to comment on Donald Trump’s ineptitude, nor to discuss the finer points of translation, but rather to take issue with the writer and/or editor of the article in which the opening sentence appears.

Etourderie is not particularly common, not a foreign word or phrase that most moderately well-read English speakers (such as readers of the New York Times) would be familiar with. It’s no eclair or soupçon or joie de vivre.

And don’t get me wrong: I certainly don’t object to writers engaging in vocabularical calisthenics, whether by coining neologisms (like, I presume, vocabularical) or simply by reaching deep into their mental dictionaries to dazzle readers with sesquipedalian pyrotechnics. Indeed, I could argue that a writer has a responsibility to employ le mot juste in order not only to convey precise meaning but to offer the reader a bit of enlightenment. I, for one, now know what etourderie means—though I’m no closer to knowing how to pronounce it—and this piece of knowledge has now taken its place in my mental universe.

(Unfortunately, since I no longer have the capacity to add information to my store of knowledge without removing some equally large piece of information, I no longer know what “crepuscular” means. DON’T TELL ME! I’m trying to hold on to etourderie at least through the end of this afternoon, when the light starts to become. . . something.)

The point, here, is that, when a writer deploys an unfamiliar word, fulfilling the responsibility to enlighten the reader comes with an additional responsibility of providing sufficient context for the reader to figure out the meaning. In this case, in an article describing how President Biden’s actions have occasionally been indistinguishable from what one might have expected from his predecessor, and in a sentence describing some of Trump’s shortcomings, one could guess that etourderie had a negative connotation. But any number of English words or phrases could be plugged into that sentence with apparently equal effectiveness: bigotry, racism, self-aggrandizement, narcissism, thin-skin, megalomania. . .

(DIGRESSION: Donald Trump is a truly horrible and worthless piece of human garbage, isn’t he? EOD)

Using big words for their own sake is not great writing. It’s just rude.

Also, for the record, there’s nothing “fabled” about Trump’s etourderie: The man is unarguably a blundering moron.

Why Is This News?

I just read this article--front-page, top right corner of The New York Times--reporting that former representative Dennis Hastert (R-Ill), who served as speaker of the house for much of the early 2000's, has been indicted over activities designed to hide past "misconduct"--the word placed in ominous quotation marks right in the headline.

Now, today's title notwithstanding, I understand why this merits press coverage: Hastert is (or at any rate, was) a prominent public figure, apparently the longest-serving Republican speaker ever.  In that sense, any major events in his life merit some public scrutiny--in the same way that a Kardashian wearing a tacky dress apparently merits scrutiny.  But front-page, above-the-fold coverage in the national paper of record?  Even if Hastert is ultimately found guilty, his "crimes" hardly seem worthy of such blaring coverage.

The crimes themselves sound pretty bad: Lying to federal investigators and engaging in shady banking practices.  But the shady practices themselves seem to be that he withdrew money from bank accounts--apparently, his own bank accounts--in amounts that were designed to evade bank-reporting requirements.  He was giving the money to an unspecified person to compensate for unidentified instances of "past misconduct": In other words, it sounds like he was a naughty boy in the past and was now paying someone off to keep his naughtiness quiet.  When his banking patterns did draw the attention of regulators, and Hastert was subsequently questioned by the FBI, he denied paying anybody and claimed that he was just holding onto the cash himself because he had lost faith in the nation's banking system.  (And, heck, the way Congress operates, who wouldn't believe such an excuse?)

So, OK, if he did everything he's being accused of, he did break some laws.  But in the annals of criminal justice, his crimes hardly rise to Dillinger-esque proportions: He used his own money, to pay off someone for something he did, long after he was no longer involved in government, and--presumably out of embarrassment, he tried to hide the fact that he was making these payments.  He should certainly face punishment, but unless there is substantially more to this story than we're hearing so far, I imagine that punishment will probably amount to little more than some fines--and of course the suffering of the shame that he had tried so hard to avoid.

At the risk of sounding like a Fox News enthusiast, though, the "liberal" New York Times' trumpeting of this story from its most-prominent platform, makes me wonder if the editors are engaging in their own inappropriate glee at the downfall of a prominent Republican.  Not that I don't enjoy that as well, but I could wish for the Times to tone down its Schadenfreude.

Couldn't Have Said It Better Myself

The headline on the online version of The New York Times reads, "Stressing Youth, Marco Rubio Joins 2016 Presidential Field."

I don't know about the youth of America, but it certainly stresses me.

Page Three Comes to Page One

Generally speaking--or, heck, specifically speaking--I have no objection to female nudity.  A day that includes unexpected glimpses of naked women can never be considered an entirely wasted day.  Nevertheless, I was shocked--shocked!--today when I surfed over to The New York Times website and found--on the front page--a breast!  A breast adorned with the Star of David, no less!  Had the Times decided to amp up circulation by, ahem, amping up its readers' circulation?

Well, no.  Or probably not.  The story behind the breast reported on Israeli efforts to encourage more women to undergo screening for a gene that greatly increases the risk of contracting breast cancer.  One could argue, therefore, that the picture was meant simply to illustrate and not to titillate.  But is that the case?  Here's the picture:

 

On the one hand, it's an arresting image, what with the Mogen David and the surgical scar; indeed, I assume the scar is what captured the photographer's fancy.  On the other hand, the picture also features prominently--provocatively--a nipple.  A nipple!  And thus crosses one of the red lines of "indecency" with which we're all familiar (just ask Janet Jackson).  It was clearly intentional, too; otherwise, the photographer could simply have asked the model to pull her shirt up another half inch, right?

Why female nipples are considered such hot buttons (ahem) remains a mystery to me, but there it is.  And so when the editors chose this image for the front page, they obviously knew they were choosing a picture that some people would consider--on some level--"indecent."  Maybe not Page Three of the Daily Sun "indecent," but "indecent" nonetheless.

Does this image herald a new, bustier age in mainstream journalism?  One can only hope.

What Shall It Profit a Newspaper If It Shall Gain Multiple Pulitzer Prizes, and Lose a Subscriber?

When I wake up on Sunday mornings and ponder whether to get up or burrow back under the covers, what pushes me toward the former is the thought of my New York Times, neatly folded in its blue plastic wrapper, waiting for me down on my doorstep.  As I wrestle out of bed--into which I often find myself stapled by a bevy of cats weighing down the corners of my blanket--I eagerly anticipate pouring myself a cup of coffee and separating the Times' sections for the day's reading: first sports, then the front page, then the Sunday Review, and, time permitting, Arts and Leisure.  Ah, Sundays!

All of which is to say, when I open the door and do not see the familiar blue wrapper, I feel more than a little peeved!  And so I have felt for roughly the last four weeks!  For some reason, the paper has not been delivered, and I am reduced to reading the paper off of my computer screen like an animal!

In the grand scheme of things, I realize this hardly qualifies as a tragedy.  Indeed, I come out ahead on the deal: I get a credit for the undelivered paper, but, as a subscriber in good standing, I have access to the online edition--access for which I am effectively not paying, as I keep getting credits for undelivered papers.  Still, the little rituals of life can be among life's greatest pleasures.  And the small deprivation of an undelivered Sunday paper starts the week off on a sour note.