US Vice President Cheney minced no words recently when he vulgarly proposed that Senator Patrick Leahy do something impossible to himself. Most US newspaper editors, however, wary of offending public sensibilities, chose not to repeat his verb and called it instead "the F-word." By so doing, they called attention to their vigilance against dirty words and also to a word weed spreading through the language like dandelions.
The -- word: This usage probably began as a coy way to avoid obscenities and delete expletives. Garry Trudeau described the main ones in a Doonesbury comic strip last month in which a Cheney voice announces that "I not only intend to use the F-word from now on, I'm also using the S-word, the C-word, the P-word and the J-word," leaving readers to wonder what curse the J-word might euphemize.
This usage -- I call it letteracy -- is hardly limited to dirty words. It has effloresced since 1988, when the usual proprietor of this space commented on three geopolitical examples: "the D-word" for detente; T for taxes; and U for unemployment. "This vogue will probably peter out in a few years," he wrote, "after we go through the alphabet and begin to get confused about what a given letter is supposed to signify."
William Safire was half-prescient. We have, indeed, gone through the alphabet, and what a given letter signifies is often confusing. Yet there is no sign that letteracy is petering out. Here's a glossary of examples.
A -- This may be the granddaddy of letteracy, the Scarlet Letter for adultery. B -- Budget. Biodiversity. C -- Cancer. Cellulite. Class. D -- Detente. Dinosaur. Deficit. E -- Elite. New York Times columnist Barbara Ehrenreich commented on conservatives' promoting the idea of "a sinister, pseudocompassionate liberal elite. ... Note how richly the E-word embellishes the screeds of Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and their co-ideologues." Also: Euphemism. Electronic.
F -- The Cheney F-word episode recalls a moment in 1976 when the New York Times Magazine published a campaign profile of Jimmy Carter by Norman Mailer. Carter had just created a stir by acknowledging that, hardly perfect, he had experienced lust in his heart. Explaining himself, Carter disclaimed making moral judgments about others, saying, "I don't care if people say -- ." In his manuscript, Mailer insisted on spelling out the F-word. After some discussion, here is how he agreed to finish the sentence: "... and he actually said the famous four-letter word that the Times has not printed in the 125 years of its publishing life."
G -- God. Genocide. H -- Horror. Husband. Hostages. Halliburton.
J -- Jews. K -- Kashmir. L -- After Michael Dukakis lost the 1988 election, "the L-word" was widely and sarcastically used to signify liberal. Today the term is known as the title of Showtime's television drama about lesbians. Also: Landslide. M -- Marriage, as in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision last February enabling single-sex unions. In her dissent, Justice Martha Sosman described the controversy as "a pitched battle over who gets to use the `M' word." Also: Math. Malaise.
N -- By far the most common usage of the N-word is to avoid repeating the hateful corruption of the word "Negro" when used by non-blacks. O -- Oil. Organic. Orphanages. P -- Posture. Productivity. Process. Q -- Quagmire. Quality. Quiet. R -- Recession. Revolution. S -- Sustainability. Socialism. Socialization. T -- Terrorism. Torture. U -- Unions. Unilateralism. Uranium.
V -- Values. As the 2004 campaign ripened, this became the buzzword of both the Bush and the Kerry campaigns, so much so that in July the New York Times reported that "Mr. Kerry used the V-word no fewer than eight times in a 36-minute speech." Also: Vouchers. Volunteers. Vagina. W -- Welfare. Wedding. Wilderness.
All told, that's 54 examples of letteracy, encompassing 22 letters of the alphabet, and there are surely many more. No matter how many, by now they all boil down to a single C-word: cliche.
SEE THE DOG
With the Republicans gathering in New York to formally nominate their candidates this week, political speculation next turns to potential Cabinet appointees. Before filling the Cabinet jobs, however, the first requirement is to remember them all
For decades, a brief mnemonic described the departments, and followed their order of creation: St. Wapniacl. That is, State, Treasury, War, Post Office, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Labor. In the last half-century, however, the roster of Cabinet departments has been transformed with the combination of War and Navy into Defense, the transmutation of the Post Office into the Postal Service and the addition of three departments whose names start with H, two with E, plus a T and a V.
The present Cabinet consists of 15 departments, plus other officials designated from time to time by one president but not necessarily another, like the US representative to the UN, or the US trade representative. In order of creation: 1789, State, Treasury, War, Attorney General (the Department of Justice was created in 1870), Post Office. 1798, Navy. 1849, Interior. 1862, Agriculture. 1913, Commerce, Labor. 1949, Defense (merging War and Navy and adding Air Force). 1953, Health, Education and Welfare (becoming Health and Human Services when the Department of Education was created in 1979). 1965, Housing and Urban Development. 1966, Transportation. 1970, Post Office Department converted to independent Postal Service. 1977, Energy. 1979, Education. 1988, Veterans Affairs. 2003, Homeland Security.
The addition of the Department of Homeland Security makes a new mnemonic all the more necessary. Here's one first proposed on the New York Times editorial page in 1988 and later revised: See The Dog Jump In A Circle; Leave Her House To Entertain Educated Veterans' Homes.
In the event of a war with China, Taiwan has some surprisingly tough defenses that could make it as difficult to tackle as a porcupine: A shoreline dotted with swamps, rocks and concrete barriers; conscription for all adult men; highways and airports that are built to double as hardened combat facilities. This porcupine has a soft underbelly, though, and the war in Iran is exposing it: energy. About 39,000 ships dock at Taiwan’s ports each year, more than the 30,000 that transit the Strait of Hormuz. About one-fifth of their inbound tonnage is coal, oil, refined fuels and liquefied natural gas (LNG),
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
To counter the CCP’s escalating threats, Taiwan must build a national consensus and demonstrate the capability and the will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) often leans on a seductive mantra to soften its threats, such as “Chinese do not kill Chinese.” The slogan is designed to frame territorial conquest (annexation) as a domestic family matter. A look at the historical ledger reveals a different truth. For the CCP, being labeled “family” has never been a guarantee of safety; it has been the primary prerequisite for state-sanctioned slaughter. From the forced starvation of 150,000 civilians at the Siege of Changchun
The two major opposition parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), jointly announced on Tuesday last week that former TPP lawmaker Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) would be their joint candidate for Chiayi mayor, following polling conducted earlier this month. It is the first case of blue-white (KMT-TPP) cooperation in selecting a joint candidate under an agreement signed by their chairpersons last month. KMT and TPP supporters have blamed their 2024 presidential election loss on failing to decide on a joint candidate, which ended in a dramatic breakdown with participants pointing fingers, calling polls unfair, sobbing and walking
RSS