"Support for Kerry-Edwards Surges Across the Country" read a July press release from the US Democratic campaign headquarters. US President George W. Bush also likes the urgent verb; he told a veterans' convention in August of his plans to move troops to new locations outside Europe, "so they can surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats." This military usage has become a favorite at the Pentagon; Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, wrote in The Washington Post about troops "that can be `surged' in quickly."
The verb is rooted in the Latin surgere, "to rise"; its primary sense is "to billow suddenly and with great force, as in a great wave." In political lingo, this fast swelling of support fits in nicely with other metaphors of natural disaster, like avalanche, tidal wave and landslide.
A surge is not a bounce. In politics, a bounce is a rise in poll ratings after an event like a convention, which is usually followed by a decline; implicit in the description of a rise as a bounce is the expectation of its temporary nature; what bounces up must come down. A surge, however, can stay up, or even surge further. Thus, when the Bush ratings rose after the GOP's New York convention this year, the Republicans hailed it a surge while the Democrats dismissed it as a mere bounce.
Bounces and surges can both come as a result of negative attacks. Every right-thinking goo-goo (an 1890s derogation of self-proclaimed proponents of "good government") abhors negative attacks, which have surged in the 2004 presidential campaign, especially regarding the candidates' military service in the Vietnam era.
"Our present leadership," said Senator John Kerry, "has given us the old politics of false and simplistic negative attacks." The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, countered with "The president has been on the receiving end of more than $63 million in negative attacks."
"The media have made it a truism," writes Gerald Parshall of McLean, Virginia, "that undecided voters hate negative attacks. But when was the last time a politician made a positive attack on an opponent? And yet campaigners of every stripe persist in attaching the adjective `negative' to the word attack as if to distinguish `negative attacks' from some other kind."
He suspects that this serves as "a semiliterate intensifier in the same way that television episodes are never merely `new' but always `all new.'"
If elected (belay that -- no candidate stoops to the conditional these days). When I am elected Usage Emperor, I give you my solemn oath within 10 minutes after taking office (formerly "I promise") to banish all redundant negative attacks, replacing them with grammatically unassailable savage attacks, unprincipled attacks and sneaky attacks.
BENCHMANSHIP
"You can see what kind of a deep bench the Republican Party has," said an NPR analyst about the parade of political celebrities during the GOP convention.
"We are now rushing to add new managers," Toyota's president, Fujio Cho, told a Michigan audience last month, "in sports terminology, you could say we have a short bench."
The depth and length of benches is a metaphor gaining momentum throughout the English-speaking world. I think it got to first base in baseball.
"A deep bench means you've got a lot of good substitute players who can come into the game," says my colleague Jay Schreiber in the New York Times sports department. "With talented backup players sitting on the bench in the dugout or on the sidelines, a team has a real safety net."
The opposite is not a shallow bench, as one might logically presume, but a short bench. This usually means that the coach or manager has few reliable substitutes in reserve, and is a negative. But in basketball, it can also mean that the coach chooses to play his best seven or eight players game after game -- shortening his bench, going with his best reserves to give each nonstarter more playing time.
In Britain, I suppose, a small minority in Parliament would call itself a short back bench.
CHOP-CHOP CHANGE
Here is how the English language grows: The verb chop -- possibly from the Dutch kappen, "to cut with a blow" -- cried out for an adverbial extension to make the action specific. In the 15th century, that need for an adverb led to "I shall choppe of his heade," expressed by Shakespeare in 1593 as "Chop away that factious pate of his" and later chop through, chop into, chop down.
While this was developing in English, the Hindi word chhap, which meant "brand, stamp, seal," was being carried by European traders to China. There, a chop denoted the official seal on a license or permit; to traders, a first chop meant high rank or top quality, and no chop meant "no class." The custom house where duties were levied on transient goods was a chop-house, where approving officials put their chop on the goods.
Meanwhile, in American English, the verb to sign also acquired an adverbial extension. Just as sign on specified "to volunteer," the doubly extended sign off on specified "to approve." And now we come to the most recent breakthrough: a marriage of the Hindi-Chinese chop and the English (sign) off on.
At a hearing last week of the Senate Governmental Affairs committee, Secretary of State Colin Powell was answering questions from Senator Carl Levin about meetings with top CIA officials just before his historic prewar presentation of the American position before the UN.
"The CIA chopped off or concurred in everything that I said," Powell testified, using "concurred" to define the phrase. Moments later, in emphasizing that point, he said, "The CIA had chopped off on it and had chopped off on those two points for several days before my presentation."
That would have been understood clearly by Hindi speakers of six centuries past, and by Marco Polo on his trek for Asian spices in old China. By making its metaphoric chop, and by doing it off on what it considered the validity of the intelligence, the CIA had placed its seal of approval on what the diplomat was about to present.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations