"They just sic the attack dogs out there," complained US Representative Adam Smith about the campaign of US President George W. Bush. "I think it's kind of over-the-top relentless."Republicans returned fire, claiming that Senator John Kerry's blasts at the Bush administration were over the top (not hyphenated when not used as a compound adjective).
Over the top, derived from World War I trench-warfare usage, has replaced the similarly militaristic "way out of line" as a derogation of excess. "Out of control" has a nice imputation of madness but is losing popularity, and two sports terms, "out of bounds" (from basketball) and "over the line" (from tennis), are passe, though boxing's "below the belt" still evokes the metaphoric wince.
Of standard English adjectives, "extreme," which had a good run just before and after Barry Goldwater's 1964 "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," has lost much of its zing because of overuse. "Excessive" is bookish; "uncalled-for," "undue" and "unwarranted" are weak; "intemperate" is limited to judges and "inordinate" to demands. "Outrageous" and "unconscionable" sound suitably angry but are hard to spell.
Who frequents that over-the-top space? That brings us to attack dogs.
"Vice-presidential candidates serve as attack dogs," a Kerry adviser who wished not to be identified told the New York Times, adding this concern about Senator John Edwards in that role: "Our vice-presidential candidate was picked for his sunny optimism. He self-consciously eschewed negativity during his own campaign. Consequently, he doesn't make for the most effective attack dog."
The political use of this metaphor dates to 19th-century cartoons, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Center. The lexicographer David Barnhart writes in the National Post of Canada, "The term attack dog may have been influenced ... by attackman [1940] in such team sports as lacrosse."
The earliest use I can find is from a 1976 Washington Post article by Myra MacPherson: "Columnists were painting [Bo] Callaway as a sort of attack dog, with [President Gerald] Ford giving the orders."
What verb is used to induce an attack dog to do its thing? Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, was popped last month by a New York Times editorial for having "sicced federal agencies on runaway Democratic lawmakers." That is derived from the command "sic 'em!" which is a mongrelization of "seek them" and has appeared as, "He doesn't know sic'm from c'mere."
But the past tense presents a problem. Sicced, as used above, looks funny, but sicked (extending the "ic" with a "k" on the analogy of politicked) suggests "made ill." This is a verb best used in the present tense.
"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," a political operation disputing the Democratic candidate's Vietnam heroism, have been described as attack dogs financed by Bush partisans. Exemplifying the conflict of recollections in the "fog of war" (a rough translation of a coinage by Karl von Clausewitz) is this column's search for the origin of the term Swift boat.
Is it rooted in a hummingbirdlike bird called the swift? Or is it from the adjective swift, synonymous with fast? Or does the 50-foot US Navy patrol vessel bear a Pentagonian acronym?
In my initial exploration, I cited Tour of Duty, Douglas Brinkley's book about Lieutenant John Kerry's service in Vietnam. He wrote that the name was a Pentagon moniker for "shallow water inshore fast tactical craft." Brinkley informs me that his source was a 2002 book by Michael Kelley, Where We Were in Vietnam, and he supplied me with Kelley's useful glossary.
Is the source reliable? Kelley says: "I must have pulled it from something, probably an Internet site. Wherever I got it, I sure didn't make it up. It may be an informal acronym. Whether that was a formal acronym of the Navy, I don't know, but I don't think so." He says that the more formal initials were PCF, for "patrol craft, fast." (That is initialese, not an acronym forming a word.)
Thus the matter, clearly sourced by the historian Brinkley to an acceptable level, but without the original source, remains fuzzy, like so many conflicting memories of decades ago. Until a hard contemporaneous citation comes along, the Swift boat name remains "origin obscure."
Serendipitously, I discover in Michael Kelley's glossary a definition of a 1967 Super Gaggle as a "Special US Marine Corps tactic created to overcome voluminous and accurate ground and antiaircraft fire thrown at helicopters."
Since that time, gaggle -- without a prefix -- has come to mean "a small group of journalists gathered around a news source." The originator was probably Dee Dee Myers, press secretary to former president Bill Clinton early in his administration. She recalls, "People would mill around in the common area outside my office, and at some point in the first year I called it the gaggle, and then Dave Leavy kind of institutionalized it by referring to it to other staffers and the press as the gaggle."
Myers resolutely denies that her term was intended to compare reporters to a flock of geese. The collective gaggle was coined around 1470 as "A gagyll of ghees A gagyll of women," but the latter connotation seems no longer to apply. However, the new meaning of gaggle ties in to a newly popular prefix to suggest a fresh coinage.
The prefix super has had its day, just as Clark Kent's changing-room telephone booth has been made obsolete by cell phones; it has been trumped by hyper, then mega and now giga. Tomorrow we can expect a large gathering of reporters -- as at a presidential news teleconference linking the East Room to thousands of newsrooms around the world -- to be called a gigagaggle.
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