The GOP knock on Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee presumptive, is that he flip-flops. The senator's defenders counter that his stands are nuanced.
Thus, in one corner of the linguistic arena, we have a heavy-hitting onomatopoeic reduplication: flip-flap, cited in the 16th century as "they goe flip-flap in the winde," meaning to swing back and forth, and soon taken up by performers to describe a type of somersault, becoming flip-flop about a hundred years ago. In the opposite corner, wearing tricolor trunks, is nuance, rooted in the Latin for "cloud" and the French for "shade," meaning "a subtle variation in tone" or "delicate shading of meaning." According to Candy Crowley of CNN, US President George W. Bush once told her, "In Texas, we don't do nuance."
A New York Times headline about this stark vocabulary controversy sought absolute objectivity: "Kerry's Shifts: Nuanced Ideas or Flip-Flops?" As an example, David Halbfinger noted that Kerry recently told a group of Jewish leaders that Israel's building a barrier of separation was legitimate self-defense, "but in October, he told an Arab-American group that it was `provocative and counterproductive' and a `barrier to peace.'" On the other hand, the reporter noted the opinion of the candidate's aides that "Kerry's fluidity is the mark of an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process."
A Washington Post editorialist, under the thesauruslike headline "Flip-Flop, Hedge and Straddle," observed that "flip-flops aren't always bad; there's nothing to admire in politicians who never change their minds and never learn from experience" and noted that "his supporters can find a Bush flip for just about every Kerry flop."
They also say that "what sometimes looks like indecision reflects his devotion to thinking through a problem, to weighing every nuance."
The Kerry forces counterattacked with a charge spelled out in this headline in The New York Sun: "Democrats Seek to Portray Bush as Flip-Flopper." The lead: "Galled by the torrent of accusations that Senator Kerry of Massachusetts has repeatedly flip-flopped on critical issues ... Kerry's supporters are compiling lists of issues on which they believe the president has wavered or completely reversed himself."
Does the verb waver (akin to the verb waffle, from the Scottish waff, "gust of wind," and not related to the Dutch wafel, "cake baked on a grid") mean the same as the verb reverse, synonymous with flip-flop?
The Post editorialist found the difference to be subtle (one might say nuancal, an adjective coined by the secretary of state, Alexander Haig, in 1981): "Bush reversals differ from Kerry waffles. Mr. Bush seems to his detractors to change course with worrisomely little thought -- and to feel just as sure of himself in his new position as he was in his old ... Mr. Kerry has a similar problem for a different reason: It's not always clear what, if anything, he's committed to."
In the synonymy of slippery speech, to waffle, waver, oscillate, vacillate is "to swing back and forth between opinions." To hedge is "to avoid taking a position, or to take both sides simultaneously." To equivocate is closer to prevaricate, dissimulate, which mean "to obscure so as to deceive," or more plainly, "to lie," and to dither, hesitate, falter is "to be irresolute in action, unsteady in belief."
To flip-flop is "unabashedly to switch sides," but when done by a politician you support, it is called "changing one's mind to comport with the nuances of new circumstances." A neutral term is "to undergo a reversal of views." When engaged in by a politician you oppose, the verb tergiversate, pronounced with a soft g, is a choice favored by pedants, meaning "to switch sides like an apostate."
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"It is not true," said Kerry, asked by two New York Times reporters about the White House claim that the invasion of Iraq had caused Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to abandon his nuclear plans. "That deal was on the table several years ago .... No matter how much they bluster and futz, they can't fake it."
As an intransitive verb, futz is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as US slang for "to loaf, waste time, mess around." It was first recorded in print by the novelist James Farrell in his 1936 Studs Lonigan: "Studs kept futzing around until Helen Shire came out with her soccer ball." In the 1941 Budd Schulberg novel What Makes Sammy Run? the title character tells a budding playwright about his long-delayed play: "Don't futz around with it too long."
A week before the Kerry usage was reported, the New York Daily News music critic Howard Kissel quoted the soprano Arianna Zukerman about her intention to sing songs by Franz Schubert orchestrated by other composers: "You don't want to futz with Schubert songs ... They're so beautiful, so complete." Two days after the Kerry usage appeared, The Associated Press quoted Senator Joseph Bruno, Republican majority leader of the New York state Senate, complaining, "We've been futzing around for a week or longer, and we're still where we were."
What is the origin? Is it an alteration of the innocent fussing, or is it the sort of euphemism that got Senator Al D'Amato in trouble? Both the OED and Merriam-Webster rely on an article in the February 1943 American Speech quarterly: "Some American Idioms From the Yiddish," by Julius Rothenberg. The author defines the term as "idling about, kibitzing around, making a nuisance of oneself, consuming much time and accomplishing little." He notes that "futz has undergone an internal change to make it less obviously vulgar" and speculates that the "seemingly innocuous" expression is rooted in the Yiddish arumfartzen.
Why, at a moment when the Federal Communications Commission is threatening to fine broadcasters for the use of certain vulgar terms, did Republicans not get all het up over the Kerry usage? Perhaps because of this entry in J.E. Lighter's Historical Dictionary of American Slang: "1984 USA Today (Nov. 7) 3A: President Reagan ... [suggested] it is time to `stop this futzing around'"
And for today's column, so it is.
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