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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Words: Port-manteau Words and Duffelbag Words

Thanks to my daughter for the article on Lincoln and Herndon yesterday.
She left a message threatening legal action unless I issue an attribution of source. Since she is a lawyer, this was no empty threat. I tried to suborn her with the befuddled old father routine, but she sneered and said she would begin the suit in Maryland and left me a toll-free number for the Public Defender.

She also asked, "Why Bush?", apparently since Mr. Bush appears in the title, but nowhere in the piece.

Why Bush, indeed, I have asked since the year 2000.

I just wanted to juxtapose a REAL president versus a mid-level corporate executive who pantomimes as a president:
Lincoln: intelligent and expresses himself as such;
Bush: dull, drab, and mundane.

I am not referring to his verbal bloopers. Everyone does that. I mean that he is extremely mediocre in expressing himself. He is cursed by the prevalence of Duffelbag Words ( words derived from Sports metaphors of not a particularly brilliant type) which are among the less discrete charms of the Booboisie.
HOWEVER, the ultimate blame must be layed to the people of America ( people of the USA, that is. Canadians always complain when I imply America is the sum totality of the hemisphere). It is the people themselves who have allowed conceptions of finality, such as "culmination", "climax", and "denouement" to be collapsed into the all-around sports duffelbag expression: 
it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings, 
or, better yet,
it ain't over 'til it's over!

It is the people themselves who abbreviate "recrimination" or "regret" or "review" into the sports duffelbag expression:  
Monday morning quarterbacking.
Or consider that the Secretary of State see fit to express not that victory was achieved at long last, rather that there was but a minute left on the clock!



Inspiration thanks to: H.L.Mencken
" College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity. "  
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/mencken.htm

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