Then the “blizzard conditions” arrived, on top of the snow that had fallen so recently, on top of what we’d already shoveled into rather large piles, and things threatened to become interesting again.

Drifts. Now that’s something I miss here in DC. It’s happened a couple of times since I’ve been here, and it’s happening now. The snow is still arriving pretty much horizontally, although the end of the precipitation is supposedly in sight. The winds, however, will continue, if we are to believe the weather mavens (and they’ve been pretty accurate this year).

I know, it’s trite to talk about the weather so much. So here’s a picture of a bird hiding under our back deck during the onslaught today:

For all I know, the sparrows are still hunkering down in the bush by the front porch (two of them flew out Monday while I was talking across it with a neighbor, me down on the ground, he on his porch—he didn’t even notice).

Almost time to start shoveling again …
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*I refuse to call it Snowmageddon, or Snowpocalypse, or Blizzacane, or whatever everybody’s calling it. Good grief, as if.

And today: Jeff Greenfield on the American preference for presidents with unchallenging (i.e., bland, preferably mono- or bisyllabic Anglo-Saxon) last names. Could a George W. Dukakis ever have been elected? George W. Kucinich (or Voinovich)? George W. Deukmejian? A “nation of immigrants”—yeah, so what?

Addendum 2008.10.31: “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama” (posted to YouTube in February ’08) [h/t to Thomas N.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Okay, it wasn’t a fistfight—he had shouting match with Eric Alterman, author of Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, during the Q&A at a book signing.

Okay, okay, the exchange wasn’t heated (as far as I know—I wasn’t there). Thomas merely asked Alterman a tough follow-up question. And Alterman continued to dismiss the impeachment of Bush and Cheney as not only politically stupid but a kind of “moral vanity.”

Alterman is wrong, of course, and Thomas is absolutely right. Bush and Cheney deserve to be impeached. Not only have they repeatedly broken the law, they have easily satisfied the lower standards that make offenses impeachable (i.e., significant and harmful political “misdemeanors”). But I think Thomas is wrong to frame it in the context of “liberalism”—viz., that Alterman as a putative “liberal” should, ipso facto, support impeachment. In fact, it is perhaps the highest form of conservatism to insist that the president of the United States is not above the law, and to seek removal when the laws, and the lawful prerogatives of Congress, are flouted by the executive branch. In this regard, I am conservative, despite my radicalism on other issues.

How diseased is modern American conservatism? One need look no further than its acceptance of a president who has arrogated kingly authority over the legislature, private enterprise,* and the public. Not long ago this same segment of the American polity sullied the Constitution with the tawdry, basely motivated and totally unjustified impeachment of Bill Clinton. These “conservatives” have poisoned political life in this country to the extent that a population that actually wants impeachment hearings calmly accepts inaction from their elected representatives. Yes, the majority wants impeachment, but not enough to insist on it. Is this because of sour memories of the nineties? Is it because they know the Democrats aren’t powerful enough to pull it off on their own? Maybe it’s because they watch TV. And read Eric Alterman. (Whose work I generally admire, by the way.)

The impeachment drive against Richard Nixon owed its success to the fact that many members of his own party were disgusted by his criminal behavior and put the political health of the republic above their narrow personal loyalties. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was almost risibly partisan, as well it should have been—it was garbage from the outset and should have gone nowhere. The fact that it almost succeeded says something about not only the debased state of American politics but also the concentrated power of the increasingly univocal, commercially prostituted mainstream media.

Again, the impeachment of Bush and Cheney goes nowhere because politics in this country is currently too sick to manage it. The Democrats are apparently convinced they will soon deal a death blow to the stumbling, stammering, bleeding creature that is Goldwater–Reagan–Gingrich–DeLay–Bush/Cheney “conservatism.” That is apparently one reason they choose not to do the constitutionally proper thing and impeach the president and vice president. They are also mindful of the fact that, although they constitute a majority in both chambers of Congress, they are not a “supermajority,” which makes them susceptible to an unprecedented level of obstruction by the dead-enders in the Republican minority. And although they would be fully justified in beginning impeachment hearings, they would be attacked relentlessly by the news corporations that continue to lick the feet of the Bush/Cheney cabal. (Not that the press should turn around and lick the Democrats’ feet. It would be sufficient if the “news” would simply convey factual, uninflected coverage of the issues that really matter to its consumers, not oligarchic and plutocratic spin.) And so the Democrats wait.

A Democratic president and a stronger Democratic majority in Congress could, if it mustered the will, find many ways to redress the imbalance that has developed between the executive and legislative branches, to identify and root out odious practices in federal agencies, and even to punish some wrongdoers. Will they? Much will depend on the conservatism that emerges from the decayed corpse of its current avatar—a Frankenstein monster of money, know-nothingism, and self-righteousness.

The truly shocking thing about the lawlessness we are living through is how few self-described conservatives have spoken out in favor of the proper constitutional corrective of impeachment. Bruce Fein has been one. Mickey Edwards has been another. This country needs a lot more than that. And until a truly conservative conservatism is reborn in this country, and the radical elevation of untrammeled, secretive, fear-mongering executive authority is universally rejected, Thomas and the rest of us are going to be very frustrated indeed. Impeachment is not a liberal thing. It needs conservatives to work.
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*E.g., illegally pressuring telecoms to hand over phone records. Of course, there’s a quid for every quo: on balance, Bush/Cheney has been very good for corporate America—and anyone, for that matter, who already has it made. [back]

I always imagined fifteen guys stomping up and down on some poor guy’s chest. Maybe I’m the only one—I never really checked with anyone else. Well, today I came across this translation at a Russian blog: пятнадцать человек на сундук мертвеца, which back-translates nicely to “fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,” but here the chest is a wooden thing you put stuff in, not the place where you breathe in and out (while you’re alive, anyway).

That certainly makes more sense. Still a tight fit, but more reasonable than fifteen pirates standing cheek-to-jowl on any person, prone or upright, living or dead. So, is that the correct interpretation?

Google to the rescue once again. Using the entire phrase as input, I found this:

Dead Man’s Chest is a tiny island that forms part of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Pirate legends of the Caribbean claim that the notorious pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard) marooned 15 of his pirate crew on “Dead Man’s Chest” as a punishment for their mutiny and desertion.

Can I trust this source? Let’s Google “virgin islands” + “dead man’s chest” … voilà: a nice Wikipedia article about Dead Chest Island. Apparently the name got shortened in the intervening years. At any rate, if you look at the photo of the island, you might imagine the thoracic cavity of a dead man floating in the water—if you have a particularly morbid turn of mind. So it would seem I was right all along. It’s just that the chest was metaphorical, and a whole lot bigger.

But wait! There’s an island south of Puerto Rico called Isla de Caja de Muertos—Caja de Muertos for short, which can be rendered in English as “Coffin of Dead Men” or “Dead Men’s Chest.” A wooden thing again! And really—why do I think I see an anatomical chest in the Virgin Islands and not a treasure chest (or chest of drawers, for that matter)? Round and round we go—maybe the Russian translator got it right.

I really thought the blogger had cleared up a problem I never even knew I had. Но, увы …

A while back the online magazine Smith presented a six-word “story” by Ernest Hemingway:

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

A remarkably concise tale indeed—pathos concretized pithily. Smith invited its readers to go mano-a-mano with Papa, and six-word memoirs from its readers came pouring in. The best were culled, and a book was born: Not Quite What I Was Planning, now available from your neighborhood bookseller.

Here are a few examples from the Amazon blurb:

• Found true love, married someone else.
• After Harvard, had baby with crackhead.

A few more from the Smith site:

• This place is getting borderline crowded.
• Married with children (and second thoughts).
• Brush with Death; Comb with Life.
• Interrupted invisible burnings always bright beneath.
• I grew into an abusive child.

I’m trying hard to like these things. Some are clever, but something is bugging me. Maybe it’s the preponderance of abstract words. Or maybe it’s the syntax—too many words need to be supplied by the reader. Is that what makes them start to sound like snippets from the personal ads, or telegrams? Maybe six words is six words too few. Maybe twelve is really the lower limit for a reasonable intellectual or emotional payoff. Even then, what we get might be more like an aphorism or witticism than a “memoir” or “story.”

I think Hemingway’s sixer was pretty darn good (even though it, too, reads like a classified ad). I don’t know if I’ll seek out more.

Addendum 2008.03.02: Last week Salon got into the act. The results to date are not encouraging.

Turns out it’s a beer with a higher-than-normal alcohol content. Some set the bar at 9%, and Bell’s Sparkling Ale is advertised at just that.

So now you enter 2008 knowing that, too, whether you care or not. Happy New Year!

[Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E.] Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.

“I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: ,” wrote Fahlman. “Read it sideways.”

And it caught on like wildfire. Remarkable that we can trace it back to this point. (Or maybe this story will roust a prior inventor out of obscurity.)

The idea of “mentoring” came, of course, from the mythic Greek figure Mentor. I grew up in a town called Mentor, so I suppose I have a personal interest in this matter. But even if I didn’t, I’d be nauseated by the back-formation mentee. Mentoree is awkward, but it’s English. Mentee is … crap. (I think James A. Garfield, scholar and president, pride of Mentor, would have agreed.)

Months before this book went into production, I was tangentially involved in a website devoted to so-called e-mentoring. The education professionals behind this were talking about mentors and mentees, and I tried to get them to accept an alternative: the mentored, or mentorees, or beginners, or simply new teachers.* I would have loved to have them introduce the term tyro, because a mentor–tyro relationship is exactly what they’re talking about, but that was hoping for too much. I lost. And, I fear, the English language has lost. Mentee is worse than crap. It is poison. It teaches you that you can do whatever you want to English and no one will care.

“Oh, but there’s a logic to it,” someone will say. Of course there’s a logic to it! It was coined by “science types.” It’s not a matter of logic. The lunatic asylums are full of impeccable logic. It’s a matter of history. It has to do with remembering where things came from and where we came from. Some of the smartest people I work with don’t care much for history—don’t care much about history. They are obsessed with novelty, and so with neologisms. Just like the rankest marketer. Sad, but true. I hope you’re accustomed to being a marketee by now.

To help me keep my sanity when I’m at the office, I hereby resolve to refer to recipients of sage guidance as manatees.

Manatees being mentored at the bottom of the ocean.
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*Or how about “protege”? Today (2007.09.15) I discovered a thread at the Volokh Conspiracy, predating mine by a fortnight or so, that revolved around using this word in pairings with “mentor” (as a viable, at-hand alternative to “mentee”).

Q. When I began learning English grammar from the nuns in 1951, I was taught never to use a comma either before or after independent clauses or compound sentences. Did the rules of English grammar and punctuation change while I was in that three-week coma in 1965, or in the years that it took to regain my basic and intellectual functioning before I returned to teaching?

A. I’m sorry, I can’t account for your state of mind, but standard punctuation calls for a comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses unless the clauses are very short. I would go further and suggest that it’s a good idea to reexamine any rule you were taught that includes the word “never” or “always.”

Q. Is there an acceptable way to form the possessive of words such as Macy’s and Sotheby’s? Sometimes rewording to avoid the possessive results in less felicitous writing.

A. Less felicitous than “Sotheby’s's”? I don’t think so.

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*Do not bother to tell me it should be “as they say.” Tell me anything else, but not that.

Q. The menu in our cafeteria shows that enchiladas are available “Tues.–Fri.” When I ordered one on a Wednesday, I was told that enchiladas are available on Tuesday and Friday, not Tuesday through Friday. When I informed the cafeteria manager that this was incorrect, she seemed shocked and refused to change the sign. Please help determine who is correct.

A. Although the sign was incorrect, I’m not sure you should annoy the person who provides the enchiladas.

Q. Is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that includes an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parentheses? Should I incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parentheses (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case : - ); simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a double-chin effect : - ) ); or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (some emoticons are similar : - D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?

A. Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve posed in this note give us added incentive to keep our distance.

Q. My friend and I were looking at a poster that read “guys apartment.” I believe it should read “guys’ apartment.” She claims that it should read “guys’s apartment” and that the CMOS specifically gives the example of “guys’s” to make “guys” possessive. I looked through every section on possessives and did not find the word “guys’s” or any rule that would make this correct.

A. “Guys’s” is acceptable in the way that “youse guys” is acceptable; that is, neither is yet recognized as standard prose, and if your friend can find it in CMOS, I’ll eat my hat. And shame on your friend. It must make you wonder what else she’s capable of.

Q. O English-language gurus, is it ever proper to put a question mark and an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence in formal writing? An author is giving me a fit with some of her overkill emphases, and now there is a sentence that has both marks at the end. My gratitude for letting me know what I should tell this person.

A. In formal writing, we allow both marks only in the event that the author was being physically assaulted while writing. Otherwise, no.

And here’s one I found on my own (and it took a lot of work, believe me):

Q. As an editor of regulatory documents, I routinely come across sentences in which the subject is an inanimate object but the verb denotes something only a person can do. Examples are “this document analyzes the hazards” and “the analysis considers the environmental impacts.” Does this type of thing have a name? Inappropriate anthropomorphism or personification? Is there a rule I can cite when explaining to the author why I have suggested rewording the sentence?

A. Why reword it? Documents do analyze and present and consider. They discuss and bemoan and mangle and make mockeries of things. There’s no rule that restricts writers to using the literal meanings of words. If it gets to the point where the documents are ordering in pizza, consider rewording.

Isn’t it refreshing how flexible these folks are? You read CMOS and it feels like a 700-page straitjacket. I remember feeling a pang when I first allowed such constructions as those quoted above to pass, but a copyeditor won’t last long without a cheerful willingness to bend even one’s own most cherished rule.