I don’t get it. If Laura Schlessinger says “I’m Laura Schlessinger,” she gets no flak for it; everyone takes it in stride. But if I say the very same thing, people act like I’ve uttered some huge falsehood. Why the double standard?
Tag Archives | Lapsus Linguae
Uoltajre!
Michael Johnson’s article “The Delightful Voltaire” (linked from LRC today) tells me something I never knew before about Voltaire – namely that he chose the name “Voltaire” as an anagram of “Arouet l.j.” (the “l.j.” standing for “le jeune”). Johnson calls it a “loose” anagram, but it’s actually quite exact, given the once-prevalent convention that I and J are interchangeable, as are U and V (a convention that made sense in a culture steeped in Latin).
Incidentally, in another article recently linked from LRC, Tim Black claims that “the attacks launched against religion by thinkers like John Locke or Voltaire were not targeted at its content – they were targeted at its form as part of the state.” This sentence is a bit ambiguous, since Locke and Voltaire were attacking particular religious institutions and doctrines, not “religion” as such – but they clearly thought that various widely held religious views were false and dangerous, and were definitely attacking these views and not solely their forcible imposition by government (though of course they attacked that too).
Seeing Like a State
I was just watching part of a Congressional presentation on C-Span honouring the slaves who built the u.s. capitol – not by making restitution to their heirs, of course, but by setting up some sort of plaque. What especially bugged me was the speakers’ continual references to expressing “thanks” and “gratitude” for the slaves’ “sacrifices” and “contributions.” If I take your wallet at gunpoint, it would be rather a euphemism to call your handing it over a sacrifice, and what I owe you is not gratitude. (Of course the language of sacrifice and gratitude is also used in connection with conscript soldiers shipped off to die in lands they’ve never heard of.)
Bobbing Along on the Beautiful Briny Sea
From the “you can’t make this stuff up” department:
[BP CEO Tony] Hayward took a break from overseeing the energy giant’s efforts to contain the undersea leak so he could watch his 52-foot yacht “Bob” participate in the J. P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race.
If you put that description in fiction people would say: “the J. P. Morgan reference is too much; your satire is too heavy-handed.”
Selective Responsibility?
Just saw Jack Conway (Rand Paul’s opponent) on Olbermann, explaining that he can woo conservative-leaning voters away from Paul because “I’m fiscally responsible in certain areas.” So which are those other areas where he’s fiscally irresponsible?
Apparently foot-in-mouth disease is rife on both sides of the aisle in the Kentucky senatorial race.
Wordgame
Okay, the main thing that caught my eye in this report is completely irrelevant to its topic. The first person to guess what silly thought crossed my mind wins what Stan Lee used to call a No-Prize.