AT
LARGE
Tidying up
March 31, 2005
By
Doug Cabral
Bloodsport
Do you know who Mister Whiskers is? Have you ever composed a memcon?
(Hint: I'll bet there were occasions when you wished that you had.)
Are you practiced in the art of the prebuttal? In the U.S. government,
what's the Fudge Factory? Who rides in the zoo plane?
You don't have a clue? Sad. And you consider yourself politically
with it.
What you need is “Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary
of American Political Slang,” edited by Grant Barrett(Oxford
University Press, New York, 302 pp., 2004). Mary Matalin and James
Carville, who will take their own places in some future taxonomy
of political hatchet jobs, composed the introduction.
It's fun, and it's enlightening, particularly so because it reminds
one that not much is new under the sun, or in politics. For instance,
young turks are described as having been named after the Ottomans
in the early 20th century who tried “to rejuvenate and Europeanize
the Turkish empire.” (They had some success, but failed to
go on to establish much of a beachhead in the Middle East.) We know
them now as “young or new members (of an organization) impatient
for radical or fast change.” First appearance was in the Aug.
4 Daily News of 1908.
Or, ever hear of a young scratcher. He's “a Republican in the
1880 presidential campaign opposed to old-guard 'machine' politics.”
The young scratchers have become the ageless scratchers, I suppose.
No one, Republican or Democrat, seems to mind machine politics anymore,
except before they're admitted to the machine.
Incidentally, hatchet jobs and the hatchet men who do the work have
been around since before the end of the 19th Century, according
to the Jan. 28, 1898 Fresno Bee. The Swift Boat Veterans didn't
invent them.
Interestingly, many - maybe most - of the terms included in Hatchet
Jobs and Hardball appeared first in newspapers. Further testimony
to the vitality and importance of the press, covering politics and
government and calling it by name.
Marine Report
Tora Johnson teaches human ecology and geographic information science
at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Before taking up
this exalted work, Tora wrote the twice-monthly Marine Report for
The Times, covering the waterfront, so to speak, and focusing on
the marine world's human denizens. During much of her tenure as
the marine reporter, Tora lived with her husband and young son aboard
their sailboat in Vineyard Haven. She was an adjunct faculty member
at Cape Cod Community College (CCCC) at the time. This month, Tora
published “Entanglements: The Intertwined Fates of Whales and
Fishermen” (University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 312 pp.,
2005).
The book, handsomely illustrated and carefully researched, explores
the centuries-long struggles between fishermen, scientists, and
environmentalists over the North Atlantic right whale. In particular,
Ms. Johnson examines in a measured and understanding way the conflict
between those whose livelihoods and cultures lead them to use and
abuse whales and those who would preserve the right whale, whose
population of just a few hundred may be approaching extinction.
In general, it is a story whose corollary may be found in similar
clashes across the globe between man's use of natural resources
and mankind's responsibility for conserving those same resources.
Ms. Johnson will speak about her book, and sign copies of it, at
CCCC's Lecture Hall A, on April 15, at 6:30 pm.
No joke
We're thinking there may have been some non-traditional forces at
work. A copy of The Times mailed to a subscriber in San Miguel De
Allende, Mexico a year ago did not reach its destination. Unlike
those purposeful American merrymakers who know just where they are
going south of the border, and unlike those determined Mexican workers
who travel north to where the good jobs are, this edition of The
Times kicked around official Mexico until last month before its
fate was sealed, in the form of two pale blue stamps pointing to
the return address and imprinted with the word “devolucion”
- return to sender. We checked to see if this particular edition
of the newspaper deserved such treatment, and we concluded that,
yes, perhaps it did. It was the April 1, 2004 edition, the April
Fool's edition of last year that hoodwinked a bunch of our readers.
Obviously, the Mexican postal authorities were having none of it.
|
