As the new year begins, I think of words. I teach college students writing, so I get a lot of words tossed at me. This is my chance to toss them back.
Some words begin to drill into my head, sometimes giving me endless joy, but too often causing me great pain. For the painful ones, I have to un-drill them or go nuts. Please bear with me as I extract a few irritating words and phrases to share with you. When they are exposed to sunlight I feel that they can wither a tiny bit. Please add the words and phrases that cause your own teeth to gnash. I’m positive that my list is thoroughly incomplete.
So here they are, in no particular order:
Intelligence: I always thought “U.S. government intelligence” was an oxymoron, like “military intelligence.” But I gained unexpected appreciation for our country’s spies when the National Security Estimate appeared to declare that Iran had stopped developing nuclear weapons years ago. The announcement took the wind out of the sails of the Bush administration’s drive to attack Iran. The neo-con maniacs in power may still launch some kind of assault, but they were quite visibly taken aback by the report, and they need to regroup. Consequently, the world got a breather. The “estimate” reminded us to hope in unexpected ways: There are sane, decent people throughout the government and the military, and someone had the guts to throw a monkey-wrench into the war drive. Ordinarily, I hate “intelligence,” but there really may be some intelligent people in the “intelligence community.” Do I contradict myself? Well, then, I contain . . .
A Market-Place of Ideas: This metaphor is frequently used as a self-evident truth to defend free speech, so the intention is often admirable. But the domination of the paradigm of unbridled capitalism is so complete that we are forced to regard our knowledge as bought and sold by means of an invisible hand as if such weird notions were second nature. But do ideas need to be in a market? Do we need to buy and sell ideas? Has anyone told these people that there’s such a thing as monopoly? That the market can be rigged? Can’t there be “a potluck of ideas” or “a wild orgy of ideas” or “a cultivated garden of ideas” or “an ecosystem of ideas” or “an amusement park of ideas” or any number of other metaphors? We could even have “a crap shoot of ideas” (or is that the market-place?). I like the notion of a garden, personally. That way we can cultivate ideas that feed us while at the same time pull out the weeds that will choke us. The weeds can grow anywhere they want, except right where the tomatoes are planted. And the garden is fed with the luxuriant manure of real life and compassion. Do you believe me? If you do, you may belong to a . . .
Faith-based Organization: Once upon a time there was a thing called religion. Today it feels awkward to talk about “religious schools” or “religious charities,” so “faith-based” has become the current obfuscation of choice. For some reason, “faith” seems to eclipse or blunt the bad associations of “religion” (Spanish Inquisition, Salem Witch Trials, etc.). Faith is a warm, undifferentiated heart-felt feeling and not a doctrine. “Faith-based” may not have been invented by Bush, but he has certainly done a lot to popularize the euphemism. We’re living with the many disasters of “faith-based” politics brought to us by Bush and Company’s muscular faith. Whenever a student writes, for example, “faith-based charity,” I respond: Do you mean a religious charity? Of course, even if using the term “faith-based” were enforced through social pressure, I suspect that no one would complain that it was a form of . . .
Political Correctness: This term has been around for a while, and thankfully its use is fading. I witnessed the birth of this term: how people in the New Left would joke that a particularly dogmatic activist was “politically correct,” meaning that his doctrinaire political outlook would blind him to the material world and he would be a bone-head. The rightwing enthusiastically adopted the term as a criticism of anyone advocating egalitarian politics, particularly through self-naming. So, for example, Lakotas wanting to change the sign in the national park in the Great Plains from “Custer’s Last Stand” to “Battle of Little Big Horn” or someone wanting to be called a name of their own choosing (e.g., “woman,” “African American”) are just whims of puny liberals and professional victims. And “faith-based” is absolved. Most denunciations of “political correctness” are actually coming from people who disdain the expansion of democracy to begin with. Too often it’s the White Citizens Council at a tea party. Which leads to . . .
Empowerment: I got nothing against this word, and all of its variants (empowered, empowering, etc.). It’s a beautiful idea, whatever it is. I see students using this word often, so often that it’s become an overused vague stand-in for some kind of achievement, whatever that is. When a community learns to do something or organize a protest, that’s good; they have a better sense of their capabilities to make change; they get a whiff of change, the possibility that they can take power. But feeling good about yourself or gaining tools is not in itself the power to rule, just a step along the way. If every small improvement or achievement is “empowering,” then oppressed people around the world would have been in power a long time ago. I’d like to be more modest, and less vague. Someone who learns how to read in jail can have his mind travel far beyond the bars, but he’s still behind bars. While I’m at it, I’d also like to ditch a few of the technical terms that social science has sprinkled into everyday speech: “underserved,” “underresourced,” “underprivileged,” and others like them. Natalie Portman came to Stanford a while ago, speaking about some of the causes she supports, and she talked about “poor people.” It’s invigorating to say that someone is poor and not “underprivileged,” that a school is crappy, meaning that it doesn’t have books or its teachers get paid peanuts, rather than to say that the school is “underresourced.”
Most of the time, what’s “underresourced” is real “intelligence,” the kind that shops at the Halliburtonesque “market-place of ideas.” I know I’ll be criticized for advocating “political correctness,” but I don’t care: mouthing off at a few words is “empowering.” At this point I’m ready to seize the Winter Palace.
www.obenzinger.com
Hilton Obenzinger is the author of "American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania," among many other books of criticism, poetry and fiction, and the recipient of the American Book Award. He is a long-time Jewish American advocate of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Hilton Obenzinger teaches writing and American literature at Stanford University.
Every time we read the phrase, "globalization of free trade," in our minds we can mentally replace it with a translation that is closer to the truth--
"The Boomernomics of kleptocracy."
(Oh, are you a baby boomer? 'Sorry to pin this on your generation, but let's face it, this is not Reaganomics. This did not come from the World War II generation. Who was in office at the passage of NAFTA? Bill Clinton, the first Boomer President. Who has continued this flavor of economics? George W. Bush, the second Boomer President. So it's not personal, and I'm not anti-Boomer, but as for how to name this economics, the shoe fits there.)
by
John Kusumi (39 articles, 0 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 77 comments)
on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 8:09:16 PM
Actually I Iike the word "faith-based" from one standpoint,
it brings out the likely or possible fatal flaw in the venture, organisation, or undertaking right from the outset.
Unfortunately faith-based is not yet taken by enough others as the negative pejorative and early warning of impending calamity it should be.
Faith-based thinking is oxymoronic. Yet it is exactly the sort of mental processing that has had major influence in recent history at the highest levels with the Bush administration and Tony Blair in the UK, and here in Australia, until recently John Howard. Bush's beliefs, his convictions without rational basis, have no only trumpted his reason but the reasoning of others as well as the his sworn obligation to the law and to the constitution.
An astute person can almost see a catasphe coming now when a leader starts talking about what they beLIEve. Its a dead give away that they haven't engaged their critical faculties and done their homework and so the rest of us ought to look out for some serious consequences to come from the inevitable faith-based judgements which amount to not having engaged with the subject matter critically at all.
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Brett Paatsch (0 articles, 2 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 1010 comments)
on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 9:23:08 PM
Yes, "globalization" is one of those irritating words. We used to call it "imperialism" or "international finance capital" but today we're supposed to think something good is going on, and I'm not so sure that's the case, or at least it's not as good as cheer leaders like Tom Freidman think it is. Marx talked about how the entire world and all traditional values would be brought into the capitalist orbit -- "all that's solid melts into air" -- and it turns out he was right. As for "boomer," that's also a word that bugs me. I hate when whole generations are dismissed with stupid terms. I can't stand my students being tossed off as Generation X, Y or Z or the Pepsi Generation or . . . That's like being called a "consumer." Do you mean, that's what all of my life has become, that I consume? I'd much rather be a producer -- am I allowed? So, I don't boom, and I don't consume. If anything, I'd rather be known as a 68er or remaining family member surviving mass murder (remember the Nazis?) or Not Happy with Globalization of Consumer Booms.
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Hilton Obenzinger (18 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments)
on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 11:56:39 PM
Here's another word play. When you read or hear the word mainstream, you can replace it in your mind with a translation that makes sense of the world around us.
Adjective form: "corrupt."
Noun form: "corrupt cabal."
The next time you hear a pundit say, perhaps of Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich -- "He's out of the mainstream," what is really meant is, "He's out of the corrupt cabal."
:-D
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John Kusumi (39 articles, 0 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 77 comments)
on Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 5:20:44 AM
One that really grates on my nerves is "HOMELAND"...then again this country, thanks to the out of control corruption, is more like Hitlers germany so... maybe its an accurate word after all thanks to the trash that have it in a stanglehold.
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Rae (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 218 comments)
on Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 5:17:49 PM
Note that you can combine and use both of my word substitutions suggested above. Now that you know the key, when someone says, "Globalization is mainstream," you can read "Boomernomics is corrupt."
by
John Kusumi (39 articles, 0 quicklinks, 23 diaries, 77 comments)
on Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 9:54:25 PM
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