Kill the boer, kill the congresswoman

Last year Julius Malema (whom some refer to as Kiddi Amin) of the ANC Youth League was criticised for singing a song described in the media as “Kill the boer, kill the farmer”. And shortly after the controversy AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche was killed on his farm, and a couple of his farm workers were charged with murder. Some said, and others implied, that Malema’s singing of the song incited them. I’d still like to know the actual words of the song, and whether they do say what the media report them as saying.

But now a similar controversy has broken out about American politician Sarah Palin, who seems inclined to shoot off her mouth in loose cannon fashion as much as Julius Malema.

She posted a map on her Facebook page, showing gunsights aimed at a map with several American politicians that she wanted taken out, electorally, one hopes. But now one of them, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, has been taken out, literally, by gunfire, and Sarah Palin, like Julius Malema, is being accused of inciting this with her target map.

There is often a big gap between rhetoric and reality, and sometimes people say things metaphorically that they do not mean to be taken literally, yet there are often people who do take them literally. And now the Facebook page is full of accusations against Sarah Palin similar to those made against Julius Malema last year when Eugene Terreblanche was killed.

Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiate’ Oxford’s Top Word 2010

Some have criticised US politician Sarah Palin for her neologisms, like “refudiate”, and have accused her of ruining the English language. Others have praised her, and she herself has apparently compared herself with Shakespeare, who also made up new words. .

Who’s laughing now? Sarah Palin’s ‘refudiate’ Oxford’s Top Word 2010 – Business News – Exec Digital:

Sarah Palin’s latest self-made source of public mockery has been re-made as merit, being named New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2010 and the latest addition to its official lexicon

I think the English language is in far more danger of being ruined by stupid journalists who misuse “refute” to mean mere denial instead of “prove to be false”. If Sarah Palin is guilty of malapropisms, then so are they.

And “refudiate” is a useful portmanteau word to mean “not only have I shown conclusively that it is false, but I have nothing but contempt for those whose moral turpitude led them to suggest that it was true.”

Not that Sarah Palin meant anything like that by it; she probably malapropped her own neologism, if such a thing is possible. But it could prove to be a useful word.

Pleonastic sesquipedalian neologisms

Politicians and bureaucrats seem inclined, more than most people, to invent new words, but this takes the cake: ‘Refudiating’ Palin brings Shakespeare into Twitter exchange:

A Twitter posting Sunday from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in which she claimed common ground with Shakespeare, started the blogosphere’s week in rollicking fashion.

Palin tweeted that ‘peaceful Muslims’ should ‘refudiate’ the New York mosque being built near Ground Zero. This prompted plenty of retweets at her expense — ‘refudiate,’ of course, is not a word.

After deleting the offending tweet, Palin replaced it with another, calling on ‘peaceful New Yorkers’ to ‘refute the Ground Zero mosque plan’ — although the word she was apparently looking for was ‘repudiate.’

That won’t, of course, stop the misuse of “refute” — again, mostly by politicians and sycophantic journalists who take their words at face value.

I’ve read dozens of news reports saying that politicians have “refuted” something when they haven’t refuted it at all. All they have actually done is deny it, whereas to refute something means to prove conclusively that it is false.

Sarah Palin is so 2008

John Smulo said on Facebook:

I’m trying to deal with Facebook suggesting I become a fan of Sarah Palin.

But John, Sarah Palin is so 2008.

She isn’t a patch on our Lynda Odendaal!

As one political commentator, The Wild Frontier at The Times — Lynda Odendaal puts it:

THE departure of Lynda Odendaal from the position of second deputy president of Cope is not a seismic event in South African politics. The party’s first deputy president is Mbhazima Shilowa. It’s president is Mosiuoa Lekota. It’s Parliamentary leader is Mvume Dandala. So there is no shortage of leadership to fill the vacuum left by Odendaal. But her departure is yet another signal that Cope is yet to plot a course that inspires the electorate.

And probably the same could be said of Sarah Palin in the USA — not a seismic event. Is there a Lynda Odendaal fan group on Facebook? Is there a fan group for every political drop-out?

Will the real maverick please stand up

American political terminology is sometimes lost in translation, and perhaps sometimes lost even in American English.

New York City News Service: Mavericks Lost in Translation:

Both Senator McCain and Governor Palin also routinely describe themselves as mavericks – a term said to have originated from 19th Century Texas statesman Samuel Augustus Maverick, who refused to brand his cattle.

Katz defined maverick as “a quintessentially made-in-America word for someone who often goes his own way.”

But John McCain and Sarah Palin still seem, to most observers, to be branded Republican, unlike Colin Powell, the true maverick, who felt free to follow a different herd. And after being forced to destroy his own reputation by lying publicly for the party cause, who can blame him?

Colin Powell – The Real Republican Maverick : Clips & Comment:

What did Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell do when Dick Cheney and George Tenet fed him bad information and sent him to the United Nations a la Adlai Stevenson? He waited an appropriate amount of time because he’s a gentleman, he packed up Dick Armitage, and left the Administration that stabbed him in the back and left him out there hanging. Now that was Mavericky. Not relying on the broken down Republican Party, Powell took his own counsel this weekend and endorsed Barack Obama for president.

Someone in the alt.usage.english newsgroup remarked that terms like “maverick” and “renegade” seemed to have favourable connotations in the USA, at least among some sections of the population, whereas in other parts of the world they were viewed more negatively, with their implications of disloyalty.

It also casts more doubt on the research findings of Jonathan Haidt, who said that conservatives placed more value on loyalty as a moral value than liberals do (see Notes from underground: The moral high ground — or is it?), because it seems that in the US it is people who like to portray themselves as conservative who have a positive view of terms like “maverick” and “renegade”, where the former means someone with no particular loyalty, and the latter means a turncoat — someone who is positively disloyal.

US election campaign rhetoric

As I’ve said elsewhere, the US presidential election campaign has reached the boring stage, in which mud-slinging has replaced rational debate on policies. But some people seem to find it more worrying than boring, especially when it comes to things like this

OPINION Blog | The Dallas Morning News:

It’s increasingly worrying that John McCain and Sarah Palin are embracing the acceptability of campaign tactics that play to the most racist and intolerant tendencies among their supporters. John McCain knows that Barack Obama has no links whatsoever to terrorism, and yet he’s doing everything he can to create that linkage. And he’s unleashing Sarah Palin to do his dirty work while McCain claims to be above this condemnable form of negative campaigning.

Hat-tip to Scyldings in the Mead-Hall who says: “I’m sorry, but intentionally or not, it sounds far too much like the tactics of a certain rabble rousing housepainter from Munich.” And tactics familiar to those of us in South Africa who lived through the National Party regime of Verwoerd, Vorster et al.

I haven’t been following it all that closely. Much of the rhetoric flying around now does not come from the candidates but from their “campaigns”, and their supporters engaging in juvenile tactics of misspelling names in laboured political puns.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it dozens of times, people claiming that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Muslim. That’s about as convincing as saying that Sarah Palin is a Muslim because she’s the governor of Al Aska.

I read newsgroup headings about the RePUGs and the GOP’ukes and the DemocRATs, and I think of all the benefits that the Internet had brought mankind — that infantile insults like these can be transmitted around the world instead of being confined to late-night seedy bars.

So I take this kind of rhetoric with a pinch of salt.

I remember that at one time the Anglican Dean of Johannesburg, Gonville Aubie ffrench-Beytagh, was charged with terrorism and that one of the items on the charge sheet was that he had said that Brigadier “Rooi Rus” Swanepoel of the Security Police (a nototious torturer) should be shot. It was a casual throwaway remark that anyone could make, and to treat it seriously as evidence of a conspiracy to kill him seemed ridiculous.

The courts thought so too, and ffrench-Beytagh was acquitted.

And so I’m inclined to think that this kind of rhetoric by the US presidential “campaigns” is just silly season hype.

But then I remember that Robert Kennedy was murdered while campaigning. And Martin Luther King, though not a candidate, was murdered a few months before.

So perhaps it’s more chilling than I thought.

US election campaign rhetoric

As I’ve said elsewhere, the US presidential election campaign has reached the boring stage, in which mud-slinging has replaced rational debate on policies. But some people seem to find it more worrying than boring, especially when it comes to things like this

OPINION Blog | The Dallas Morning News:

It’s increasingly worrying that John McCain and Sarah Palin are embracing the acceptability of campaign tactics that play to the most racist and intolerant tendencies among their supporters. John McCain knows that Barack Obama has no links whatsoever to terrorism, and yet he’s doing everything he can to create that linkage. And he’s unleashing Sarah Palin to do his dirty work while McCain claims to be above this condemnable form of negative campaigning.

Hat-tip to Scyldings in the Mead-Hall who says: “I’m sorry, but intentionally or not, it sounds far too much like the tactics of a certain rabble rousing housepainter from Munich.” And tactics familiar to those of us in South Africa who lived through the National Party regime of Verwoerd, Vorster et al.

I haven’t been following it all that closely. Much of the rhetoric flying around now does not come from the candidates but from their “campaigns”, and their supporters engaging in juvenile tactics of misspelling names in laboured political puns.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it dozens of times, people claiming that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Muslim. That’s about as convincing as saying that Sarah Palin is a Muslim because she’s the governor of Al Aska.

I read newsgroup headings about the RePUGs and the GOP’ukes and the DemocRATs, and I think of all the benefits that the Internet had brought mankind — that infantile insults like these can be transmitted around the world instead of being confined to late-night seedy bars.

So I take this kind of rhetoric with a pinch of salt.

I remember that at one time the Anglican Dean of Johannesburg, Gonville Aubie ffrench-Beytagh, was charged with terrorism and that one of the items on the charge sheet was that he had said that Brigadier “Rooi Rus” Swanepoel of the Security Police (a nototious torturer) should be shot. It was a casual throwaway remark that anyone could make, and to treat it seriously as evidence of a conspiracy to kill him seemed ridiculous.

The courts thought so too, and ffrench-Beytagh was acquitted.

And so I’m inclined to think that this kind of rhetoric by the US presidential “campaigns” is just silly season hype.

But then I remember that Robert Kennedy was murdered while campaigning. And Martin Luther King, though not a candidate, was murdered a few months before.

So perhaps it’s more chilling than I thought.

Nucular

Back in 1971 I watched a B-grade horror film at the Windhoek Drive-in.

It was called The vulture, and one of the villains in it was described as a “nucular scientist”.

It was the first time I’d heard the word “nucular”, and assumed it was an order of magnitude more dangerous than “nuclear”. As fusion bombs are far more destructive than fission bombs, so nucular bombs would far more destructive than nuclear ones.

Thirty years later, comes the 21st century, and the President of the United States begins talking about “nucular weapons”. Has the science fiction of the 1970s become reality in the 21st century?

Well, why not?

We have these smart bombs that can hit the precise window of the Chinese Embassy that they are aimed at — why not nucular ones that behave like nuclear bombs on steroids?

But the plot thickens.

The language fundis at the alt.usage.english newsgroup have been discussing the use of the term “nucular” by the US vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

Apparently she spoke about nucular weaponry being the whole being or essence of too many people and places on the planet.

Then someone else pointed out that “nucular” seemed to be a term that characterised the leaders of the US Republican Party. Perhaps it is a kind of shibboleth, by which the faithful can be distinguished. Members of other parties reveal themselves by not using the magic word.

But another one of those fundis dug deeper, into the Oxford English Dictionary, and this is what he found:

I’m not sure that it’s been brought up here before, although I suspect it has, but “nucular” appears to be a “real word” as well, although one that appears to have fallen out of use before “nuclear” became common. The sense is “of or relating to a nucule”, which is defined as

1. Originally: each of the seeds in a nuculanium (obs.). Later: a small nut or nutlet; a section of a compound (usually hard) fruit; a nut borne in an involucre. Now rare.
2. The female reproductive structure (oogonium) of a charophyte.

The OED cites this sense of “nucular” in 1876 and 1935, flagging it as “Bot. rare”. There are hits in Google books from 1855 through 1911.

I can’t remember anything about The vulture other than the fact that it featured a nucular scientist. I’ve forgotten the plot, the setting, and everything else. It was memorable only because it was where I first heard the word “nucular”. Perhaps the vulture in the film was a wooden vulture, or perhaps we are all living through a B-grade horror movie. .

Nucular

Back in 1971 I watched a B-grade horror film at the Windhoek Drive-in.

It was called The vulture, and one of the villains in it was described as a “nucular scientist”.

It was the first time I’d heard the word “nucular”, and assumed it was an order of magnitude more dangerous than “nuclear”. As fusion bombs are far more destructive than fission bombs, so nucular bombs would far more destructive than nuclear ones.

Thirty years later, comes the 21st century, and the President of the United States begins talking about “nucular weapons”. Has the science fiction of the 1970s become reality in the 21st century?

Well, why not?

We have these smart bombs that can hit the precise window of the Chinese Embassy that they are aimed at — why not nucular ones that behave like nuclear bombs on steroids?

But the plot thickens.

The language fundis at the alt.usage.english newsgroup have been discussing the use of the term “nucular” by the US vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

Apparently she spoke about nucular weaponry being the whole being or essence of too many people and places on the planet.

Then someone else pointed out that “nucular” seemed to be a term that characterised the leaders of the US Republican Party. Perhaps it is a kind of shibboleth, by which the faithful can be distinguished. Members of other parties reveal themselves by not using the magic word.

But another one of those fundis dug deeper, into the Oxford English Dictionary, and this is what he found:

I’m not sure that it’s been brought up here before, although I suspect it has, but “nucular” appears to be a “real word” as well, although one that appears to have fallen out of use before “nuclear” became common. The sense is “of or relating to a nucule”, which is defined as

1. Originally: each of the seeds in a nuculanium (obs.). Later: a small nut or nutlet; a section of a compound (usually hard) fruit; a nut borne in an involucre. Now rare.
2. The female reproductive structure (oogonium) of a charophyte.

The OED cites this sense of “nucular” in 1876 and 1935, flagging it as “Bot. rare”. There are hits in Google books from 1855 through 1911.

I can’t remember anything about The vulture other than the fact that it featured a nucular scientist. I’ve forgotten the plot, the setting, and everything else. It was memorable only because it was where I first heard the word “nucular”. Perhaps the vulture in the film was a wooden vulture, or perhaps we are all living through a B-grade horror movie. .

The Times – Let’s stay off Resentment Road

Jonathan Jansen writes about visiting Durban recently and finding that many of the streets had been renamed, and questions the wisdom of renaming places to commemorate political party hacks.

The Times – Let’s stay off Resentment Road:

Imagine, for example, naming a street after Julius Malema, the youthful idiot who found a way of remaining in the news by threatening to “eliminate” or “crush” the enemies of his campaign to seat Jacob Zuma in the presidency.

As the Sarah Palin of South African politics, he is a dangerous demagogue rescued from obscurity and not sure what to do with his new-found power other than display his limited vocabulary with words like “kill”. Apartheid taught him well.

I have to admit a certain amount of sympathy. I too visited Durban recently, and had the problem of finding myself in Problem Mkhize Road, and wondering what Problem Mkhize had done for Durban. Though I have to admit that I didn’t really know what Mr Cowey (after whom the road was previously named) had done for Durban either.

One of the nice things about the 1990s was that after our first democratic elections a lot of places and buildings named after politicians got renamed with neutral names. The Marais Viljoen Building down the road from us was sensibly named Compensation House (it houses the offices of the Workmens Compensation Commissioner). The Hendrik Verwoerd Dam was renamed to something neutral. Jan Smuts Airport became the Johannesburg International Airport — that was a bit silly, because it isn’t in Johannesburg, it’s in Ekurhuleni. Now it’s the O.R. Tambo International Airport, so it doesn’t really matter where it is.

I liked the idea of removing the names of politicians (especially living ones) from the names of places, because naming things after politicians smacks of totalitarianism to me. In Moscow, Kalinin Propekt is now Arbat again, and Kaliningrad is back to being Tver.

One of the last acts of the last Nationalist city council of Pretoria was to rename Kilnerton Road to C.R. Swart Drive. Part of it has been re-re-named back to Kilnerton Road, but the rest remains with the name of C.R. Swart. That, it seemed to me, was a calculated insult to black people. The Kilnerton Institute was a well-known educational institution in eastern Pretoria, run by the Methodist Church. Many black South African leaders received their education there. In the 1960s it was closed down as part of the ethnic cleansing that took place to implement apartheid, and renaming the road seemed to be a deliberate attempt to remove even its memory. C.R. Swart, however, was Minister of Justice in the 1950s, and presided over the introduction of some of the most oppressive and racist legislation ever to disgrace our statute book. I would not be at all sorry to see his Drive go.

I’ve got nothing against O.R. Tambo or Pixley ka Seme, or Rick Turner or Alan Paton. They were certainly not repulsive like C.R. Swart and worked for freedom and justice rather than to oppress people. But I wonder how happy they would have been to have things named after them?

But the Nationalist City Council of Pretoria has gone too. Pretoria joined with twelve other local authorities to become part of the megacity of Tshwane, and Pretoria no longer has its own city council; it is only part of a bigger city. There is now only the council of the City of Tshwane. I’m quite happy about that. Nobody seems to quite know who Tshwane was, except that he is said to have once lived in the area. That’s a bit like Cowie’s Hill. Unlike Mr Cowey of Cowey Road, Mr Cowie lived on his hill.

The amalgamation of municipalities and local authorities seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. As Jasper fforde, the author of the books about Thurday Next, the literary detective, points out, the Cheshire Cat of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books is now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat. And “City of Tshwane” is much easier to say than “Unity Authority of Warrington” or “Nelson Mandela Metropole”.

Now suddenly we seem to be back to the 1950s, when the Nationalists were renaming everything after their party hacks. As Bob Dylan once sang, “Oh no, no no, I’ve been through this movie before.”