Once an English teacher, always an English teacher. Sad, maybe, but true. I've always loved words, and I think in some ways it was impossible to grow up in my family without loving words. It's an inherited trait. The Twomblys (should the plural be Twomblies?) talked, the Redingtons did crossword puzzles and made puns. Over the years, I began to realize the power of words, and woe to the student who used the word "mankind" in my presence, and then professed not to understand what could be wrong with it.....I'll save the full-blown lecture for later.
I would have supposed that most writers would care passionately about words and their correct usage. It is that supposition that caused me to be shocked when I read novelist Elinor Lipman's column in Monday's Globe (2/11), entitled "Chelsea and the kid gloves." In her column, she claimed that it wasn't any big deal that pundit Bill Shuster asked the question "Doesn't it seem like Chelsea is being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Lipman wonders why the Clintons should have taken umbrage at that. She thinks they overreacted. Wouldn't anyone take umbrage if their daughter was described as "being pimped out?" Should the listener not have assumed any sexual-trafficking connotation as Ms. Lipman claims? In what other context does one use the word "pimp?"
She continues her column to similarly brush aside Don Imus's famous description of the Rutgers' girls bastketball team, saying "Did anyone in his or her right mind need to be disabused of Imus's characterization?" We may well have understood that the young women on the team were not "hos," but that doesn't mean it was o.k. for him to call them that, along with the adjectives he used to precede the word. I am aghast that Ms. Lipman is willing to see language used so imprecisely and scurrilously. If she thinks it's o.k., then I think the degradation of our culture has gone further than I had imagined.
Words both reflect the culture and have the power to shape it. I hope I understand as well as the next person the way language changes, and particularly that the vernacular may expand to include words that previous generations would have had their mouths washed out with soap for using. Acceptance of these kinds of insults as normative, however, I think goes past a boundary that I would rather not see crossed. And here's why, since you asked:
We are living in an age of the manipulation of language much like what George Orwell imagined in 1984. If we grow sloppy in our usage, we accept the deaths of "troops," because that word is more dehumanized than deaths of "soldiers," which is more dehumanized that saying deaths of "men" and "women." It allows us to have a President who will talk about "shock and awe" when our military is dropping bombs on Baghdad. It brought us "Operation Enduring Freedom" and "Desert Storm." In munitions, it brings us "smart bombs" and Focused Lethality Munitions (see previous blog). We can objectify and rename anything until it is unrecognizeable for what it is. I take issue not only with Ms. Lipman, but also with Shakespeare himself, who said "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." A "ho" is not synonymous with "basketball player" and "pimped out" is not synonymous with "speaking on the campaign trail on behalf of your mother." Ms. Lipman should have known better.
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