Andrew Rosenthal, the NYT editorial page editor, "runs the show and is lazy as all get-out."

According to a NYT writer, quoted in a NY Observer piece titled "The Tyranny and Lethargy of the Times Editorial Page/Reporters in 'semi-open revolt' against Andrew Rosenthal." The Observer pauses to say "one can almost hear the Times-ness in his controlled anger (who but a Timesman uses the phrase 'as all get-out' these days?)" and that riff on language derails me from the substance of the article.

I mean, I nearly got sidetracked earlier this morning, when I was writing about Justice Scalia's remarks — about the way judges inactivate themselves in times of war — into riffing on his use of "whatnot." Talking about WWII, he'd said, "the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot." Whatnot! Who talks like that?

Detouring from substance, I spent some time in the Oxford English Dictionary. "Whatnot" goes back to 1540, to Palsgrave's translation of Gnapheus's "Comedye of Acolastus" — "Excesse of fleshely pleasures..hath taken awaye all thynges..my goodes or substance, my name .i. my good name and fame, my frendes, my glory .i. my renoume or estimation, what not? .i. what thyng is it that she hath not taken from me?"

This language riffing is an excesse of fleshely pleasure for me... and whatnot. The question is interesting: "who but a Timesman uses the phrase 'as all get-out' these days?" What do non-Timesmen say these days? And here's off-ramp I'm not going to take: Who says "these days"? Oh, no... I accidentally took the off ramp! And now Jackson Browne is playing on YouTube.  

These days I seem to think a lot/About the things that I forgot to dooooo/And all the times I had the chance tooooooo....

Focus, Althouse. The question on the floor is: What do non-Timesmen say these days? The phrase to be completed is Andrew Rosenthal is lazy as.... The answer — what normal newspaper writers supposedly say — is — I assume — hell or fuck. Or — my personal go-to expression — fucking hell. Is "all get-out" hilariously old fashioned and puritanical? Years ago we used to say "anything" — as in: Lazy as anything.

So what does the old OED have to say about "as all get-out"? The "get-out" can be traced as far back as 1838. J. C. Neal Charcoal Sketches: "We look as elegant and as beautiful as get out." The first "as all get out" comes from Mark Twain's "Adventures Huckleberry Finn" (1884): "We got to dig in like all git-out." Or if you need the more polished version, without the "like" and the "git," there's Harry Leon Wilson's 1916 "Somewhere in Red Gap": "When I got into the parlour she had them on, pleased as all get-out."

So, now, out of the language sidetrack, onto the substance. What's up with Andy Rosenthal and the Timesmen?

"Andy’s got 14 or 15 people plus a whole bevy of assistants working on these three unsigned editorials every day. They’re completely reflexively liberal, utterly predictable, usually poorly written and totally ineffectual. I mean, just try and remember the last time that anybody was talking about one of those editorials. You know, I can think of one time recently, which is with the [Edward] Snowden stuff, but mostly nobody pays attention, and millions of dollars is being spent on that stuff."

Much more at the link. Great substance, actually. Check it out. Well, I'll keep on movin' ... movin' on/Things are bound to be improvin' these days....