"How do we squash the prejudice against female presidential nominees, which has always been with us, but became even worse after Kamala Harris got whomped by Donald Trump?"

Asks Gail Collins in a column with a title that asks a different question, "Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?"

Maybe it would be better to ask this other question, my question: When will we ever get to evaluate a female presidential candidate as just another presidential candidate? We've been nudged too many times to pick the woman because she is a woman. It makes people wary. I mean, really, why was Kamala Harris foisted on us?

So, yeah, she got "whomped." I'm collecting these colorful words that make losing seem violent but also fun. I'm thinking of George W. Bush taking what he called a "thumping" in the 2006 midterms, and Obama, after the 2010 midterms, saying he'd experienced "a shellacking."

Gail Collins is talking about whomping and squashing. Brutal words, but still polite. Euphemisms.

What's the etymology of "whomp"? It's the sound. A heavy, low sound. From the OED, quoting a 1960 issue of New Scientist: "The Sunday edition of the New York Times..whomped to the floor outside my apartment door."

"Trump’s opponents complain about the aggressive connotations of the new name."

"But the United States is protected by the most lethal and vigilant fighting force ever assembled, no matter what it’s called. The new name could prompt more focused debate about how to use it."

Writes the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "In defense of the War Department/Euphemisms such as 'defense' and 'security' have a tendency for bureaucratic mission-creep."

"For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed... a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions..."

"... that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students. When, as a student at Harvard Law School, I was booed and hissed and told to 'go die' for articulating pro-life or other conservative views, exactly zero administrators cared about my feelings. Nor did it cross my mind to ask them for help. I was an adult. I could handle my classmates’ anger. Yet how sensitive are administrators to student feelings under other circumstances? I had to chuckle when I read my colleague Pamela Paul’s excellent column on the Columbia School of Social Work and she quoted a school glossary that uses the term 'folx.' Why spell the word with an 'x'? Because some apparently believe the letter 's' in 'folks' renders the term insufficiently inclusive. I kid you not...."The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "

Writes David French, in "What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech" (NYT).

French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more."

"A squid ship is a bustling, bright, messy place. The scene on deck looks like a mechanic’s garage where an oil change has gone terribly wrong."

"Scores of fishing lines extend into the water, each bearing specialized hooks operated by automated reels. When they pull a squid on board, it squirts warm, viscous ink, which coats the walls and floors. Deep-sea squid have high levels of ammonia, which they use for buoyancy, and a smell hangs in the air. The hardest labor generally happens at night, from 5 p.m. until 7 a.m. Hundreds of bowling-ball-size light bulbs hang on racks on both sides of the vessel, enticing the squid up from the depths. The blinding glow of the bulbs, visible more than a hundred miles away, makes the surrounding blackness feel otherworldly. 'Our minds got tested,' Anhar said...."

From "The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat/China has invested heavily in an armada of far-flung fishing vessels, in part to extend its global influence. This maritime expansion has come at grave human cost," by Ian Urbina (The New Yorker). 

"I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.... Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy."

That's Matt Gaetz.

I'm reading "Gaetz Says He Will Move to Oust McCarthy for Working With Democrats/A day after the Republican speaker turned to Democrats for help passing a stopgap spending bill to avert a shutdown, the far-right congressman promised to try to remove him from his post" (NYT)

In an interview that aired on CNN on Sunday, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. McCarthy’s main tormentor, said he would do just that. By bringing up a measure called a “motion to vacate,” he can call a snap vote on whether to keep Mr. McCarthy in his post.

I like the phrase "main tormentor." Seems like the writer wanted to say "arch nemesis" and knew she needed to tone it down for NYT standards. 

"But during the Globe’s first Shakespeare and Race Festival... she hosted a workshop in the theater with actors of color and learned how they were disadvantaged by some of the set and lighting design decisions."

"'What we have proved subsequently is that it does not work for actors of the global majority,' she said, using the Globe’s preferred language to describe actors of color. 'It feels like a space of empire.' With this in mind, the Globe has plans to change the design when it raises the money, repainting the space in a lighter hue and reconsidering the Renaissance-inspired ceiling mural that depicts the white-skinned goddess of the moon surrounded by similarly complexioned cherubs...."

From "This scholar is pulling back the curtain on race in Shakespeare/Farah Karim-Cooper argues that the Bard has a race problem. But that doesn’t mean we have to love him less" (WaPo).

"In what at first glance might seem like a positive (and possibly 'sex positive') move, the term 'sex work' suddenly appears to be everywhere...."

"It’s now commonly used by politicians, the media, Hollywood and government agencies. But make no mistake: 'Sex work' is hardly a sign of liberation. Why, you might wonder, does exchanging money for sex need a rebrand? Derogatory terms like 'hooker' and 'whore' were long ago replaced by the more neutral 'prostitute.' But 'sex worker' goes one step further, couching it as a conventional job title, like something plucked out of 'What Color Is Your Parachute?' Its most grotesque variant is the phrase 'child sex worker,' which has appeared in a wide range of publications, including BuzzFeed, The Decider and The Independent. (Sometimes the phrase has been edited out after publication.)... In recent years, language has undergone drastic shifts in an effort to reduce harm. Sometimes these shifts result in contorted language that obscures meaning. Sometimes these shifts make people feel better without changing anything of substance. And sometimes they do move the needle toward positive change, which is always welcome. But the use of 'sex work,' however lofty the intention, effectively increases the likelihood of harm.... To help people hurt by the sex trade, we need to call it like it is."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "What It Means to Call Prostitution 'Sex Work'" (NYT).

New term learned: "Sunday scaries."

I was surprised to see this childish locution as a serious answer — clued "Feeling of dread heading into a workweek." It would be a spoiler to say where, but it was in a highly respected puzzle and presented as an established phrase.

I googled and got over a million hits:

"Even the name of the place Corey Brooks frequented for routine medical care — Magee-Womens Hospital — felt alienating."

"Patients donned pink gowns. Cutouts of pink bras were plastered on the walls. A sign urged patients to 'fight like a girl.' 'Things like that are just incredibly disorienting for someone going into those spaces who is always being reminded, hey, this wasn’t designed for you,' Brooks said. 'You’re not really sure if you should disclose to these people that you’re trans or not.' Brooks identifies as nonbinary and transgender, but as someone who was assigned female at birth, they share similar health needs as cisgender women for gynecologic care and screenings for chest health as they age...."

 
From "For trans people, medical visits can be more traumatizing than healing/Trans patients share their stories of subtle discrimination, outright hostility and ill-informed medical professionals" (WaPo).

Is everything woman-specific now going to be characterized as unfriendly or even wrong and toxic?!

"Declaring Emergencies and Banning ‘Latinx’: First Acts for 9 New Governors."

A NYT article by Maggie Astor. 

From the list of Democrats:

Wes Moore... the first Black governor of Maryland... issued an executive order to establish the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation. One thing it could oversee would be a program he suggested to let high school graduates do a paid year of community service....

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania/Through an executive order, Governor Shapiro opened the vast majority of jobs in the state government — 92 percent of them — to people without four-year college degrees.

From the list of Republicans: 

"Yes, the French are... lazy. It’s just not in the way we lazily think."

I'm reading "Are French People Just Lazy?" by the historian Robert Zaretsky (NYT).

"Mr. Zhang, 56, said he lost $70,000 gambling last year, prompting him to play more in the hopes of winning it back."

"He immigrated six years ago from Beijing, where he worked as a calligraphy teacher, but is now unemployed, he said. He rides the bus [to the casino] weekly from his home in south Brooklyn to play baccarat and other games. He pulled out his platinum Resorts World card, saying he was prepared to stop gambling once he played enough to obtain a black card, the highest status. 'If only I could win a little bit every time I came,' Mr. Zhang said in Mandarin. 'How great would that be?'"

From "Casinos Target a Vulnerable Clientele: Older Asian Gamblers/The industry’s efforts to lure Asian customers will be a significant factor looming over the upcoming application process for new casino licenses in New York" (NYT).

The article isn't entirely about the vulnerability of "older Asian gamblers" to gambling problems. Some of them are riding the bus to socialize with other people who speak their language, and others make money by selling the $45 gambling voucher they receive for taking the $20 bus ride.

"There seems to be genuine confusion over what a well-meaning person can say without offending someone."

"According to Pew, a majority of Americans believe there isn’t any agreement on what language is considered sexist or racist of late.... You might find yourself wondering: Can I use that word? Am I not supposed to say that anymore?... [W]e enlisted the help of the polling firm Morning Consult to survey a representative sample of over 4,000 Americans...."

This is a very useful and entertaining exploration by the New York Times. Let me just highlight — uplift and highlight — a few things that stood out for us here at Meadhouse: 

First, the overview:

"Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel/President Biden has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."

That's the headline at the NYT for something currently at Memeorandum with the headline "Biden's Folksiness Can Veer Into Folklore, or Falsehoods."

Perhaps that had been the front-page teaser at the Times. It's not on the front page at the moment. It went up yesterday, but there's only one newer headline with the name Biden on the front page — "Biden Administration Plan Could Lead to Employee Status for Gig Workers" — and that isn't about Biden, just his administration. 

There's an older headline still on the front page — "Joe Biden Knows How to Use Donald Trump." That extols Biden... but for what? What is Biden being given credit for here? The author is Ezra Klein, who goes on about how "startlingly few interviews and news conferences" Biden gives.

"While these are beautiful objects and tell important stories that need to be known, it's disappointing to see the MET giving legitimacy to Crystal Bridges Museum."

"The museum is open-to the-public storage for the personal art collection of some the Walton heirs of Wal-Mart fame — known for paying their employees so little that as of 2022 they are reported to be the biggest recipients of food stamps and Medicaid in most states."

That's a comment on the NYT article "The Magnificent Poem Jars of David Drake, Center Stage at the Met/Before the Civil War, an enslaved artisan from South Carolina created storage vessels that transcend ceramic traditions." 

 From the article:

In Great Britain, they say "coffin" and regard a 6-hour car "journey" as something that would challenge anyone's resolve.

10:23am, the Queen’s coffin passes through her local village of Ballater.
Our colleague @PeterAdamSmith was told yesterday: “The country has lost a Monarch, we have lost a neighbour”.#QueenElizabeth pic.twitter.com/Bh4mU1Js1c

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) September 11, 2022

All the British news reports I'm seeing about moving the Queen's body from Scotland to London are using the word "coffin."

I think it's a word we Americans tend to use when talking about horror movies or Halloween or old cemeteries.

It is also used in America to generate outrage about the stark reality of death. Let me give 2 examples from the NYT:

1. From 2004: "The Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures."

2. From 2018: "As Senator John McCain’s coffin was being loaded onto a military plane bound for Washington on Thursday afternoon, cameras from major American TV networks beamed the coverage around the world, allowing a rapt public to witness the next leg of his four-day funeral. Back at the White House, President Trump aggressively tried to wrestle back the attention. 'Throwback Thursday!' the president exclaimed on Twitter, posting a video of celebratory Fox News clips of his unlikely route to the presidency just as Mr. McCain’s coffin was heading for Washington, where it will lie in state in the United States Capitol on Friday." (Remember when we were "rapt" at the transportation of a dead Senator's body and the President was a lout not to devote himself 100% to national mourning?)

If you attempt to research the American preference for the word "casket," you'll be swamped with funeral-industry doctrine restricting "coffin" to containers that are wider at the shoulders and narrower at the feet. ‚ so "coffins" really are those horror movie/Halloween props and what we picture buried in very old cemeteries. The modern rectangular box, we're told, is called a "casket." This is a denial that "casket" is a euphemism for "coffin."

In America, at least. In the U.K., it seems, "coffin" is the most reverent and respectful word — expressive of rectitude and rectangularity. 

"As the day is long."

I'm exploring the phrase "as the day is long" as a consequence of becoming interested in the word "daylong," which the NYT used to describe the raid on Mar-a-Lago — "the daylong search of the former president’s home." I've been using the word "raid," which I'm sure is utterly correct, because I researched it, when I saw, immediately after the news broke, that it was a talking point to say that it was not a raid. 

That talking point dropped out of the conversation. I didn't even get a chance to use my research: the OED defines "raid" as "A sudden or vigorous attack or descent upon something for the purpose of appropriation, suppression, or destruction; spec. a surprise visit by police to arrest suspects or seize illicit goods."

But that doesn't mean that supporters of the raid want to use the word "raid." There's the word "search," but is that adequate? The NYT seems to have worried that "search" alone called too much attention to the the avoidance of "raid," and — I'm just guessing! — they appended "daylong."

Meade noticed that first, and when he texted the quote to me with the word "daylong" circled, and the note...

For NYT, “raid” = “daylong search” 

I replied:

like it was gentle and leisurely… like a day at the beach 

as legit as the day is long

NPR's prissy headline: "Weighing the pros and cons of Beto O'Rourke dropping an f-bomb on a heckler."

Here. 

Dropped an f-bomb. Give me a break. Saying "fuck" isn't the equivalent of violence. It's not a bomb. Say "f-word" if you're somewhere — where?! — where you can't say "fuck." But in this case it wasn't the f-word. It was the M-WORD.

Beto O'Rourke called a guy in the crowd "motherfucker." "Motherfucker" is a lot worse than "fuck." It has a separate entry on George Carlin's 1972 list of "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." As you can see at that last link, to Wikipedia, Carlin later spoke of some guy criticizing him saying "motherfucker is a duplication of the word fuck, technically, because fuck is the root form, motherfucker being derivative; therefore, it constitutes duplication. And I said, 'Hey, motherfucker, how did you get my phone number, anyway?'"

Anyway, what does NPR have to say about the pros and cons of Beto calling a guy in the crowd "motherfucker"?

"Written as though theft were something to be winked at. Bless this newspaper, which even in its decorating articles can't call a spade a spade."

"One has already despaired of real news being anything but understanding of perpetrators, even violent perpetrators. Except maybe the louse Donald Trump, or Ghislaine Maxwell."

Writes a commenter at the New York Times article, "The Lamp That’s Taking Over New York/A sleek newcomer, the Pina Pro, is appearing on droves of outdoor tables in the city — and sometimes disappearing, as diners fall for its mellow glow" ("At Altro Paradiso, a few lamps have mysteriously disappeared, Ms. Miller said. When the restaurant didn’t yet have one for every table, 'people would fight over them,' she added.")

And in case you're distracted by the question "Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'?," someone answered the question on NPR back in 2013: 

"Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together." 

That is, it's not racist. The spade in question — in the original 1542 writing by Erasmus — was the garden tool. That it is a garden tool — and not a playing card or a person of color — is clearly demonstrated by this witticism in Oscar Wilde 1895 play "The Importance of Being Earnest":

CECILY: "Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into an engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade."

GWENDOLEN: [Satirically.] "I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different."

"WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name!"

"They don’t call us 'women' anymore; they call us 'birthing people' or 'menstruators,' and even 'people with vaginas'! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!"

Tweeted Bette Midler, quoted in "Bette Midler sparks debate by saying trans-inclusive language erases women" (NY Post).