Every so often I fruitlessly suggest men and women who, if editors were still interested in quality instead of comforting gullible audiences, would elevate an op-ed page. At The New York Times, for example, replace 150-year-old Thomas Friedman with David Samuels and David Brooks with Will Leitch. Longtime pop music critic/archivist Bill Wyman, now living in Sydney, also fits that magic-bean idea. I’ve met Wyman several times—at weekly newspaper conventions years ago—and though today we probably don’t agree on politics (he’s written for Salon, New York and The Columbia Journalism Review) that hardly matters.
Wyman’s contributed a couple of articles to Splice Today, most recently a long and original takedown of The Rolling Stones. He wrote: “The arrival of a new Rolling Stones album is a very happy time for me. Not because of the music. Rather, it’s an opportunity for rock critics across the nation and the English-speaking world to pull out the hoariest and most overused cliché [the band’s best album since…] of their profession.”
Last week, he wrote a long critique of podcasts—he didn’t name specific examples—for Podnews, providing scabrous advice for those purveyors of digital media who rub him the wrong way. (Wyman’s a fan of podcasts, by the way, and at one time operated his own in Chicago.) He wrote: “Don’t say ‘no pun intended.’ Also, having said, ‘no pun intended,’ don’t say, ‘Or should I say, pun very much intended, har dee har har.’ It’s… been … done.”
I bring this up because while Wyman’s specific target is the slipshod language, syntax and cliches of podcasters, identical criticism of the media in general could be levied; which the author knows, and it probably drives him as nuts as any former print journalist who laments (but powerless to change, grudgingly acknowledges) the degradation of the English language. Now-standard phrases like “Let that sink in,” “Explain it to me like I’m a five-year-old,” “Delete your account” or “Learn to code” stick out. It’s across the board: liberal, progressive, conservative, paleocon or libertarian, all look for that empty riposte to say nothing. What’s particularly irked me in the last two years is a writer (not always dumb) prefacing a point by the chickenshit qualifier, “I’m sorry, but…” They’re not sorry at all, so what’s the point? Nearly identical is “It’s almost as if…” another way to play it safe.
In the same vein, Adam Aleksic (“an American linguist”) contributed a “Guest Essay” to the Times this week, headlined “The Insidious Creep of Trump’s Speaking Style,” concluding, “The fact that we’re talking like Donald Trump could mean that we’re starting to think like him as well.”
A lot to “unpack” here. The linguist Aleksic succumbs to another modern wimpy device, saying “we’re talking like Donald Trump.” That’s at the least unimaginative, at the worst just stupid. Who’s the “we” that’re talking like Trump? I’ll grant that “fake news” is legitimate—but that’s also true, given the media’s abandonment of standards—but I’ve yet to meet or converse with someone who “talks like Trump.” I couldn’t even repeat his typically hyperbolic reference to the “big, beautiful bill,” although I suppose Aleksic and his friends in the media had no such reservations.
Then: “In fact, Mr. Trump may have a greater impact on the English language than any president in the history of the United States, maybe ever.” Was it Trump who coined previous groaners like “game-changer,” “perfect storm,” “conventional wisdom” or “the mother of all…”?
He continues: “Joe Biden certainly had catchphrases like ‘folks’ and ‘malarkey.’ Barack Obama would often punctuate speeches with ‘Let me be clear’ [just as Richard Nixon did] and George W. Bush was well known for his ‘Bushisms’ [well-known in the media, particularly Slate, which collected “Bushisms” and sold a book of them, perhaps profitable]. Yet none of these phrases became a part of the average person’s day-to-day speech.” He forgot Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.”
Biden, 82, said “malarkey” a lot because it was a common word when he grew up (a euphemism for “bullshit”) so it wasn’t a “catchphrase.” Politicians have used the word “folks” since before I was born; just as they wouldn’t appear in a button-down shirt (too preppy) or spread collar (British), they said “folks,” thinking that connected them to, as Aleksic says, “average people.”
Aleksic, a 24-year-old Harvard graduate, isn’t modest. In the intro to his website [https://www.etymologynerd.com], he writes: “I'm Adam Aleksic, a linguist and influencer currently living in Manhattan. You probably know me for creating educational videos as the ‘Etymology Nerd’ to a following of over three million across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Or you know me from my book Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language. Or you don't know me.”
I’d never heard of this “Instagram and TikTok star,” before his sloppy Times essay, and have no inclination to seek out his wisdom. I prefer Bill Wyman’s.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023