July 10, 2004
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Wrestling with Words
“Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something
a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday….”– Bernard Holland, The New York Times of Monday, May 20, 1996
From today’s New York Times obituaries:
R. W. Burchfield died Monday. He was “an internationally renowned lexicographer who wrestled
the Oxford English Dictionary into the era of ‘sexploitation.’ “In other news….
“Although Mr. Kerry had told the crowd at the New York fund-raiser that
‘every single performer’ on the bill had ‘conveyed to you the heart and
soul of our country,’ his campaign on Friday sought to distance Mr.
Kerry and his running mate, Senator John Edwards, from the anti-Bush jokes, lyrics and statements of some of the entertainers.But it declined to release a videotape of the performance at which Ms.
Goldberg, a bottle of wine in hand, made an extended sexual pun out of
the president’s surname.[Also on Friday...]
At an afternoon airport rally in Beaver, W. Va., a town of 1,378 people,
Mr. Kerry attached the word ‘value’ to virtually every line of his
standard stump speech….”Somehow, a different word comes to mind.
