Tumbrils and the English Language
As George Orwell pointed out more than half a century ago, the storehouse of the English language occasionally needs a good sweep. In the hands of excited, careless or tired writers, words and phrases that once were new or uniquely descriptive become so overused that they seem to threaten the integrity of the language itself. With a broom (or rather, cartwheel) in hand, CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn attempts a cleaning.
As George Orwell pointed out more than half a century ago, the storehouse of the English language occasionally needs a good sweep. In the hands of excited, careless or tired writers, words and phrases that once were new or uniquely descriptive become so overused that they seem to threaten the integrity of the language itself. With a broom (or rather, cartwheel) in hand, CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn attempts a cleaning. –ARK
Dig, Root, GrowAlexander Cockburn at Creators:
Next up: “iconic.” I trip over this golly-gee epithet 30 times a day. No warrant for its arrest is necessary, nor benefit of counsel or trial. Off to the tumbrils, arm in arm with “narrative.” These days everyone has a narrative — an earnest word originally recruited, I believe, by anthropologists. So we read “according to the Pentagon’s narrative…” Why not use some more energetic formulation, such as “According to the patent nonsense minted by the Pentagon’s press office…”? Suddenly, we’re surrounded by “narratives,” all endowed with equal status. Into the tumbrils with it.
This year, we’re all on shaky ground, and the need for independent journalism has never been greater. A new administration is openly attacking free press — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
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Pull the Sandersmobile into the garage for inspection, pop the hood and you’ll soon discover the vacuous truth: no engine, just an exhaust pipe, pumping out rhetoric. So much talk, so little action. The deeper you look at Sanders, the less substance you see.
Mostly due to revenue from ads, the Web firm will rake in $60 billion this year, making it bigger than both the newspaper and magazine industries; the hypocrisy of British Prime Minister David Cameron announcing extended austerity from a golden throne sickened more than one; meanwhile, The New York Times is losing talent left and right. These discoveries and more after the jump.
CounterPunch, the muckraking political newsletter founded in 1994 by investigative journalist Jeffrey St. Clair and recently deceased iconoclast Alexander Cockburn, has paid a “savage price” for maintaining its deeply critical view of President Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign season.
Fashion, tips for surviving a police encounter, and why we might all be better off when the American empire crumbles are among the subjects the late CounterPunch editor Alexander Cockburn rapped about in a conversation in the Deep South sometime during the summer of 2006.
He could be infuriating in his lust for truth and social justice, but no serious student of our time can deny Alexander Cockburn’s importance as one of the most principled and insightful political journalists of the past half-century.
Alexander Cockburn, editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch, lost a two-year battle against cancer when he died in Germany on Friday night.
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