On language: "Super duper missiles," and why such phrases matter

So, today is Sunday.  By my math, that makes yesterday Saturday.  What did you do with your morning yesterday?  I spent it with a rather large (super duper?) mug of French press coffee, writing about the novels of Paolo Bacigalupi and John Scalzi, trying to make the case that they have some insight into the current economic problems created by supply chain breakdowns, trade and trade protectionism in the coronavirus era.  Why would I do this with my Saturday morning?  Words is are, um... things that are happy-making, and they... um, I like the things that are word-inclusive, and...

OK, see what I did there?  Let's take an unfunny joke and make it even less funny by explaining that which did not need to be explained.  The humor, such as it was, came from the juxtaposition of professing my love for the written word with stumbling over my attempt to express it through the act of writing.  See?  Of course, you saw that already.  It was an obvious joke, and if you hadn't seen it coming, then, really?  I do that kind of joke all the time.  It is based on two elements.  Now, let's pull back the curtain on how I write this stuff, because like any hack of a writer (which I am), I stole borrowed every trick I know.

I got that one from Joss Whedon.  Yeah, I'm a self-professed Whedon fanboy.  (And see what I did there with "professed?"  Me = total hack.)  I am such a loser fan of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer that not only do I own the DVDs, I listened to the commentary tracks.  I suck.  (Vampire joke.  Me = total hack.)  At one point, Whedon commented that he built his dialog around the observation that the humor sometimes came from having the characters stumble over their attempts to construct a witty retort when in reality, most people simply aren't that witty.  So, make the stumble as humorous as possible.  That can be both funnier, and more real.  That's part of why Whedon writes some of the best dialog around.

Make the stumble into the joke.  I do that all the time.  How do you tell the difference between a Whedonesque stumble-joke and someone with no command over the English language?  You have to look for demonstrations of command of the language.  I do not have Joss Whedon's command of the English language.  I do not have John Scalzi's command of the English language, and for those who enjoy Whedon, I will mention that I think Scalzi is an even snappier writer.  I can occasionally put together a hack-ick joke, ripping off another writer's style, and mostly just write functionally.  Yet, in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and in the world of the illiterate, the functional writer may not be king, but he can publish a couple of books with Oxford and get tenure.  So I've got that going for me, which is nice.  (See what I mean?  Stolen.  And yes, that one was straight-up stolen.  Kids!  Don't do that!)

There is another element to the stumble-joke at the beginning of this post, and it is a common element of my blog-writing.  Strategic informality.  Did you notice that the last "sentence" was not a complete sentence?  I'm weird about this.  I go around pestering people about the proper uses of the terms, "data," and, "media," which are the plural forms of, "datum," and, "medium," respectively, and I used commas in a particularly formal way in this sentence.

I also use, "ain't," and, "y'all."

Allow me to defend, "y'all."  In Spanish, we have vosotros or ustedes.  Second person plural.  These are grammatically useful.  The absence of the second person plural in English is stupid.  "Y'all" isn't stupid.  The absence of the second person plural-- such as ustedes-- is stupid.  I'd say, "ustedes," if more people spoke Spanish, but this illiterate country of mono-linguists objects to the concept of education, and besides, I like keeping one sentence in one language.  "Y'all" is a perfectly fine word, and it fills a niche.  Second person plural.  Learn it.  Know it.  Live it.  (There I go again.)

So there is my defense of the word, "y'all."  You will see it on this blog.  You will not, however, see it in my academic publications, nor will you hear it when I do television or radio interviews.  In those contexts, I revert to a highly formalized word choice.  I use "y'all" in the classroom, and when blogging, both because I find the term useful, and because the strategic use of informality creates a tone that I enjoy, both as a reader and as a writer.

I find it particularly enjoyable, though, to alternate between formalized and informal tone, and you will see that throughout this blog.  I enjoy contrasting highly informal writing with what I might call high-pretense.  Academic writing is dull.  I can do it, but that doesn't mean I enjoy it to the same degree as the freedom of figuring out the most effective way to weave humor into commentary on literature, jazz, politics and economics.  So, I will use, "ain't," in order to contrast with the persnicketiness of telling you that the proper phrasing is that "data are."  This amuses me.  You may enjoy watching sportsball, but I enjoy this.  These are a few of my favorite things.

[Stop!  Thief!]

"Super duper missiles."  Emphasis added.  Why am I spending my Sunday morning writing about the latest silliness to escape from the vocal cords of Donald J. Trump?  I thought about writing something about the oddities of the stock market and the economy, something about the current state of the music industry... there are always more books to discuss...  Why this?  Why?

Donald J. Trump referred to "super duper missiles."  At some level, this is easy to dismiss as another minor demonstration of what we have known for years-- he is an infantile braggart.  He not only brags constantly, he does so in a way that betrays an intellect and maturity level far below what any serious mind would require of a serious leader.  Marcus Aurelius reborn, he is not.

Picture, in your mind's eye, Donald J. Trump trying to give the Gettysburg Address.  Go listen to Churchill's rousing speeches during WWII.  Then substitute Trump.  Imagine him trying to give those speeches.

Part of my point here is that there is a level of formality that we expect of leaders, just as there is a level of formality in academic writing.  Presidential papers reveal that how leaders speak when they aren't giving formal speeches is very different from how they speak when they are on camera, on microphone, or on stage, in Lincoln's case.

In fiction, or at least in satire, we have plenty of buffoonish presidents who speak like braggart children.  President Camacho from Idiocracy would be the obvious reference, but there are so many that trying to list them would be futile.

President Camacho can't go back and forth between sounding like an idiotic braggart and a serious leader because he's just an idiotic braggart.  He doesn't do the idiotic braggart schtick as schtick.  That's just him.  We watch, as audience, and cringingly laugh at the idea of such an idiotic braggart with a background in pro-wresting being elected president, but in the real world, we assess whether or not a person is just doing schtick by whether or not that person switches back and forth between the idiotic braggart schtick and speaking as a serious, intelligent person.

Hence my prompt:  imagine Trump trying to give a Churchill WWII speech, or the Gettysburg Address, or pick your favorite.

You know full well what would happen.  He'd toss the speech, ramble about some wackadoo conspiracy theory, rage at the media, and demand that everyone praise him for how great he is, because that's what he does.  And he would do it with childish diction.

Which is my point.

Super duper.

In contrast, consider Harry Truman's August 6, 1945 speech announcing the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

Somewhat more dignified, wouldn't you say?  No infantile bragging.

What would Trump have said?  He'd have made it worse, wouldn't he?  And he would have done so in the most childish of ways.

Super duper.

Every once in a while, Trump manages to read a speech from a teleprompter, and some faction of the commentariat fawns over how "presidential" he was, simply because he didn't say something like, "super duper."

I look at this from a writer's perspective.  Trump as character.  I have described him on several occasions as the Andy Kaufman character, "Tony Clifton," and I think I was among the first commentators to do so on The Unmutual Political Blog, but the point about Clifton was that he never switched back.  That was vital, and my most recent point here was that Trump is Clifton because he can't switch back.

Let's notice something about the phrase, "super duper."  Let's borrow, rather, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The dog that didn't bark.  That's a Sherlock Holmes reference.  Notice when the dog isn't barking.  A week from now, and certainly, a month from now, nobody will remember "super duper missiles."

Why not?  Because Trump will have said and done so many more stupid things that it will fade into the background.  Have you forgotten about Trump telling you to drink or inject household cleaning products yet?  That was just a few weeks ago.  Remember him staring directly at an eclipse? Probably not.  That was too long ago.  The thing is, every week or so, Trump says or does something so fantastically stupid that it would be presidency-defining for anyone else.

Dan Quayle.  While officiating at a spelling bee, he asked a child to spell, "potato," but in an incident that presaged the Seinfeld "Moops" bit, the card he held misspelled the word.  The child spelled it correctly, but as per the card, Quayle told the child to add a superfluous "e" to the end.  That incident defined Quayle for his life.  He was just reading from a card.  The card was wrong, and he glitched.  The recently passed scholar, Richard Fenno-- the greatest Congress scholar of all-- wrote a book after following Quayle around, and maintained that while Quayle was not the sharpest guy around, he was not the dolt that he was portrayed to be.

That card.  That damned card.  Not a smart guy, but that card...

For Trump, that'd be nothing.  The country would move on to the next Trump-moment within 24 hours.  That is why I'm writing this.  Pay attention!  Don't be inured to this!  Don't treat it as a din indistinguishable from silence.

"Super duper."  Unless intentionally and subversively violating the rules of formality and diction for purposes literary, humorous or otherwise, adults don't speak that way.  World leaders don't speak that way.  Trump was not speaking that way to be subversive.  He's just a childish braggart.  Were it intentionally subversive, he would be able to stop, and not just when reading a prepared speech written by someone else.  He would be able to stop when speaking his own words.  The fact that he can't is a demonstration that it isn't an intentional subversion.

Yet even if it were, there is a time and a place for intentional subversion of linguistic convention.  There is a reason that I use "ain't" on this blog, but not in my Oxford University Press books, and it isn't that the editors catch the "ain'ts" and remove them.  "Track changes."  It's a thing.  I'z got's me proof.  See?  That was intentional subversion of grammatical rules.  The fact that I can find strategic places to do so within blog writing demonstrates that it is intentional.

To be sure, writing is a skill.  By no means would I claim to be a great writer.  This blog is a writing exercise, a hobby, a dodge, and a way to throw out some ideas whist quaffing the extracted caffeine from the beans of that glorious plant because I am, I fully admit, an addict.  It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.  It is by the beans of Java the hands acquire shakes, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

Where was I?  Oh, right write.  Writing is difficult.  Linguistic aptitude is not the only demonstration of intellect, and even if it were, the process of moving from spoken language to the written word is more different than one might think without spending a great deal of time either struggling to write or studying the neurological differences between what happens when you speak and what happens when you write.  I do not judge people for mere lack of eloquence.

I am, after all, nothing more than a hack of a writer, myself.

There is something to be said for knowing your limitations, lest you fall prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect.  I don't need to rehash its applicability to Donald Trump here because a) I've said it before elsewhere, b) so have plenty of others, and c) that's not the point.  The point is that there is something more revealing about something like, "super duper missiles."

It is not actually ineloquent, nor is it a demonstration of ignorance.  It is a failure to toggle back and forth in a conscious, strategic way, between the formal and informal use of language in order to use a word like, "duper," in a culturally subversive way.  When I use, "ain't," or "y'all," on a blog while refraining from doing so in academic writing or during television and radio interviews, the conscious choice to toggle back and forth between formality and informality demonstrates purpose, as does the context in which the choices are made.  It is Trump's inability to toggle, and the childishness of the term, that reveal why I am spending a Sunday morning ramblin' (see? intentionality) about this.

This is why other world leaders don't take Trump seriously.  They think of him as an idiot child because of things like this.  There is a level of superficiality to any one incident, but the point is that it isn't one incident.  This is just Trump.  Remember the Australian PM, caught on tape behind Trump's back doing an impression of him?  To world leaders, Trump is a joke, and he's a joke because he speaks like an idiot, braggart child without the ability to toggle over to speaking like a serious, intelligent adult.  That's to say nothing of opinions expressed by Rex Tillerson, HR McMaster, or plenty of others who have worked in close proximity to Trump.

Beyond that, though, what is revealed?  What is revealed by the thought experiment of substituting Trump for Lincoln or Churchill at a vital moment in history to give an important speech?

Contrast Trump with Truman's announcement of the atomic bomb.  Perform the thought experiment of Trump in the position of Truman.

Do you see why I just spent my Sunday morning thinking about the phrase, "super duper missiles?"

I get to play around with language.  I'm a professor writing a blog.  I'm the peanut gallery, and language is inextricably linked to politics.  This is political commentary.  It is, however weird, my job.  Wow, my hours are weird.  But, language is the clay with which I mold my... um... this metaphor could go somewhere if I were a better writer, but I suck.  See previous comments.  This is somewhere between being hard at work and goofing off, but I can do that, and make myself the butt of the joke because I'm just some schlub shouting into the void.

Anyone who seriously cares what I write here... seriously?!  I'm not attacking you, the very few people who read this blog.  The point is that there is freedom in obscurity, and I enjoy that freedom.  That... academic freedom!  [Battle Hymn of the Professor.]

But... I'm not the President of the United States.  I'm nobody, and I never will be anybody.  I'm a lowly professor, and that's it.  The joy of writing a blog about which few people really care is that I can have fun.  I have no responsibility except to my own muse.

Like I said, I'm not the President of the United States.  That means, in principle, I could say, "super duper missiles."  In context, you would probably understand the intentional subversion of formality because I use phrases like, "intentional subversion of formality."  Me = pompous ass.

Or, "I'm not pompous, I'm pedantic.  There's a difference.  Let me explain it to you."*

If I were in any position of authority, I wouldn't use phrases like, "super duper missiles," just as I don't say, "ain't" when I am on television or writing for formal, academic outlets.  Then again, anyone who would put me in a formal position of authority is smoking something that isn't really legal in this state, and as a responsible adult-type person, I must discourage any such activities.

Friends don't let friends put people like me in positions of authority.



*Sorry, I didn't write this, but it isn't famous enough to jest about plagiarism with a failure to attribute it, and I don't actually know the origin.  It is also not easy to figure out who first said it.  So, I'll put some quote marks around it and footnote it, because this is a blog with footnotes.  OK, I am pompous.