The best book I’ve read about show business (not that there’s a lot of competition) is “Cavett,” by the former late-night talk-show host Dick Cavett (duh) with his college pal, journalist Christopher Porterfield, published in 1974. I recently found the book in my attic, beyond dog-eared, after assuming it had been long, long gone.
There are very, very few books in any canon I’d describe as “compulsively readable”. This is one. Anyway, your correspondent is a huge fan of the language and words. When they’re appropriated, diminished or even ruined by political and/or cultural purposes much smaller than the Mother Tongue, as almost all political and/or cultural purposes are, well, that pisses me off. Here are Cavett and Porterfield with an example I bet you havent thought of in a long time, if ever:
“I must say the word “gay,” is about the silliest choice of a word for homesexual. How was it picked? It means joyous or exuberant, and what that has to do with homosexuality is anybody’s guess. Should straight people be called “glums”? It follows that the proper word for bisexual would be something akin to manic-depressive. Gay was such a good word before it was appropriated; when read aloud today from literature of the 18th and 19th century, it invariably gets a laugh.”
“Appropriated,” is exactly the right word for what’s happened to gay, a word that has literally been redefined. At least it wasn’t done, as far as I can tell, for deliberate political reasons. Forget “liberal”, which was buried years if not decades ago. Consider “agenda,” as in the accusatory: “Everyone knows he has his own agenda.” Who doesn’t? Who shouldn’t?
That’s at least less partisan than the butcher job currently being done on “elite” or, better, “elitism”, or best, “the elite” which it is now bad to be a part of. Then there’s the “Ivy League elite,” reviled by millions, almost all of whom would jump at the chance to send their children to Harvard or Yale or Princeton and then bore you into a coma bragging about it.
The nadir of this dumbness, for me, came a couple years ago when ESPN’s boorish Chris Berman suggested the word dynasty must be redefined to reflect “the realities of the salary cap era.” Sorry, Boomer. Even the Worldwide Leader doesn’t get to redefine words. Depressing footnote: Berman went to Brown. He’s part of the Ivy League elite.
Interesting, and very different, takes on the “elite” nonsense can be found here and here.
