Last week I wrote about civil society taking a stand against Trump. This week I continue that theme, highlighting a few more noteworthy sources of resistance in these troubled times. Read on, and prepared to be impressed with the worlds of teen publishing and dictionaries!
Teen Vogue
If the words “teen girl magazine” make you think of nothing but makeup tips for teenyboppers and trite personality quizzes, you obviously haven’t picked up a copy of Teen Vogue lately. What am I talking about? Here’s Sady Doyle’s “The true story of how Teen Vogue got mad, got woke, and began terrifying men like Donald Trump” with a brief explanation:
Teen Vogue deserves credit not just for Duca’s op-ed [“Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America”] but for the entirety of its political coverage, which has provided sharp, impassioned coverage of everything from gun control to Black Lives Matter in 2016. Much of this is due to Teen Vogue’s editor, Elaine Welteroth, who graduated to the position last May [2016], and Phil Picardi, the magazine’s digital editorial director. Just [four to five] years ago, the site’s most-read articles were comprised almost entirely of light celebrity and beauty news (an expose of Taylor Swift’s secret past as an Abercrombie & Fitch model performed particularly well). Today, a quick scan of its Twitter feed reveals pieces about the Dylann Roof verdict and Ohio’s recent abortion ban interspersed with galleries of “2016’s Cutest Celebrity Couples” and a review of Miranda Kerr’s skincare routine.
The magazine’s commitment to publishing serious reads for adolescent girls has not flagged as the Trump administration’s near daily misadventures have exhausted the nation. They continue to offer up well-written and wide-ranging stories sure to be of interest to all readerships. Here’s a partial list of articles currently on their website’s front-page:
To quote Doyle once more:
So: Teen Vogue publishes stronger, more adversarial Trump coverage than Time or Newsweek? Teen Vogue contains both skincare tips and Native American history lessons? Of course it does. Teen Vogue, unlike Time or Newsweek, is drawing explicitly from a rich tradition of aggressive, opinionated, adversarial coverage of sexist white men.
…
Now we need to stop feigning shock at the women and girls who are running circles around mainstream publications’ political coverage, and start listening to what they have to tell us.
Dictionaries
Using words clearly to inform and analyze or compellingly to persuasive effect makes for good journalism. But all of that would be moot if those writing didn’t have a solid understanding of words in the first place. And that’s where dictionaries come in. But more than being mere catalogues of parts of speech, definitions, and origins, dictionaries serve to archive linguistic meaning that is not only precise but contextualized, preserving historical and contemporary connotations, references, and implications. As such they complete some of the same functions as historians, helping society to identify and recall truth, understand the present, and learn from the past.
Two particular dictionaries have taken their tasks as stewards of linguistic accuracy and context particularly seriously, wading with some frequency into our national morass in order to elucidate, remind, and when necessary, call out.
The first and more well known of these is Merriam-Webster. Founded way back in 1843, Merriam-Webster has managed to assert its relevance in the digital age by tweeting rather prolifically about the Trumposphere.
Some of these forays into the public discourse are basically petty in nature—like snapping back when Trump in a tweet once mixed up the spellings of council and , a homonym mishap that could happen to anyone.
Others in fact exonerate him (unlike the Mueller Report) following accusations of his having misused language—as in the case of his somewhat unnatural but ultimately correct usage of the adverb bigly, or when he employed the little-used idiom to laugh up one’s sleeve.
But still others—the majority—are implicitly or overtly critical. And while the dictionary’s interaction always ties into language somehow, there are times when one cannot help but get the impression that the criticism is not merely linguistic.
Observe these examples from Marketwatch’s 10 times Merriam Webster has majorly trolled Donald Trump:
1) Trump lies.
When Trump said he invented the term “priming the pump” The President asked journalists from The Economist in May whether they understood what he meant by “prime the pump. He then added: “Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.”
2) Facts are facts.
When Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts” Conway said that the administration was giving “alternative facts” when Sean Spicer claimed that Trump’s was the largest crowd in inauguration history.
3) Ivanka is complicit.
When Ivanka said she didn’t understand what it mean to be “complicit” The president’s daughter told CBS this in an interview in April.
4) Trump is surrounded by grifters.
Or this one from February, highlighted in a Huffpost article:
The famously sassy dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster tweeted a perfect word ahead of Wednesday’s congressional testimony from Michael Cohen, who once was Donald Trump’s personal attorney and fixer.
5) And also con men.
That same day, online dictionary searches for con man experienced an 800% spike, as reported by Merriam-Webster itself:
Con man sweet-talked its way to the top of our lookups on February 27th, 2019, following reports that Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, planned on using this term as a descriptor of his erstwhile client in testimony to be given before Congress later today.
Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, plans to tell Congress on Wednesday that Mr. Trump is a “con man” and a “cheat” who knew an adviser was communicating with WikiLeaks about the release of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia.
— The New York Times, 27 Feb. 2019
But Merriam-Webster is not the only dictionary service working to call things by their true names and hold language manipulators to account. Wordsmith has been subtly calling out Trump, his administration, and his followers from the very beginning. Their “A word a day” newsletter for the week of October 7th, 2016, whose theme was purportedly the very innocent-sounding “Miscellaneous Words,” listed one for each weekday:
- narcissisim
- lien
- vitriol
- precarious
- demagogue
Miscellaneous coincidence? Likely not. But just in case, let’s see what their detailed entry for demagogue says:
demagogue or demagog
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: A person who appeals to the prejudices and emotions of the people to gain power.
verb tr., intr.: To manipulate an issue, to speak, or to act in the manner of a demagogue.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek demagogos (leader of the people), from demos (people) + agogos (leader). Earliest documented use: 1649.
USAGE:
“We’re at a tipping point in America, and a media so eager to be objective can no longer pretend that Donald Trump isn’t the most dangerous, authoritarian, and unhinged demagogue to ever seek the nation’s highest office. We can barely keep up now with his misstatements and lies, with his name-calling and racist rants, with his crazy, self-absorbed pontifications. It’s so bad that I almost suspect each new mini-scandal is a deliberate ruse to distract from the last one. And his candidacy is so toxic that I can no longer pretend to show respect for anyone who still supports him.”
Dianne Williamson;
Time to Stop Pretending Trump is Presidential Material;
Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Massachusetts); Jun 9, 2016.
In His Own Words:
“We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
-Donald Trump (
reference)
Both Merriam-Webster and Wordsmith have also helped provide commentary on dangerous current trends. Merriam-Webster included the terms alt-right and dog whistle in their new additions to the dictionary last year, for instance, while as early as this week, Wordsmith contributed their two cents to the ongoing bickering over the use of the word Nazi as an epithet:
Godwin’s law
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: The idea that as a debate progresses, it becomes inevitable that someone would compare another to Hitler or the Nazis.
ETYMOLOGY:
Coined by Mike Godwin (b. 1956). Earliest documented use: 1991.
NOTES:
Lawyers don’t make laws, but a lawyer once did make a “law”. Back when people lived in caves, they used something called the Usenet to engage in discussions with people around the world. These discussions involved passionate arguments and debates on humanity’s deep yearnings and moral dilemmas. Is it pronounced gif or jif? Is Mac better or PC? Does it take one space or two after a period? The Who vs. Led Zeppelin. vi vs. emacs?
A lawyer named Mike Godwin coined an adage that stated: “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Since then Godwin’s law has served as a useful reminder that whenever a comparison to Hitler or Nazis is made, the discussion is over and the one making such comparison loses.
There is, however, an exception. When actual Nazis (or as our president calls them, “very fine people”) are involved in a discussion, invoking Godwin’s law doesn’t mean anything. Godwin himself has started [sic] that
manytimes.
USAGE:
“In 2017, neo-Nazis claimed to be offended by the video game Wolfenstein 2, since it had the hero shooting Nazis. If you self-identify as a neo-Nazi, you can’t claim Godwin’s Law when people lump you in with Hitler and the Nazis.”
Eamonn Brosnan; Taking Offence for All the Wrong Reasons; Winnipeg Free Press (Canada); Mar 21, 2019.
Yet another dictionary, dictionary.com, provides a more succinct and actionable take on the above:
Regardless of how strict or unyielding someone might seem, you might want to think twice before hurling the term fascist or Nazi at them. Then again, if you encounter an actual fascist or Nazi, let the insults fly.
—“Nazi vs. Fascist: Is There Really A Difference?”
* * * * *
Journalists and dictionaries are, as we have seen, performing an important task by helping to accurately identify, describe, contextualize, and analyze the realities of our past and present. Thankfully, both sectors appear to be not only holding the line in the Trump era but expanding their scope and positive influence. Let us hope there are always plenty of such individuals and outlets willing to call a spade a spade, and to spread the word about it.