Christopher Hitchens has an interesting bit of speculation up on Slate: if Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, will he then announce for President?
I agree with Hitchens far more on religious issues than I do on political ones, but he always makes me think. Plus, he's a fine writer in any case, and his thinking here is especially intriguing. Plus, you gotta like a guy who not only uses the word etiolated, but renders it as a hyperlink, for your convenience in looking it up.
Word. Power. That's my Hitch.
4 comments:
didn't help Jimmy Carter
didn't help Jimmy Carter
True. But Carter wasn't up for the NPP while running for office. In fact, he won in 2002, more than two decades after his presidency had ended.
Plus, you gotta like a guy who not only uses the word etiolated, but renders it as a hyperlink, for your convenience in looking it up.
Hyperlinking a vocabulary word is boastful and condescending. If you have to provide a definition, you're trying too hard to impress.
Dan:
You've got a valid point. But (sit down now) I don't completely agree.
First, there's always a place for a handy link, even if you expect your audience's chins to be sufficiently drool-free that they might know how to use the Google. It strikes me as a courtesy when people do this, when writing for an on-line outfit.
Second, when the word you've thought of is just the right word, or when you want to share your delight with the language, you get to do so.
Which is not to say that Mr. Hitchens might not occasionally indulge himself in trying to impress. But it's okay by me -- I am frequently impressed by him, whether or not he appears to be trying to do that.
Finally, there's the possibility that a Slate editor added the link, which raises the possibilities that the editor was the condescending party, and/or that the editor had to look up the word him- or herself, and so spared the readers the effort.
Just because YOU already knew what it meant …
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