What's in a word? Plenty.

Stephen Chupaska — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:12:50 GMT

What do we read?
Words, words, words.
And you don’t have to be a sharp editor, like mine, to find some words and phrases either spoken or written (Don’t try me, Chupaska.-Ed.) that are not necessarily clichés, but tend to spring up in everyday life.
Of course, there’s the collective fingernails-on-the-chalkboard feeling one gets when you see an errant apostrophe “s”; e.g. East Lyme Viking’s Football.
Doesn’t it just make you want to unsheathe a red pen and demand grammatical satisfaction?
Or when people say a book is “entitled” The Road To Wigan Pier or a movie is “entitled” The Last Starfighter.
Yes, the grandiose “entitled” can be used in place of “titled,” but plain old “titled” is entitled to some more respect.
How about when people use “impact” as a verb? Ten bucks says your boss has uttered something along these lines: “In order to impact the bottom line, we will need to adopt a more proactive business model.”
And people who say or write “proactive” should, of course, be stripped of the right to vote.
In the newspaper world, we reporters tend to lean on certain words and phrases. For instance, as the town budget season is well underway, be on the lookout for “cleaved”: “The Stonington Board of Selectmen cleaved $10,000 from the budget, making the planned public Petit Syrah drinking fountain an unlikelihood.”
Should budget cuts become a reality, they will probably be “drastic” cuts, or, in some dire cases, they will be “Draconian” cuts.
As a rule of thumb in newspaper articles, all old trees will be stately, all auto crashes will be horrific, all downpours will be torrential, and nearly every snowstorm will be blinding.
City councils will be under fire, decisions will be controversial, a throng of people will always show up, and the public will nearly always express outrage.
But it’s not only reporters who use crutch words and expressions; part of the problem is the people who write letters to the editor.
Now, it’s been a while since I graduated from Wharton, but I know that blaming the readers is not the best business strategy for an industry that’s “seeking to redefine itself,” but nevertheless there is something to it.
Because there is one word, above all, you won’t stop using: “kudos.”
In the last month, six authors of letters to the editor of The Day employed “kudos.” That’s on average one “kudos” per week.
And in case you’re wondering, Zydeco band Beausoiel received kudos for a great show at the Garde Arts Center.
Superintendent of Schools Christopher Clouet received kudos for the way he handled some bother with Tourtellette High School.
The Day received kudos for bringing back the TV listings and for a story on a New London restaurant.
New London City Manager Martin Berliner got sarcastic kudos for sending out a tax bill around the holidays.
A 9-year-old received kudos for a letter about world peace.
Kudos, as you might imagine, comes from the Greek “kydos,” or, that which is heard of.
According to never-wrong Wikipedia, the word fell into favor among British university students in the middle of the 19th century.
So, presumably, letters to the Times of London then began, “Kudos to Prime Minister Disraeli for the Reform Act of 1867.”
After about 100 years of obscurity, the word apparently vaulted back into use in the 1980s when “kudos” became the name of a chocolate-covered granola bar.
And, indeed, many a schoolboy and schoolgirl received Kudos in their brown bag lunches, along with the impossible to open packets of Capri Sun.
The kudos revolution is an example of how words and language inhale and exhale over time.
And the English language is an excellent topsail; its vocabulary continues to change the way we communicate and use words, and propel it forward, for better or worse.
So, if you liked this column, feel free to offer me props, big-ups, or perhaps holla at me. I’ll know what you are saying.
Just spare me the kudos.
This is the opinion of Times writer Stephen Chupaska.

Connecticut: We Are The Truly Blessed

Stephen Chupaska — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:46:00 GMT

Normally it takes some UConn-related exploits on the hardwood or the sight of beautiful women driving Swedish cars to make me happily nutso about the Nutmeg State.

But the recent kafuffle over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s religion and fellow GOPer Mike Huckabee calling himself a “Christian leader” makes me proud to be from Connecticut, where God has the good sense to stay home during elections.

While Romney and Huckabee waste voters’ time about who or what gets to umpire the afterlife, we can thank the heavens that our politicians, flawed though they may be, debate real-life issues—health care, schools, the fate of the local economy.

Last November, the 2nd Congressional District race between Joe Courtney and Rob Simmons was the closest race in the nation and to both candidates’ credit, neither campaign used religion to attack the other.

In New London last month, most of the City Council candidates named whatever church they belong to in their campaign literature, but most of the public statements dealt with public schools and public safety, not about what pile of rocks they go to on Sunday mornings.

But it’s not like Connecticut is populated by godless heathens either.

According to a Gallup poll from 2006, 37 percent of Nutmeggers attend church or synagogue at least once a week or almost every week, the highest such number among the New England states. And let’s not forget that the state’s Blue Laws once prohibited the sale of contraceptives and still make it impossible for me to purchase on Sunday the requisite amount of bourbon it takes to get through New York Giants games.

Mainly, it’s because the state’s political culture is governed by New York Times reporter William Yardley’s brilliantly coined phrase “pragmatic apathy.” Yardley used the expression to explain the state’s collective ho-hum reaction to the legalization of civil unions.

Pragmatic apathy basically manifests itself like this: “So, gay people want to be legally joined. Is that going to keep me from my golf game and driving my Benz real fast on the Merritt Parkway? No? OK, fine. Let them do what they want.”

It’s that same idea that serves as a counter argument to the awful and pretentiously titled “Faith in America” speech former Gov. Romney gave earlier this month in College Station, Texas.

Forced by former Arkansas Governor Huckabee’s surge through the now parted Iowa poll numbers, Romney was compelled to explain how his membership in the Church of Latter-day Saints would affect his presumed presidency and, more importantly, to placate religious right-wing prairie voters who will caucus on Jan. 4.

Romney attempted to channel JFK’s famous 1960 speech about church and state. Instead he offered a ham-handed and condescending treatise on God and America.

“We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason,” Romney said. “No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life.”

Did anyone else read those last two lines and say, “Well yeah, Mitt. That’s the point.”

Last Sunday, conservative columnist George Will, frustration evident on his face, opined on This Week that “We are reaching a critical mass in this country, where you’re going to get a rebellion of people against the suffusion of public life with piety.”

Now, Connecticut is perhaps too mild-mannered to serve as a staging ground for that most welcome revolution. But imagine both Romney and Huckabee are still vying for the GOP nomination around the time of the Connecticut primary. Think of the freedom they would have to talk about decidedly empirical things, such as schools, health-care bills, and the economy, among people, who, for the most part, don’t care about how they worship.

It’s the same notion that keeps piety private, and that’s the lesson both Romney and Huckabee would do well to learn, if not for their own good, but for the good of the nation if one of these two is unfortunately elected president.