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· Pointed Takes on Style Delineated · September 28, 2004 « The Last Acquirement of the Educated Mind | Main | Veepstake Styles: Family Resemblances from the Rigging Shack » · Home on the Range of Texas Gobbledygook ·R I begin this way because I'm into sawing Texas old-growth today, not George W. Bush's (though his Prairie Chapel Ranch does produce some), but Maury Maverick's. Maverick's the New-Deal Democrat who invented the apt political term "Gobbledygook." I just learned this in Michael Lind's Made in Texas: George Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (2003). Grandson of that famous Maverick whose unbranded calves became connected with deviant politicians, then independent individuals, Maverick lambasted empty political language in 1944.
Though I'd not endorse Maverick's move, its moral equivalent does seem appealing. I say this today in a charitable spirit of voter education. Consider, for instance, Jocolo's thoughts over at A Writing Teacher's Blog yesterday:
Despite Laura Bush's librarian-like efforts to encourage good reading, I think George Bush will never fully understand what the great Canadian Northrop Frye once more seriously had in mind for genuine literacy. Frye wrote in his book The Educated Imagination (1964) this thought, perhaps anticipating the President's famous seven-minute reading, on September 11, 2001, in Florida:
Well, I must conclude with one more Canadian voice, that of the late Bernard Lonergan, from his great book Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957). A brilliant theologian, Lonergan is like the Rev. above, praying, bless his soul, for that Presidential turkey on the right.
Want four more years, anyone? Permalink Comments Sign me up for "no more years," Styles. I appreciate being sandwiched between Frye and Lonergan. Nice company. Let's hope the "style points" in tomorrow night's debates go to the taller guy. John, it's rather Frye who's sandwiched between you and Lonergan, which gives me poetic leave to sharpen my point. Since Frye was an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada, I think he might also be imagained as praying now for all gobbledygookers innocent of The Great Code. You're right: poetry does help. Ah! A Texas chain-saw massacre!
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