Thanks for explaining your position over metaphorical politicians, Jamie.
Lucid and pertinent. I think I more or less completely agree, as I do also
with what Mark and Rupert said.
To take up two of your other points briefly (I hope).
"
Why wouldn't a reversed phrase like "a politician-like
prostitute" make sense, quite apart from the fact it doesn't roll off the
tongue? Probably an irrelevant question.)
"
Yeah, I thought, that doesn't work now (and I'm aware that part of my lack
of instinctual distaste for the term "whore" is that in my idiolect, it
comes over as pretty much archaic. Not the case obviously in Ireland, or
among American rap singers, however.)
But maybe there was a time when it *could* have made sense -- the phrase,
"politic whore" seemed to my ear something that could have existed in maybe
parallel to the title Thomas Dekker gives to one of his plays, _The Honest
Whore_.
When I dumped it into the frequently useful google search, sure enough, the
phrase "politic whore" had been used about that time, in _The Yorkshire
Tragedy_. Hey, I thought, clever me! Then I noticed where google had found
the term -- Gary Taylor's magisterial edition of _The Works of Thomas
Middleton_.
At that point, I howled with outrage, and started to beat my head against
the computer keyboard. It's bad enough that _The Revenger's Tragedy_ has
been ascribed to Middleton, but _The Yorkshire Tragedy_? Have we reached
the point where virtually any Renaissance play that can't be definitively
proved to be by someone else must have been written by Thomas Middleton?
A Casablanca moment -- like Renault, I found myself shocked, shocked that
such things could be going on.
When I got my temper back, I thought I'd see what happened when I chased
Jamie's, " 'shyster' to my ear sounds anti-Semitic," which I could
sympathise with. There are possible overtones there. Though what
immediately sprang to my mind was the possible Yiddish origin of the term (I
was wrong there) in parallel to "shickster" (which is originally Yiddish)
rather than the more obvious connection to Shylock.
Anyway, I chased the term via the usual suspects -- starting with Wiki (a
nice article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyster ) which sent me to
Michael Quinion's always useful World Wide Words blog (
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-shy1.htm ).
I was reading along happily, nodding in agreement and thinking how useful
Michael Quinion's researches can be, when a reference to _The Subterranean_
cropped up.
Uh oh, I thought, I hope this doesn't mean what I think it means, but alas
...
Slightly later, Michael wrote:
"Mike Walsh described shyster as both obscene and libellous."
*Mike Walsh* described something as obscene and libellous? Mike Walsh is
virtually a walking epitome of what it means to be obscene and libellous.
Frankly, when Boss Tweed suggested to Ike Rynders that something ought to be
done about Mike Walsh, and as a result a few days later, Walsh was found at
the foot of a flight of steps with his neck broken, I didn't shed any tears.
Or I wouldn't have, if I'd been alive in New York in 1859. I know the
inquest on his death concluded that he simply fell down the flight of stairs
while drunk, but believe *that* if you like.
That's bad enough, the suggestion that the first person to be recorded to
use the term was Walsh, but if you go to the OED and check under SHYSTER,
*there* it turns out that it was *also* used by Walsh's co-editor of _The
Subterranean_, George Wilkes, in a pamphlet he wrote while he was banged up
in the Tombs for committing a seditious libel. Normally, I'd be sympathetic
to someone in Wilkes' position, but given that Wilkes was majorly
responsible for hounding Madam Restell, an early practitioner of family
planning, to death, I wouldn't have objected if they'd thrown away the key.
So Jamie, while the anti-semitic overtones of the term "shyster" are
probably an unfortunate result of false association and folk etymology, it's
deeply compromised from its very origins and at the least should be used
with extreme caution.
Robin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Jamie McKendrick
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2014 11:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: status of the list
I'm afraid I hadn't heard of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and checking on
the net I see it's going to take me quite some time to figure out its
implications. Still, academic or not, questions about the way language work
have to be deemed appropriate for a poetry list. Maybe your timing, Robin,
was a shade off in this instance!
Briefly to explain why I disapprove of 'whorish politicians' and phrases
of that kind: mine's a very straightforward objection, even though I know
that language is a dangerous thing to be straightforward about . It's not
just that 'whore' is (mainly now) a contemptuous term for a prostitute, but
that any such phrase, for its meaning and impact, depends on a contempt for
prostitutes, even if it's a metaphor, and even if it's directed mainly at
men. I don't understand the basis for that contempt - well I understand it
but dislike it. (Why wouldn't a reversed phrase like "a politician-like
prostitute" make sense, quite apart from the fact it doesn't roll off the
tongue? Probably an irrelevant question.)
Would that view outlaw any phrases about other jobs? Not always, but
sometimes - 'shyster' to my ear sounds anti-Semitic but I know there may be
reasons to doubt this. There are certainly many racial slurs that have
lodged in the language, as metaphor or simile, that I hope all of us would
consider unacceptable. Whenever we hear 'whore' and cognates I think there
is an implied prejudice against women that may not be meant but is
inextricable, though I'm ignorant of southern Irish usage, and Giles's
subsequent linguistic point may also have weight.
...
Jamie
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