Book: Chamber of Horrors

This will also run Thursday in PLAY, The Daily Northwestern's entertainment section. I may change this/write more later.

Jargon is tempting. If you're lying, stating the obvious or don't know what you're talking about, jargon provides that extra lift into eloquence and credibility. Why use just one syllable if adding three will make you sound more important? That is the governmental approach to language as detailed in Chamber of Horrors: A Glossary of Official Jargon both English and American (1952: Andre Deutsch Limited, London). The author uses the pen name Vigilans “because he does not want to become the victim of a man-hunt effected by a horde of civil servants," according to the inside jacket cover.

Chimney sweepers become "flueologists," people work not "full time" but "on a full-time basis," and impractical plans are "of a visionary description."

Vigilans writes that this language is "no more reprehensible when used by officials than when used by their subjects." But he did not anticipate how much of it would become common usage. "Purchase," "amount," "conceptual," "background," "communicate" and "consume," all proved largely useless in this book, aren't even recognizable as jargon to most people today. Jargon more than ever now is accessible to all and constantly mingled with common speech, especially as job titles become more pretentious. As Paul Westerberg sang to a "flight attendant" in his song "Waitress in the Sky": "A 'sanitation expert' and a 'maintenance engineer,'/A garbageman, a janitor and you, my dear."

New jargon is easy to create because English verbs and nouns have a wealth of long synonyms. It creeps into common speech because if used right it sounds good, as George Orwell wrote in his essay "Politics and the English Language." A sentence comprising one blocky phrase after another is always suspect; a generally simple one with a little well-placed jargon, though no more useful or effective, will fool most people. Language, Orwell wrote, "becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."

Like Orwell, Vigilans targets mostly politicians and bureaucrats, quoting government documents, speeches and debates. He forgives doctors and scientists their use of esoteric language.

Chamber of Horrors is the most readable and funny reference book I've ever seen, except for Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1999; first published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book). Vigilans''entries are laced with wit and exasperation. To help the cause of good English, he shows step by step how to turn convoluted sentences into short, effective ones.
This book should be reprinted. It would be indispensable to writers, reporters and editors who have to dredge for sense in a jargon-flooded world where bluntness is unfashionable.

Rerun

Long before I joined the staff of The Daily Northwestern, I wrote this letter to the editor. Oh, what a snide little pissant I was. I'd like to preserve this—a little more perverse space junk just waiting to rattle someone's skull. As Julie once told me, bask in the horror of my logic!

Limiting gun rights means more murders by stabbing (Oct. 23, 2002)

I'm replying to Sriranjani Parthasarathy's Monday column ("Gun rights are about money, not our safety"). First of all, let me say that guns were a lousy idea in the first place. Also, I'm no fan of the NRA or the Bush administration; however, I would advise other writers to aim higher than simply taking hackneyed potshots at such entities.

Don't take the chance to write for granted -- death or massive head injuries rendering you unable to think or write could occur at any time (I'm purely trying to give advice here) -- and would you want this little inkblot left behind as the final piece in your legacy? Would I be writing the same letter if I agreed with Parthasarathy's column? I honestly can't say that I would -- but the piece would have been much more respectable, and much more widely read, if she had strived to present her opinion from a less tired angle.

The column neglects to mention that Vermont, where one can purchase and carry a handgun with ease, boasts the nation's second-lowest crime rate. England and Wales are to be commended for their low rate of gun-related deaths, but I bet that the total rate of violent deaths in the U.K. is proportionally about the same as ours. Death is death, no matter the method, and anything can become a weapon in a violent crime -- guns are just presented and sold more explicitly as such. I wonder how many poor people in the U.K. have had to suffer stabbings, beatings or something resourceful, like being assaulted with household steel-wool scrubbing pads for hours, when they could have gone nice and quickly with a bullet between the eyes.

You think about that. When you oppose gun rights, you oppose our right to be murdered with relative speed and efficiency and a minimum of pain. You also add to the plight of violent criminals, who, when recalling their deeds, will also remember the prolonged pain of their victims, whose horrendous and unexpected deaths could not be administered humanely without the loving convenience of modern firearms. This contradicts the mostly admirable liberal principle of extending merciful, humanitarian treatment to even the most vile elements of our society.

Scott Gordon

Medill freshman

"City Watch" from May 5, original version

My editors butchered my City Watch column in this Thursday's Daily Northwestern to rid it of sarcasm, or anything else that might prickle the humorless twats of the world. So just for the sake of it, I've restored the first section—the way GOD (and I) INTENDED!

The 'Yellow' Daily

Last Thursday on this page, Evanston resident Charles Boos wrote that The Daily has "a long tradition of yellow journalistic attempts to make our town appear much scarier than it is."

Boos, Communication '62, correctly pointed out that an April 25 story erroneously referred to accused murderer and Medicare scammer Ronald Mikos as an Evanston resident. It was our lead story that day.

Similarly, a year ago a flawed Daily story about a shooting in Rogers Park led to elaborate Daily-bashing on an online Evanston message board.

"It would appear that they also want to convince their readers that it is very dangerous to step off the campus into Evanston," Boos wrote on the message board, run by Ald. Ann Rainey (8th), who recently complained on the board that talking to Daily reporters will "come back to haunt you."

Evanston is not a scary place. If anything, The Daily's City Desk encourages its reporters to explore the city and show readers more than crime and poverty.

"I think you have a problem with people in Evanston in general, except for the ones that are not exactly like your parents," Boos told me of NU students.

I think students have this problem long before they read our paper.

NU students tend to arrive here with a vague fear of the city beyond campus and downtown -- referring to the remainder of the city, which most of them have never seen, with stock words such as "ghetto" or "sketchy." During New Student Week, NU staffers and students tell the new kids, usually without knowledge or qualification, that campus is buffered by "bad neighborhoods."

Boos clarified that he doesn't think our reporters make a "deliberate attempt" to make Evanston look bad. He knows editors have good reason to push crimes onto the front page. We don't do this all the time; often a murder seems to rescue us from an otherwise slow news day, so we emphasize it. We make most of our bad decisions without even thinking of them as decisions. We drift into them out of necessity or habit.

I'll admit this doesn't help students to adjust. As Boos says: "A lot of students are being exposed to a more diverse, a more complicated (city) than they lived in wherever they came from. So it's troubling when the few things that happen in Evanston become major indications of danger."

But more often we write about crime for laughs—just read any day's "Blotter." People masturbate on the sidewalks. People are arrested and released, then get arrested again later the same day when the cops notice they've stolen back confiscated items. People find original and hilarious ways to harass and batter each other.

Are we sadistic bottom-feeders? Hell yes. As journalists, we sometimes need solid, real-life black comedy to keep our spirits up. But are we reckless "yellow journalists?" No.

Havoc in a college town

Friday, May 6

Walking south early this morning (about 1:50 or 2:00 a.m.) down Sherman Avenue, I saw Northwestern University Police and Evanston Police cars converging on the Evanston Shitty Bar District—roughly the 800 block of Grove Street and the 1500 block of Sherman, marked off by The Keg of Evanston, Bar Louie and Prairie Moon. I got to the corner of Sherman and Grove, where a swarm of bar-goers were drifting about, some of them clustering around the cops either to figure out what was going on or try and tell the cops what was going on. First thing I heard was an officer on the sidewalk yelling at them—"you've been ordered to move, or you go down to The Station" (the EPD station is just around the corner on Elmwood Avenue, not so distant or majestic as an officer can make it sound). I looked around and counted 11 cop cars and two ambulances.

I could see only one cop interviewing people as I walked up and down Sherman. The rest posted themselves along the block and outside the Keg. I could tell from the rumors going around that there had been a fight in one of these bars—I figured most likely the Keg, the ugliest and most crowded dive in the Shitty Bar District. Also, as far as I could tell, it had involved two or threee people at most. One rumor was it had erupted from some frat rivalry. The CTA 201 bus inched its way up the block as police cruisers were moved from their parking spaces in the lane of traffic.

I asked an officer standing outside the Keg what happened. "Nothing to worry about," he said.

Two police departments and a fire department didn't seem to think so. It looked excessive in this shitty bar district, which, shitty though it is, doesn't draw a crowd that needs much controlling, even it's Thursday night and people are pulling off random Cinco de Mayo bullshit. As I heard one passerby say to another, if this happened at Fullerton and Western, how many cops would show up? (Not this damn many). The officers there obviously didn't need to be there, at least not because of this incident. One was idle enough to ticket a guy for walking out of Prairie Moon with a half-empty pitcher of ale in his hand. Start to finish, it was a display of swift and sweeping overkill without a climax.

I suppose we'll just have to wait now for the official report...

Palindromes

The caricatures in Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling put you at a comfortable remove from the fucked-up bits of your own life, the things you'd rather not admit to. They were strange and jagged but precise. When they were cruel, when they got hurt, it was easy to enjoy because they were allowed little warmth. In Palindromes, the laughs are smothered and muted by cloyingly well-intentioned characters. Ellen Barkin slathers on the sweet motherhood—Mrs. Wiener, in Welcome to the Dollhouse, was just flat-out shrill, even when loving. Palindromes seldom lets you step back for a laugh; the characters enfold you with their self-referential joy and goodness, even if the only appropriate thing to do is hate them.

Scott's Arbitrary Judgment: Damn good.

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