正文
在國內學英文時，相信都在課堂上、課堂下花了不知多少時間和精力在英文語法上。
到了美國才感覺到，一般的美國人說話比較“不講究”，語法不語法的，意思能表
達清楚了也就可以了。所以，說話也就漸漸地變得比較“隨便”，入鄉隨俗嘛。
第一次在電視上看美國總統辯論時，很為克林頓、老布什總統的口才傾倒，也很欣
賞當時的競選第三者，Ross Perot的德克薩斯口音與詼諧。政治家自然和商人及一
般人不同，領袖嘛，得有讓人佩服的地方。而2000年W布什與戈爾的總統競選辯論，
以及布什以後的白宮生涯，改變了這種看法，想不到，耶魯大學法學院畢業的美國
總統，不但頭痛“fuzzy math”，而且竟然經常使用“gummy grammar [拙劣的語法
]”，有些話簡直成了“經典”，常被引用，象下文中提到的“Is our children
learning?” 恐怕會讓國內教初級英文的老師笑掉大牙吧。
現在，又來了個競選副總統的州長佩林，新聞記者專業畢業，不但對過去8年的曆史
頭痛，設法避而不談，其在采訪、VP辯論中的表現/表演，更讓人捧腹、驚訝。
當年布什獲選的一個原因，據說是一些選民認為布什象是“他們”中的一個，可以
隨和到在一起喝啤酒。現在，又有人欣賞佩林的風度，說她象是個懂得柴米油鹽的
家庭婦女。一個可以與其一起喝啤酒的總統把美國領導到如今的地步，一個可以與
其聊家常的家庭婦女副總統會把美國領導出目前的境地嗎？
“We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder
when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they
get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country,
but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not
O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable
crossroads for the country?”
在電視評論節目中見到過下文作者Maureen Dowd，話語不多，聲調不高，但言辭犀
利。不愧是普利策獎的得主。
有時候，得欣賞原文，原汁原味兒，尤其是這種諷刺有加的專欄文章。
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Sarah’s Pompom Palaver,By MAUREEN DOWD,Published: October 4, 2008
I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians
whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.
There’s W.’s gummy grammar, of course, like the classic, “Is our children
learning?” And covering the first Bush White House required doing simultaneous
translation for a president who never met a personal pronoun he liked or a wacky
non sequitur he could resist.
Poppy Bush drew comparisons to Warren G. Harding, whose prose reminded H. L.
Mencken of “a string of wet sponges. ... It is so bad that a sort of grandeur
creeps into it.” When Harding died, E. E. Cummings lamented, “The only man,
woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical
errors is dead.”
Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch. As
Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with
Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax
and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of
Frontier Baroque.”
Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest
virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last
Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven.
At Sarah Palin’s old church in Wasilla, they spoke in tongues. Maybe that’s
where she picked it up.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain ran against Barack Obama by sneering that their
prose was meatier than The One’s poetry. Sarah’s running against the
Democrat’s highfalutin eloquence by speakin’ in homespun haikus.
We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when
elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of
training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if
you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be
elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for
the country?
Did Joe Biden have to rhetorically rush over to Home Depot before Sarah could
once more brandish “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there
brought to Washington, D.C.?”
With her pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory
ideas that lead nowhere: One minute she promises to get “greater oversight”
by government; the next, she lectures: “Government, you know, you’re not
always a solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem.”
Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts”
of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability,
she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change,
what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a
climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was,
miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You
know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that
we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,”
asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just
too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)
A political jukebox, she drowned out Biden’s specifics, offering lifestyle as
substance. “In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have
been, you know, all our lives,” she said, making the middle class sound like
it has its own ZIP code, superior to 90210 because “real” rules.
Sometimes, her sentences have a Yoda-like — “When 900 years old you reach,
look as good you will not” — splendor. When she was asked by Couric if
she’d ever negotiated with the Russians, the governor replied that when Putin
“rears his head” he is headed for Alaska. Then she uttered yet another
sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to
make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia,
because they are right there.”
Reared heads reared themselves again at the debate, when she said that Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac “were starting to really kind of rear the head of
abuse.”
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and
also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as
nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity
of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”
Poppy Bush dropped personal pronouns and launched straight into verbs because
he was minding his mother’s admonition against “the big I.” Palin, by
contrast, uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face
with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True
mavericks don’t brand themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05dowd.html?em
Maureen Dowd
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maureen Dowd (born January 14, 1952) is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for
The New York Times.[1][2] She has worked for the Times since 1983, when she
joined as a metropolitan reporter.[1][2] In 1999, she was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.[1][3]
Dowd was born in Washington, D.C.,[1][2] the youngest of five children, where
her father (who was born in County Clare in Ireland) worked as a Washington D.C.
police inspector.[4]
Career
In 1973, Dowd received a B.A. in English from Catholic University in Washington,
D.C.[1][2]She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the Washington
Star where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature
writer.[1][2] When the newspaper closed in 1981, she went to work at Time.[1][2]
In 1983, she joined The New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter.[1][2]
She began serving as correspondent in The TimesWashington bureau in 1986.[1][2]
In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award from Columbia University.[2] In
1992, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting,[2] and in 1994 she won
a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.[2][5]
In 1995, Dowd became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page[1][2],
replacing Anna Quindlen,[4] who left to become a full-time novelist.[6] Dowd was
named a Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine in 1996.[2] She was the winner of
the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.[1] In 2000, she won The
Damon Runyon Award for outstanding contributions to journalism.[7] In 2005, she
was the first Mary Alice Davis Lectureship speaker sponsored by the School of
Journalism and the Center for American History at The University of Texas at
Austin.[8]
Writing style
Dowd's columns are distinguished by an acerbic, often polemical writing style.
Her columns often display a critical and irreverent attitude towards powerful figures
such as President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and Pope Benedict
XVI. Dowd sometimes refers to Bush as "Bubble-Boy" or simply "W." Vice President
Dick Cheney is known by a variety of monikers, including "Vice", "Darth", "Shooter",
"Tricky Dick Deuce", "Dr. No" and "Big Time."[9] Former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld she routinely calls "Rummy," although this is actually a nickname used by his
long-time close personal friends. "Wolfie" however, is not an actual nickname used by
the friends of Paul D. Wolfowitz. President George H. W. Bush, whom she covered
as Times White House Correspondent, is known as "41," "Daddy" or "Poppy Bush."
More recent targets of Dowd's derision include former CIA Director George Tenet,
known as "Slam," or "Slam-dunk" and Cheney's chief of staff after the resignation
and indictment of Scooter Libby, David Addington, who is commonly referred to as
"the Black Adder." In a not-so-veiled swipe at Katie Couric[citation needed], Dowd
frequently refers to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket."
Her use of many such nicknames has prompted some to parody the concept of her
own book, Bushworld, by saying that it is really "Dowdworld - Enter at Your
Own Risk."[10] Another frequent Dowd motif is to catalog the popular culture
influences of the public figures she profiles in her columns.[11].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Dowd
到了美國才感覺到，一般的美國人說話比較“不講究”，語法不語法的，意思能表
達清楚了也就可以了。所以，說話也就漸漸地變得比較“隨便”，入鄉隨俗嘛。
第一次在電視上看美國總統辯論時，很為克林頓、老布什總統的口才傾倒，也很欣
賞當時的競選第三者，Ross Perot的德克薩斯口音與詼諧。政治家自然和商人及一
般人不同，領袖嘛，得有讓人佩服的地方。而2000年W布什與戈爾的總統競選辯論，
以及布什以後的白宮生涯，改變了這種看法，想不到，耶魯大學法學院畢業的美國
總統，不但頭痛“fuzzy math”，而且竟然經常使用“gummy grammar [拙劣的語法
]”，有些話簡直成了“經典”，常被引用，象下文中提到的“Is our children
learning?” 恐怕會讓國內教初級英文的老師笑掉大牙吧。
現在，又來了個競選副總統的州長佩林，新聞記者專業畢業，不但對過去8年的曆史
頭痛，設法避而不談，其在采訪、VP辯論中的表現/表演，更讓人捧腹、驚訝。
當年布什獲選的一個原因，據說是一些選民認為布什象是“他們”中的一個，可以
隨和到在一起喝啤酒。現在，又有人欣賞佩林的風度，說她象是個懂得柴米油鹽的
家庭婦女。一個可以與其一起喝啤酒的總統把美國領導到如今的地步，一個可以與
其聊家常的家庭婦女副總統會把美國領導出目前的境地嗎？
“We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder
when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they
get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country,
but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not
O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable
crossroads for the country?”
在電視評論節目中見到過下文作者Maureen Dowd，話語不多，聲調不高，但言辭犀
利。不愧是普利策獎的得主。
有時候，得欣賞原文，原汁原味兒，尤其是這種諷刺有加的專欄文章。
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Sarah’s Pompom Palaver,By MAUREEN DOWD,Published: October 4, 2008
I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians
whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.
There’s W.’s gummy grammar, of course, like the classic, “Is our children
learning?” And covering the first Bush White House required doing simultaneous
translation for a president who never met a personal pronoun he liked or a wacky
non sequitur he could resist.
Poppy Bush drew comparisons to Warren G. Harding, whose prose reminded H. L.
Mencken of “a string of wet sponges. ... It is so bad that a sort of grandeur
creeps into it.” When Harding died, E. E. Cummings lamented, “The only man,
woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical
errors is dead.”
Being mush-mouthed helped give the patrician Bushes the common touch. As
Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with
Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax
and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of
Frontier Baroque.”
Darn right. And that, doggone it, brings us to a shout-out for the latest
virtuoso of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart, the governor of the Last
Frontier. Her reward’s in heaven.
At Sarah Palin’s old church in Wasilla, they spoke in tongues. Maybe that’s
where she picked it up.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain ran against Barack Obama by sneering that their
prose was meatier than The One’s poetry. Sarah’s running against the
Democrat’s highfalutin eloquence by speakin’ in homespun haikus.
We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when
elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of
training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if
you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be
elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for
the country?
Did Joe Biden have to rhetorically rush over to Home Depot before Sarah could
once more brandish “a little bit of reality from Wasilla Main Street there
brought to Washington, D.C.?”
With her pompom patois and sing-songy jingoism, Palin can bridge contradictory
ideas that lead nowhere: One minute she promises to get “greater oversight”
by government; the next, she lectures: “Government, you know, you’re not
always a solution. In fact, too often you’re the problem.”
Talking at the debate about how she would “positively affect the impacts”
of the climate change for which she’s loath to acknowledge human culpability,
she did a dizzying verbal loop-de-loop: “With the impacts of climate change,
what we can do about that, as governor, I was the first governor to form a
climate change subcabinet to start dealing with the impacts.” That was,
miraculously, richer with content than an answer she gave Katie Couric: “You
know, there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that
we’re dealing with now, with these impacts.”
At another point, she channeled Alicia Silverstone debating in “Clueless,”
asserting, “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just
too many people in too many parts of our planet.” (Mostly the end-all.)
A political jukebox, she drowned out Biden’s specifics, offering lifestyle as
substance. “In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have
been, you know, all our lives,” she said, making the middle class sound like
it has its own ZIP code, superior to 90210 because “real” rules.
Sometimes, her sentences have a Yoda-like — “When 900 years old you reach,
look as good you will not” — splendor. When she was asked by Couric if
she’d ever negotiated with the Russians, the governor replied that when Putin
“rears his head” he is headed for Alaska. Then she uttered yet another
sentence that defies diagramming: “It is from Alaska that we send those out to
make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia,
because they are right there.”
Reared heads reared themselves again at the debate, when she said that Fannie
Mae and Freddie Mac “were starting to really kind of rear the head of
abuse.”
She dangles gerunds, mangles prepositions, randomly exiles nouns and verbs and
also — “also” is her favorite vamping word — uses verbs better left as
nouns, as in, “If Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity
of serving them,” or how she tried to “progress the agenda.”
Poppy Bush dropped personal pronouns and launched straight into verbs because
he was minding his mother’s admonition against “the big I.” Palin, by
contrast, uses a heck of a lot of language to praise herself as a fresh face
with new ideas who has “joined this team that is a team of mavericks.” True
mavericks don’t brand themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05dowd.html?em
Maureen Dowd
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maureen Dowd (born January 14, 1952) is a Washington D.C.-based columnist for
The New York Times.[1][2] She has worked for the Times since 1983, when she
joined as a metropolitan reporter.[1][2] In 1999, she was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize for her series of columns on the Monica Lewinsky scandal.[1][3]
Dowd was born in Washington, D.C.,[1][2] the youngest of five children, where
her father (who was born in County Clare in Ireland) worked as a Washington D.C.
police inspector.[4]
Career
In 1973, Dowd received a B.A. in English from Catholic University in Washington,
D.C.[1][2]She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for the Washington
Star where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter, and feature
writer.[1][2] When the newspaper closed in 1981, she went to work at Time.[1][2]
In 1983, she joined The New York Times, initially as a metropolitan reporter.[1][2]
She began serving as correspondent in The TimesWashington bureau in 1986.[1][2]
In 1991, Dowd received a Breakthrough Award from Columbia University.[2] In
1992, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for national reporting,[2] and in 1994 she won
a Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.[2][5]
In 1995, Dowd became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page[1][2],
replacing Anna Quindlen,[4] who left to become a full-time novelist.[6] Dowd was
named a Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine in 1996.[2] She was the winner of
the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.[1] In 2000, she won The
Damon Runyon Award for outstanding contributions to journalism.[7] In 2005, she
was the first Mary Alice Davis Lectureship speaker sponsored by the School of
Journalism and the Center for American History at The University of Texas at
Austin.[8]
Writing style
Dowd's columns are distinguished by an acerbic, often polemical writing style.
Her columns often display a critical and irreverent attitude towards powerful figures
such as President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and Pope Benedict
XVI. Dowd sometimes refers to Bush as "Bubble-Boy" or simply "W." Vice President
Dick Cheney is known by a variety of monikers, including "Vice", "Darth", "Shooter",
"Tricky Dick Deuce", "Dr. No" and "Big Time."[9] Former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld she routinely calls "Rummy," although this is actually a nickname used by his
long-time close personal friends. "Wolfie" however, is not an actual nickname used by
the friends of Paul D. Wolfowitz. President George H. W. Bush, whom she covered
as Times White House Correspondent, is known as "41," "Daddy" or "Poppy Bush."
More recent targets of Dowd's derision include former CIA Director George Tenet,
known as "Slam," or "Slam-dunk" and Cheney's chief of staff after the resignation
and indictment of Scooter Libby, David Addington, who is commonly referred to as
"the Black Adder." In a not-so-veiled swipe at Katie Couric[citation needed], Dowd
frequently refers to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket."
Her use of many such nicknames has prompted some to parody the concept of her
own book, Bushworld, by saying that it is really "Dowdworld - Enter at Your
Own Risk."[10] Another frequent Dowd motif is to catalog the popular culture
influences of the public figures she profiles in her columns.[11].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Dowd
評論
unix
2009-05-23 13:01:55
回複
悄悄話
那些挖苦別人的媒體精英，就不願意提及奧巴馬的任何發言都不能離開提示器。人無完人。那些常出錯的人，倒容易得到人們的信任。而那些把尾巴藏得嚴實的家夥，一定是別有用心，他們的野心絕不是語法的錯誤，而是禍國殃民的政策。這才是大眾需要提高警惕的。
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