The Elegant Variation: NITWIT OF THE YEAR

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December 21, 2004

NITWIT OF THE YEAR

We'll be joining Maud in no longer using Amazon links due to their extensive Republican contributions. The Recommended sidebar to the right will be going away in a day or two, and will remain gone until we figure out how to replace it with Powell's links.

UPDATE: The Recommended sidebar has been completely rebuilt using Powell's links. Extra special thanks to the mighty Tito who kindly sent us the steps to do this in words small enough for our pea brains to wrap around. We owe you a beer (or several)!

Time

We also urge any subscribers to Time Magazine to cancel their subscriptions with all due haste. We're thinking of subscribing just so we can dump the bastards.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." -- H.L. Mencken

Posted at 09:50 AM | Permalink

Comments

I haven't read the Time article to go along with the Thing of the Year award, but I do seem to remember folks like Hitler and Stalin also having been chosen in the past...

Posted by: Matt Cheney | December 21, 2004 at 12:00 PM

How'd you shift to Powell's? And I thought you were out until early January or I would've put you in my list of "while I'm away" destinations!

Posted by: Maud | December 21, 2004 at 12:41 PM

(Although naturally I'm not nearly as "away" as I thought I'd be....)

Posted by: Maud | December 21, 2004 at 12:55 PM

The award is given to "the person or thing that had the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill." I think that GW is an appropriate choice.

I also think that Time punked out by naming Giuliani, and not Osama bin Laden, the 2001 Person of the Year. I don't think there's any doubt that OBL had the greatest impact on the news, but they went with the less controversial choice. Weak.

Posted by: dansays | December 21, 2004 at 01:18 PM

Points taken. However given that the opening blurb of the piece reads as follows:

"For sticking to his guns (literally and figuratively), for reshaping the rules of politics to fit his ten-gallon-hat leadership style and for persuading a majority of voters that he deserved to be in the White House for another four years, George W. Bush is TIME's 2004 Person of the Year"

... it smacks more of hagiography than critique.

Posted by: TEV | December 21, 2004 at 01:35 PM

It should be noted that Time Warner gave nearly 85% of its contributions to the Dems this year. Also note that I'm a fan of the Atlanta Braves and would hate to see a Time boycott cut into the already shrinking payroll of my favorite team.

I would also like to know how you made the switch over to Powell's.

Posted by: Jeff | December 21, 2004 at 05:30 PM

dammit. i luv, luv, luv powells (it's the first bookstore i ever drank coffee in), and i review books on my site, too, but i also review lip gloss, eyeshadow, and other beauty items. if only powells would start selling cosmetics... sigh.

Posted by: jessica | December 22, 2004 at 11:07 AM

I would also like to know how you made the shift to Powell's, please. Perhaps you could post instructions?

Posted by: Bill Day | December 22, 2004 at 09:25 PM

glad to help. can you email beer? maybe at least send a whiff (with possibly your last smell-o-vision update of the year): http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Smell-comes-to-multimedia/2004/12/20/1103391690350.html?oneclick=true

Posted by: Tito | December 23, 2004 at 01:39 PM

Is Bush a nitwit? Yes, 9 out of 10 dentists agree. But should we boycott Time for naming the President its Person of the Year? No. As said in other posts, this is not an endorsement, it's their way of saying he was the most influential person in 2004. And he was. Regrettably so. All this boycotting, it's got to stop, I think. We have differences, all of us, but we should be able to buy and sell goods between one another. The Nazis painted "Juden" on store-front windows; what will we do, replace it with "Republican"? There's got to be a better way.

Posted by: stephan | December 24, 2004 at 11:37 AM

I have many reasons why I ought to hate Time magazine (AOL conspiracy theories, anti-RIAA), but I can't help it; I just enjoy the writing too much. Time is great at taking a mainstream news stories (OJ, Tanya Harding, etc) and turning it into a novel. (Also, there's Shickel and Corliss). This is mainstream journalism, and some cover stories bore me. But so far I haven't found a good replacement.

Although I wonder if the mag spends too much time in cross-promotion, in fact the writers/editors seem relatively independent and critical(and it does help to have these Time/Warner book excerpts too).

BTW, I've read the Mencken quote several times and laugh harder every time I come across it.

Posted by: Robert Nagle | December 28, 2004 at 11:53 AM

Mark,

If you want to boycott something, boycott Pfizer. They're the ones responsible for blog spam viagra, through their referral programs.

http://www.fredschoeneman.com/archives/000418.html

Posted by: Fred Schoeneman | December 29, 2004 at 04:28 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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The Rider by Tim Krabbe

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

December 21, 2004

NITWIT OF THE YEAR

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

December 21, 2004

NITWIT OF THE YEAR

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism