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Words cannot describe…but too often do

By Ed Goldman

MODIFY ME—One of the greatest if most underestimated threats to civil society is the adjective. 

An adjective can be downright menacing in its attempt to succinctly synthesize everything it lays claim to describing. For example, if you say that a writer (such as I) who enjoys a nightly vodka martini with a decent cigar (as do I) is a “martini-drinking, cigar-smoking writer,” you not only reduce him (me) to a stereotype but also ignore the things he (I) do during the other 16 hours of daily wakefulness. 

Now, in the case of celebrities who were noted for smoking five-to-six packs of cigarettes a day—such as Jackie Gleason, Edward R. Murrow and John Wayne, all of whom contracted lung cancer at some point—I can understand the temptation to refer to them as “the cigarette-smoking Gleason, Murrow and Wayne” because their habit truly ate up a lot of their waking hours. We can quantify this by using simple math (the only kind I’d ever endorse or attempt):

• There are 20 cigarettes in a package; 
• Most people are awake for 16 hours each day; ergo,
• If you smoke six packs per day, that’s 120 cigarettes, which means you’re smoking about 7.1 cigarettes each waking hour.

Since it takes about six minutes to smoke a cigarette, that means you can smoke 10 in 60 minutes. But that would leave you no time to stub one out, light a fresh one and indulge in a few minutes of smoker’s cough, which I believe is mandatory if you wish to self-identify as a Heavy Smoker.

The tyranny of adjectives is one reason why people who are homeless, have autism or are missing a limb don’t appreciate being described as homeless, autistic or peg-legged people. 

Going off in a similar direction, why do we find it necessary to say people in their 60s are “middle-aged” (which implies they’re going to live into their 120s) or “balding” (which makes it sound like they’re bearing up while enduring an ongoing illness).

Should the White House consider banning adjectives, along with its vacuuming up of people, jobs and hope? This is a naive notion because President Donald Trump (Secret Service code name: Agent Orange) deploys a steady stream of adjectives each day in his oral comments, and social media postings. While they’re mostly the same few adjectives (“beautiful”, “huge” and “best in the entire history of the United States”)—and while they tend toward the self-referential—you’ll have to admit that an adjective ban could hit him pretty hard, possibly silence him. The latter, of course, is an excellent argument for the ban, so look for a signup sheet in your spam folder. 

WILMA IN THE WILDERNESS—It’s a shame that Fred Flintstone was never a Disney toon. I’d love to hear him shout, “Abba Dabba Do, Abu Dhabi!”

It would be his reaction to the news that Disney has announced plans to build a new resort/theme park in one of the more spectacular United Arab Emirates. If you’ve ever visited there—or, like me, just seen photos and videos of the place—you know that opening a branch of The Magic Franchise, oops, Kingdom there might seem slightly redundant.