Category: New York Times

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A Mess ‘O Potamia

Look. I’ve been pissed lately (but I kept it to myself).

The New York Times keeps using the word “Mesopotamia” with regard to Iraq. Are they being cool-retro, as in thousands of years cool-retro? Or do they honestly not know that the place has been called “Iraq” since about the 6th Century? Or am I the dumb bell, not knowing that one of the Iraqi provinces had recently been renamed in honor of the Ancient Near Eastern empire? I had to find out.

I had last circled the June 22, 2007 front page where the Inside feature blurb stated, “But only one American soldier has died in the operations in Diyala Province, where 300 to 500 fighters for Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia are believed to be hiding.” I felt like this was the last straw, so I circled this one and tossed it on the To Do pile on my desk. Actually, my entire desk is one big To Do pile. So I finally got around to it tonight.

I went to the Times’ website and ran a search. There were lots of hits on the word, so I narrowed the date range. The first hits that didn’t seem to refer to Mesopotamia, the ancient kingdom, seemed to be coming in around 2005.

I then noticed the phrase “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” kept coming up, not the word in isolation or in different contexts. The NYT of October 25, 2004 was the first use I could find of this term: the abstract tells me it is the new name of aMesopotamian Icon militant band led by Jordanian fighter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”Mesopotamian IconMesopotamian Icon

Aha.

I wanted to see if this usage was what triggered the Times’ barrage of Mesopotamias everywhere.

It took almost 8 months for the revitalized empire’s name to catch on. In fact, it turned up twice on the same day, July 10, 2005. First, it turns up as:

Representative government may, just possibly, still take hold in Mesopotamia, but neither Larry Diamond, a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who was called by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to temporary service in Baghdad in early 2004, nor David L. Phillips, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as an adviser to the State Department before and after the fall of Saddam Hussein, are at all optimistic.

And in the very same issue, a letter to the Editor states:

The only kind of democracy that will flower in Mesopotamia will be some variety that is native to the place and that has been patiently nurtured by local cultivators over many decades.

Okay, here we go. (Never mind that the first is a 74-word run-on sentence). Now everybody’s misusing the word. But I was wrong. These two were about the only usages to date. It has rarely been used that way again.

I grabbed the copy of the newspaper I’d saved and sure enough, it was indeed used as the name of the ugly group “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.” Sadly, because of the NYT standards, there is no way to call this out with either quote marks or italics. So I will probably continue to misread it and get annoyed. Here’s a case where the Times is following their traditions and I can’t fault them. Yea for following your own rules for once, but Nay for the rule itself. The ancient paper needs to find a way to clarify phrases like this in the future. J’accuse! — but in the humblest way possible this time.

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Insult to Injury

Today’s Times has done it again.  A Page 1 article about Ethiopia starts off strongly, but (don’t turn the page!) deteriorates as it goes on and on and on.  Halfway down p. A8, the author decides to get coy and parody the British colonial way of thinking, but ends up just insulting these proud people.  It’s straight news reporting all the way, until:

They saw thorny hills and thirsty people.  Even today, it is still like that.  What passes for a town is a huddle of bubble-shaped huts, the movable homes of camel-thwacking nomads who somehow survive out here.  For roads, picture Tonka truck tracks running through a sandbox.  The primary elements in this world are skin and bone and sun and rock.  And guns.  Loads of guns.

C’mon, Jeff.  Yes, the British may have seen thorns and thirst.  But you are the one who sees CAMEL-THWACKING NOMADS!  Are you kidding?  You can’t just flip tones here because you want to be creative, or fun or whatever you’re doing.  And you continue the mocking(?) pseudo-mocking(?) tone with the toy truck analogy which is equally insulting.  I would preface that comment with My powers of description have deserted me momentarily, so I’ll go all omniscient narrator on your ass, which not only distances me from my subject but diminishes it as well.

This only serves to tell the reader that when it comes to this reporter’s personal view, he is too scared or arrogant to deal with it on its face.  He suddenly telescopes back until he’s seeing little ants on the battlefield.  Whew!  What a relief!  I don’t have to process the terrible things I’ve seen.Thwacked Camel

He really nails this outlook in the final sentence when he refers to human features as “elements.”  He could have flashed his poetic license with images like metal, sun, stone, sand, nonhuman “elements” in the landscape, and been just fine.  He could have even contrasted the desperate, tired soldiers or villagers against the stark backdrop of these elements.

It’s just a quick rewrite.  Again, I blame Jeff’s editors who failed to see the desperate, tired face of their writer.

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Bling-Bling Art World

What the hell?  Mike’s Art Review about Rouault at the Metropolitan in today’s New York Times (B1) says this about the man’s paintings —

The art has a sanctimony and sincerity that resonated after the war but came to seem dated in an art world besotted by American Pop and bling.

C’mon, man.  When exactly did this occur?  Sure, Pop Art changed things starting in the ’50’s, but so did lots of other art movements.  Abstract Expressionism.  Neorealism.  Bling02But “bling?”  I must’ve missed that one.  Hip-hop didn’t start until the ’80’s and use of the word “bling” is even more recent.  Perhaps when you throw out an absurd comment like that you could throw in a non-absurd example or two.  Are collectors buying images of musicians wearing giant rings and watches?  Or are collectors collecting the bling itself?  Or representations of the bling?  And what happened between the ’60’s and the ’80’s?  Did Pop meld right into “bling?”  I thought Pop referred to the kind of art, not the vantage point of the “art world.”  Help me out here, buddy, I mean we’re all under deadlines, but, “huh?”

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Beverages

Here we go with the latest New York Times errors and typos. I think this is wrong:

Sparkling beverages is an industry term for soft drinks.

It’s right smack on the cover page of the Business section in Saturday’s paper (May 26, 2007) in an article about Coca-Cola buying out the manufacturers of vitaminwater (all lower case, according to the bottle, please). I think “sparkling beverages” is one of many kinds of soft drink, but certainly the relationship is not one-to-one.

I thought the definition of “Soft Drinks” would run something like this: “Anything But Booze.” And the American Beverage Association seems to agree:

Soft drinks are distinguished from “hard drinks” or alcohol beverages, such as distilled spirits, beer, or wine. Soft drinks do not contain alcohol. Consumers can choose from a wide variety of beverages including regular carbonated beverages, diet and caffeine-free beverages, bottled water, juices, juice drinks, sport drinks, and ready-to-drink teas. Read more

Wikipedia tells us:

The term soft drink commonly refers to almost any cold drink that does not contain alcohol. Beverages like colas, sparkling water, lemonade, and fruit punch are among the most common types of soft drinks, while hot chocolate, tea, coffee, milk, tap water, and milkshakes do not fall into this classification. Read more

And if you don’t trust anything with the word “Wiki” in it, how about the Feds? The NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) defines Industry #31211 Soft Drink Manufacturing as follows:

This U.S. industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing soft drinks and artificially carbonated waters.

Their categories include Carbonated Soda, Carbonated Waters, Fruit and Vegetable drinks, Iced Coffee, Fruit Drinks, (except juice), Flavored water, Iced tea and Soda (Pop). Read more

Am I right, Sir? (from Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps)

Oh, yeah, the typos:

The Coke rival snapped up Gatorade as part of its acquisition of Quaker Oats in 2000 after the Coke board turned rejected a Quaker deal, an action that has haunted the company.

Yeah, I think the word “turned” is left over from a previous draft. Sorry, Mr. Martin, the writing error is yours. The typo is your copy editor’s. C’mon New York Times, you’re making my job too easy.