In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

It's just way overused. I think people get carried away with the "bash" part of it. Plus, there are so many prefixes and suffixes attached to the root word that it's almost impossible to tell what the word means. Why use so many syllables when a better, shorter word, like "boldly" could be substituted? Nobody knows what "bash" means, anyway. Look it up and it's a verb; or in British English it's a party. And abash by itself? It means "to destroy the self-confidence, poise, or self-possession of". I think a lot of people who use the word don't realize what it means, they just like the sound of it.

Maybe it's the people you hang out with. I can't say the last time I heard, or even read, somebody used "unabashedly."

And, by the way, "Nobody knows what 'bash' means"? Oh, yes, they do. Just ask any gay man.

[serious crayons]

"Abashed" as an adjective means embarrassed, ashamed, disconcerted. Unabashed, therefore, means not embarrassed or ashamed, and the adverb unabashedly means doing something despite it being potentially embarrassing or shameful. (It's also probably related to "bashful.")

So it's not quite an exact synonym for boldly, because you could do something boldly that wouldn't be embarrassing -- "boldly go where no man has gone before," for example. Yo wouldn't say the U.S.S. Enterprise was "not ashamed" to seek out new lives, new civilizations.

You might say, "He unabashedly requested cash contributions from everyone at the party." That could be a bold move as well, but "unabashedly" adds a bit of extra meaning, implying the speaker would find it embarrassing to impose on people that way.

And while we're on the subject, I hereby declare that the rule against splitting infinitives is silly, especially if you're splitting them with an adverb. "To boldly go" isn't the English-teacher-proper formulation. But "Boldly to go" sounds dumb and "to go boldly" is slightly awkward. In most cases, putting the adverb between the "to" and the verb sounds most natural.

[Jeff Wrangler]

And while we're on the subject, I hereby declare that the rule against splitting infinitives is silly, especially if you're splitting them with an adverb. "To boldly go" isn't the English-teacher-proper formulation. But "Boldly to go" sounds dumb and "to go boldly" is slightly awkward. In most cases, putting the adverb between the "to" and the verb sounds most natural.

That's a well-known argument for it being OK to split an infinitive. 

I suppose Capt. Kirk et al. were also unabashed to boldly go. ... 

[serious crayons]

That's a well-known argument for it being OK to split an infinitive. 

True. There are probably other rusty grammatical rules, like ending a sentence on a preposition, that the same thing has happened to. 

I suppose Capt. Kirk et al. were also unabashed to boldly go. ... 

Yes, they seemed pretty unabashed. And of course Spock was theoretically unable to feel abashed, so he did everything unabashedly.

[serious crayons]

Apparently there's a short story in a recent New Yorker called 'Cat Person.' I rarely read the NYer's fiction these days, but I might try to find this one; it sounds interesting. What caught my eye was this piece about it:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/11/too_bad_twitter_turned_the_new_yorker_s_cat_person_story_into_a_piping_hot.html

The last time I can remember a short story in the New Yorker being as enthusiastically talked-about as Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” was when Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” was published by the magazine in 1997. That autumn it seemed that every literary gathering had to reserve at least 15 minutes to rhapsodizing over the story. At present, “Cat Person” has been dominating my feeds to a degree that a New Yorker story never has before, and of course because this is the age of social media, countless people have also found countless sententious reasons to dislike it.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Anybody else hear that Ryan Lizza got fired?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-new-yorker-severs-ties-with-star-reporter-ryan-lizza

[Front-Ranger]

Wow, those must be serious accusations. 

I read the story "Cat Person" mainly because it was short. It was a fairly good story but not a "Brokeback Mountain" by any means. For writing about the sorry state of straight dating today, I prefer "Modern Romance" by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ0TMYG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

[Jeff Wrangler]

Apparently there's a short story in a recent New Yorker called 'Cat Person.' I rarely read the NYer's fiction these days, but I might try to find this one; it sounds interesting. What caught my eye was this piece about it:

I'm unusually far behind in my mags, even for me. Either I didn't read this story, since I rarely read the short fiction, or I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm only now zeroing in on finishing the Nov. 27 issue. I'm finishing the article on the Mexican woman and the People's Police. That sounds very much like a neighbor town watch I participated in back in the first half of the Nineties, except we didn't have vehicles. Or guns.

[serious crayons]

Wow, those must be serious accusations. 

With each new one of these episodes, I get increasingly worried that at some point the fairness pendulum will swing the other way.

I mean, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Roy Moore ... no question about any of them and they got what they deserve (except possibly Roy Moore -- today's the election!). Charlie Rose's and Matt Lauer's misdeeds seem well documented, Al Franken's milder misbehavior alas, seems fairly indisputable at this point. And I suspect there's more to Garrison Keillor's story than we've heard, just based on the fact that Minnesota Public Radio didn't just fire Keillor -- it blew up its own most famous brand and shows as well. I suspect they would not have brought upon their own loss on the basis of an accidental back touch. As for Trump, well, he bragged about his own assaults, then shrugged them off as "locker room talk," then denied having said them even though according to Billy Bush there were eight witnesses on the bus. Pretty cut and dried.

But ones like this, where it's one anonymous person saying undisclosed things about a man who says they dated, and he loses multiple opportunities as a result ... At this point, we seem urged to always believe the accuser and I'm less and less able to be rock-solid sure. I mean, I'm not questioning or doubting Lizza's case specifically. But it seems like a potentially harmful setup -- losing a career, perhaps permanently, isn't quite like going to prison but it's a pretty severe punishment. As a society we demand more proof and due process for imprisoning people (and even then, we make mistakes all the time!).


 

[Jeff Wrangler]

With each new one of these episodes, I get increasingly worried that at some point the fairness pendulum will swing the other way.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Do you mean like the bad old days when a rape victim was practically put on trial instead of her rapist?

But ones like this, where it's one anonymous person saying undisclosed things about a man who says they dated, and he loses multiple opportunities as a result ... At this point, we seem urged to always believe the accuser and I'm less and less able to be rock-solid sure. I mean, I'm not questioning or doubting Lizza's case specifically. But it seems like a potentially harmful setup -- losing a career, perhaps permanently, isn't quite like going to prison but it's a pretty severe punishment. As a society we demand more proof and due process for imprisoning people (and even then, we make mistakes all the time!).

I won't highlight or quote, but I agree that this situation is cause for concern. I wonder if Lizza has had or will have an opportunity to confront his accuser?