A friend of mine, who bears the onerous
burden of painting and writing poetry in
a paradise within earshot of the tide at
Drake's Bay, has chided my irritation in
response to the abdication of editing at
The Washington Post, by reciting truisms
on the volatility of language, its por-
osity to enrichment. Being older than he
is, by two academic years, these salves
only chafe the mind, having endured just
that much more exposure to the language
at its undecadent best - to infinitives,
for example, kept intact for their alac-
rity to be unencumbered by distracting-
ly premature adverbial ornamentation.
Still, the war upon gerunds has gone so
far, as utterly to deprive them of their
native coherency as adjectives. The most
pristine example of this savagery emerged
from some subaltern bureaucrat in the in-
dustries subsisting on our health care,
with the term, "pre-existing," whose il-
legitimate place on this planet owes ev-
erything to vengeance against "existing"
for unimpeachable efficacy. I need hard-
ly belabor the sadistic cruelty of this
viral monstrosity, in view of its claim
to be recited in a compassionate context.
Just today, The Washington Post - and any
writers' syndicate it is, that publishes
E.J. Dionne - hotly leaps at the throat
of moral discipline, itself (a favorite
zone of his attentions), in his deliri-
ously wobbly invention, "pre-shaping."
Barr's calculated sloth in making the re-
port public gave the president [sic] and
his AG sidekick an opportunity to pre-
shape how its findings would be received.
Caesar, himself, could not have prepared
a battlefield with less "enriching" fire,
than Dionne would have his following do,
in shaping an inquiry of impeachment.
Talk about embodying the enemy, with a
head feint! This advice is enough to
enervate whole legions of unctuous de-
fenders of upright executive conduct,
on the spot. But is this not the point?
Is virility in language not a hallmark
of persuasion's deepest asset, thought?
Was there never, do you suppose, a rea-
son why the great rhetorical models of
this language's brief tenure as the
most widely distributed structure of
human expression on this planet, adapt-
ed themselves to the plain and simple
sinews of the fleetest mode of transit?
And if language were a football, as my
friend suggests it is, the rules of the
game may change all they like. But the
physics of its missile are well tested.
One can't gain yards with wobbly balls.
