The Goldman State
Ed Goldman is a longtime newspaper and magazine columnist, the author of five books and creator of The Goldman State, a three-times-a-week online column with subscribers in 40 states, Canada and Europe. A professional playwright, composer and painter, Ed has also taught journalism at five California Universities and community colleges. His bucket list includes becoming the victim of a corporate takeover. This podcast is an extension of his unique take on the world around us and his interpretation, with all the creativity imaginable, of what that would literally sound like if he were to speak it.
The Goldman State
Episode 101: Modify Me
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Adjectives. Hidden tyrants of our language. I believe you'll find this to be one of the most amazing, wonderfully written, cleverly worded ... ugh, enough already.
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00:00 - Speaker 1
Hi, this is Ed Goldman with the Goldman State Podcast. 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 quote martini-drinking, cigar-smoking writer unquote, you not only reduced him me to a stereotype, but also ignored the things he I do during the other 16 hours of daily wakefulness. Now, in the case of celebrities who are noted for smoking five to six packs of cigarettes a day. Now, in the case of celebrities who are 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 quote cigarette-smoking Gleason, murrow and Wayne unquote, because their habit truly ate up a lot of their waking hours. We can quantify this by using simple math which, as you know, is the only kind of math I'd ever endorse or attempt. First, there are 20 cigarettes in a package. Second, most people are awake for 16 hours each day, ergo, third, if you smoke six packs per day, that's 120 cigarettes, which means you're smoking about 7.1 cigarettes each waking hour, which means you're smoking about 7.1 cigarettes each waking hour. Since it takes about 6 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.
01:43
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 quote 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 of people, jobs and hope? This is a naive notion because President Donald Trump, secret codename 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 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 sign-up sheet in your spam folder.