“How’s that again?” again

Hi boys and girls!  Time for another episode of “Pedantry Corner.”

Barack Obama, who vowed he’d provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department— and he’s hardly the only one in the administration. - Jonah Goldberg

Ummm... the castrati were frequently noted for rather notorious (and noisy) lives:

Caffarelli was… typical of many castrati in being famous for tantrums on and off-stage, and for amorous adventures with noble ladies. - Wikipedia

Could Goldberg have been thinking of eunuchs?  No, they weren’t exactly self-restrained, either (if you get my point). Well, somebody must have been disinterested and self-restrained– unless maybe Goldberg is backhandedly implying that the president’s appointees have been, by and large, anything but.  (Such a reverse-over-and-under spin seems much too nuanced to appear in the Los Angeles Times, however.)

To take but one example: the elder George Bush “may be a New England Yankee blue blood, but he has the tear ducts of a Sicilian grand­mother.”  The yield of such lines is exceptionally high, and it’s fair to say that the particular talent required to produce them is one of the few that William F. Buckley lacked. - review of Christopher Buckley’s Losing Mum and Pup

Ouch:  Right up there with, “He has the heart of a little child. Which he keeps in a box under his bed.”  Except this one (admittedly, quoted without context) seems opaque to the point of transparency.^[1]  Given William F. Buckley’s customary care at selecting the appropriate word for the appropriate circumstance, one would belive that, if he lacked “the particular talent required to produce” analogies examplified by the one quoted, it would be a lacking for which he was most grateful.


Credits:  Goldberg via Instapundit, Buckley via Kaus.
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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 22:36:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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