Tuesday, January 18, 2005
BROOKHISER, ENGLISH, AND THE FRENCH
Something Truly is Lacking
Do you know what the best thing is about visiting National Review’s diminutive weblog, The Corner? If you’re the snarky, lefty type -- like I am -- it’s that even the very first post one encounters offers plenty of fodder for blogging fun.
I visited the Home of the Dunce Caps just half an hour ago and was greeted initially by this post by National Review senior editor and purported literary scholar and critic, Rick Brookhiser:
BOXER ON IRAQI BLOGGERS [Rick Brookhiser]
Among other things, the Sarah Boxer piece on the Iraqi bloggers is notably jejeune [sic] -- college[-]newspaper[-]level stuff.
Note first that Brookhiser, while writing about Boxer, provides NR-Zero readers no courtesy link to her “offensive” piece, the same treatment Glenn Rehnolds (He persistently misspells my name; I return the favor.) has always accorded to Rittenhouse, and one I accordingly have adopted in return to Rehnolds and most of his pitiable acolytes.
Next, note the use of the “word” “jejeune.”
Interesting word, that: “jejeune.”
You don’t know it?
You shouldn’t.
You have no reason to know such “word.”
How would you pronounce it?
You can’t.
Why not?
Because there is no such “word,” not in English anyway, as “jejeune.”
I can only assume Brookhiser meant to write “jejune.”
Let’s have an eighth-grade vocabulary lesson, shall we? Brookhiser included. (Kathryn Jean Lopez Lopez may sit in on the class if she likes, but she must promise not to pass notes and swear not to doodle anything that includes the depiction of a heart nor a variation upon her name that includes the honorific "Mrs.")
The following comes courtesy of Dictionary.com:
je•june
adj.
1. Not interesting; dull: “and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases” (Anthony Trollope).
2. Lacking maturity; childish: surprised by their jejune responses to our problems.
3. Lacking in nutrition: a jejune diet.
[From Latin i i nus, meager, dry, fasting.]
je•june ly adv.
je•june ness n.
I can’t help but wonder whether Brookhiser believes the English language borrowed “jejeune,” whatever that is, from the French, and not from the Latin.
Wait, isn’t William F. Buckley a devoted impassionata of Latin?
Still more evidence of Buckley’s unreported passing, I suppose.
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JAMES MARTIN CAPOZZOLA
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James Martin (Jim) Capozzola launched The Rittenhouse Review in April 2002, TRR: The Lighter Side of Rittenhouse, HorowitzWatch, and Smarter Andrew Sullivan in July 2002, and Bulldogs for Kerry-Edwards in October 2004. He is also a contributing member of President Boxer.
He received the 2002 Koufax Award for Best Post> for "Al Gore and the Alpha Girls" (published November 25, 2002). Capozzola's record in the Koufax Awards includes two additional nominations for 2002 (Best Blog and Best Writing), three nominations for 2003 (Best Blog, Best Series, and Best Writing), and two finalist nominations in 2004 (Best Blog and Best Writing).
Capozzola’s experience beyond the blogosphere includes a lengthy career in financial journalism, securities analysis, and investment research, and in freelance writing, editing, ghost-writing, and writing instruction.
He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University at Albany and a master's in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.
Capozzola lives in Philadelphia with his bulldog, Mildred.
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