Reply #42: I found your Orwell Gospel. Here is Orwell vs. Molly Ivins.

[McCamy Taylor]

I am going to analyze a piece by Molly Ivins, the article in which she wrote that she would never support Hillary Clinton for president using George Orwell's list of "rules" for political writing. Like me, Ivins was a Texan, and so she wrote the way we all talk in Texas, which is a mite differently than they speak in Britain.

Let the games begin!

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0120-30.htm

"I will not support Hillary Clinton for president" by Molly Ivins

The reference text on which Ms. Ivins will be judged (martyred?) is "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell

http://www.george-orwell.org/Politics_and_the_English_Language/0.html

Note that Cali does not cut people like Ivins any slack. Miss Molly may have been an American, but English is English. While the Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner and the Irish author James Joyce both would have failed Orwell's good writing test, that is just too bad. The English created this language and it belongs to them. If you--pardon me, if one follows the Orwellian rules, Christopher Isherwood would be the greatest novelist of the 20th Century, and everyone else would have to go back to school. Virginia Woolfe was much too self indulgent, especially in The Waves . No tea and crumpets for her.

I am just kidding. Orwell's essay has some very practical advice for writers. But it has some suggestions that are regional, designed to appeal to a British audience. Just look at his first sentence:

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the
English language is in a bad way"

That is as Brit English as you can get. Or "git" as we say down here. In the south, we would also say Most people who care would say that the English language is in a decline .

But enough with the Cajun story. Back to Orwell on Ivins.

"(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print," writes Orwell. Will Ivins pass the test? Oh no! "conventional-wisdom"... "In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, 'Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.'"... "for mercy's sake"..."clueless naifs"..."Republican machine"..."OWN the issue"..."go long"..."Put up, or shut up".

Oh my! Let's move on to number two. "Never use a long word where a short one will do."

"triangulation, calculation and equivocation"..."apparently incapable"..."contemptible"..."superciliously explaining elementary politics"...

What did she do? Steal George Will's thesaurus? Another F. What is number three? "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out." Oh, forget that one. She was a Texan! Four, "Never use the passive where you can use the active." That one is easy. All writers know that one. And yet, what about "there are times...there are times...". That does not sound very active to me. That sounds like a folk song. Who said that Ivins could resort to the rhythms of old spirituals to give her piece more emotional impact? Shame on her! Does not she know that political prose should be as lifeless as a...

Oops almost slipped in one of those things Orwell said I should not use.

Five, "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you
can think of an everyday English equivalent." That is a good one. "Jargon" to one man is a necessary piece of life saving equipment to the surgeon who is trying to save your life. He is not going to ask for the "string". He is going to ask for the "suture". Orwell forgot to mention that context counts. If the context is a political pamphlet aimed at members of a union, then the author should feel free to use as many technical terms as his fellow union members will understand. Number five reminds me that Orwell was a journalist and that the average reader of a newspaper has a sixth grade comprehension. The average reader at Democratic Underground reads at a level considerably above this.

His prohibition against anything that is "pretentious" presents a similar problem. What does language pretend to be? In college, a student objected to the poetry of Ezra Pound, calling it "pretentious". Was Pound pretending to be a fine poet? I think that when the word pretentious is used, the problem is as likely to lie with the reader as with the author. Not every text is intended for every reader. Though we like to think that we live in a world where all are created equal, we do not all understand quantum physics or economics or baseball. Therefore, if we demand that specialists avoid using specialized language so that everyone can understand what they are writing, we are acting like a bunch of...

Bad McCamy.

Anyway, Molly Ivins flunks the Orwell political writing test. She uses too many long words, too many metaphors and stock phrase. It is a shame that she is dead, otherwise, Cali could have turned her on to Orwell and saved her from the shame of writing like a hick Texan (Imagine how people must have been laughing at her behind her back).

If I hear another word out of you on the subject, Cali, I will do Hunter S. Thompson or maybe Gore Vidal next.