Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "NYT/Cavett: Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please"

Once again it is time to bid aloha to that sober team of mirthless entertainers, Petraeus & Crocker.

It's hard to imagine where youcould find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers.

I can't look at Petraeus (his uniform ornamented like a Christmas tree with honors, medals and ribbons) without thinking of the great Mort Sahl at the peak of his brilliance. He talked about meeting General Westmoreland in the Vietnam days. Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge (and memory) of such things, recited the lengthy list (Distinguised Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general's sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, "Very impressive!" Adding, "If you're twelve."

(As speakers, both Petraeus and Crocker are guilty of unbearable sesquipedalianism, a word wickedly inflicted on me by my English-teacing mother. It¹s one of those words that is what it says. From the Latin, lierally ³using foot-and-a-half-long words.² We all learned the word for wors that sound like what they say ‹ like ³click² or ³pop² or ³boom² or ³hiss² ‹ but I¹m sure the mercifully defunct Famos Writers School surely forbade using the ³sesqui² word and ³onomatopoeia² in the same paragraph. (You can have fun with bth of them at your next cocktail party.)

But back to our story. Never in ths breathing world have I seen a person clog up and erode his speaking ‹ as istinct from his reading ‹ with more ³uhs,² ³ers² and ³ums² than poor Crocker. Surely he has never seen himself talking: ³Uh, that i uh, a, uh, matter that we, er, um, uh are carefully, uh, considering.² (No a parody, an actual Crocker sentence. And not even the worst.)

These harshon-the-ear insertions, delivered in his less than melodious, hoarse-soundingtenor, are maddening. And their effect is to say that the speaker is painfully unsure of what he wants, er, um, to say.

If Crocker¹s collection of these broken shards of verbal crockery were eliminated from his testimony, everyone there would get home at least an hour earlier.

Petraeus commits a different assault on the listener. And on the language. In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to ³Eyewitness News.² Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of ³learnedness² and ³scholasticism² ‹ possibly even that dread thing, ³intellectualism² ‹ to their talk. Sorry, I mean their ³articulation.²

No crook ever gets out of the car. A ³perpetrator exits the vehicle.² (Does any cop say to his wife at dinner, ³Honey, I stubbed my toe today as I exited our vehicle²?) No ³man² or ³woman² is present in Copspeak. They are replaced by that five-syllable, leaden ingot, the ³individual.² The other day, there issued from a fire chief¹s mouth, ³It contributed to the obfuscation of what eventually eventuated.² This from a guy who looked like he talked, in real life, like Rocky Balboa. And there¹s nothing wrong with that.

Who imposes this phony, academic-sounding verbal junk on brave and hard-working men and women who don¹t need the added burden of trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels?

And, General, there is no excuse anywhere on earth for a stillborn monster like ³ethnosectarian conflict,² as Jon Stewart so hilariously pointed out.

What would the general be forced to say if it weren¹t for the icky, precious-sounding ³challenge² that he leans so heavily on? That politically correct term, which was created so that folks who are legally blind, deaf, clumsy, crippled, impotent, tremor-ridden, stupid, addicted or villainously ugly are really none of those unhappy things at all. They are merely challenged. (Are these euphemisms supposed to make them feel better?) And no one need be unlucky enough to be dead or hideously wounded anymore. Those unfortunates are merely ³casualties² ‹ a sort of restful-sounding word.

(I have a friend who would like the opportunity to say to our distinguished warrior, ³General Petraeus, my son was killed in one of your challenges.²)

Petraeus uses ³challenge² for a rich variety of things. It covers ominous developments, threats, defeats on the battlefield and unfound solutions to ghastly happenings. And of course there¹s that biggest of challenges, that slapstick band of silent-movie comics called, flatteringly, the Iraqi ³fighting forces.² (A perilous one letter away from ³fighting farces.²) The ones who are supposed to allow us to bring troops home but never do.

Petraeus¹s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about ³ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel²?

Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.

It¹s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who¹s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware ‹ and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors ‹ can¹t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying ‹ instead of ³ongoing process of high level engagements² ‹ maybe something in colloquial English? Like: ³fights² or ³meetings² (or whatever the hell it¹s supposed to mean).

I find it painful to watch this team of two straight men, straining on the potty of language. Only to deliver such . . . what? Such knobbed and lumpy artifacts of superfluous verbiage? (Sorry, now I¹m doing itŠ)

But I must hand it to his generalship. He did say something quite clearly and admirably and I am grateful for his frankness. He told us that our gains are largely imaginary: that our alleged ³progress² is ³fragile and reversible.² (Quite an accomplishment in our sixth year of war.) This provides, of course, a bit of pre-emptive covering of the general¹s hindquarters next time that, true to Murphy¹s Law, things turn sour again.

Back to poor Crocker. His brows are knitted. And he has a perpetually alarmed expression, as if, perhaps, he feels something crawling up his leg.

Could it be he is being overtaken by the thought that an honorable career has been besmirched by his obediently doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas? The one whose foolish military misadventure seems to increasingly resemble that of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn?

Not an apt comparison, I admit.

Custer sent only 258 soldiers to their deaths.