Friday's Orwellian Tripe

Now tripe is that wonderfully obtfuscating name given to the stomachs of various animals. For the most part, if you're dining on tripe, you're chewing beef--and that means cow boys and girls. Now our amazing giver of milk (ah yes, the wet nurse) has four stomachs, for Orwellian tripe we will use the third stomach or what is referred to as book tripe or bible tripe or leaf tripe. Bible tripe looks much like a human ear, cabbage, or a jaundiced carnation. Perfect. You may be thinking, "Mr Pantagruel, are you going with a "Bible Tripe & Roma Tomato Consomme." No. Though I am boiling that sucker for days, then sauteeing it with butter, garlic, and onions--also piles of ground mustard and truckloads of sage and oregano (and my secret strash of cumin, coriander and tumeric). We're ready. Now for Orwellian tripe you need to approach your local grocer with the following assumption: "Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

Cheers! It's the bad english of contemporary political discourse that makes this tripe recipe rock! Of course, "bad english" is a bit broad so let's narrow our shopping: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs (one of my favorites), pretentious diction, and meaningless words. Wowzers, look over in that stall! Piles and piles of a recent favorite dying if not zombie-like metaphor. Not as beaten to death as football, but poker has a long glorious history of saying everything and nothing in a very drab way. Here it is on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopooulos: "Because what we want to do here, George, and what the principles in this resolution do, is to establish a basis so that you can't go back to the status quo ante where Hezbollah acted as a state within a state, attacking Israel without the Lebanese Government even knowing." And again at Crawford Middle School (those lucky out-of-school kids): "This is a basis on which a cease-fire will take place, cessation of hostilities will take place so that there can't be a return to the status quo ante, which is extremely important to all the parties, because we don't want to create a situation in which we get out of this, and then you create the conditions in which Hezbollah, a state-within-a-state, goes across the line again, abducts soldiers, and we get another war. " And again on the Newshour (go PBS): "Well, the diplomacy is moving ahead. During the time that I was in the Middle East, I had a lot of very fruitful conversations with both the Lebanese and with the Israelis on what it would take to end this conflict on a basis that would not permit a return to the status quo ante."

Yes shipmates, the dreaded sports analogy. Oh yes! Perfect with tripe! Staus Quo ante? No way! We don't want your stinking status quo ante! As Condi peers over her sunglasses at Olmert and Nasrallah, the tension is unimaginable. Give us the . . . hey, no name yet for the sizzling, new, brilliant, shocking and awing new ante that will forever change the hearts and minds of bitter enemies, but obviously it has much to do with carnage, something like "we bet the destruciton of Lebanon and the loss of civilian lives in Lebanon and Israel," (works for me, because like those good people in Crawford, I don't live in the Middle East) yes carnage, the "Carne Ante"! What a better compliment to a stomach then a serving of the very meat that used to surround the stomach when the animal was still alive. Sounds like Lebanon! Feel the birth pangs! And that's what makes this "Dawn of the Dead" metaphor work so well--weak image and virtually no clarity on meaning. Throw that in with bible tripe and we're ready for some chewin'!

So thank you Condi Rice for an example of what Orwell defines "as a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. " It's perfect to today's Orwellian tripe recipe.