Another Fix and the Measurements “Scaramucci” and “Truss”
New time measures in the political arena.
The Fix
The Passage
Sometimes Hurley the Elder asks his students to rewrite sentences. In one assignment, students were to rewrite this one:
Like the writers whose work appeared in the magazine [Harpers], its readers were unafraid of the first-person singular, willing to think out loud, to bet the pot on a metaphor, to look for words that maybe could settle the wilderness of their experience with the fence posts of a beginning, a middle, and an end.
It’s taken from Lewis Lapham’s essay “The Gulf of Time,” his first essay in Lapham’s Quarterly (Volume 1, Issue 1). In it, he is praising Harpers readers who took the time to write with sensible concerns about work published in Harpers.
Feedback
Four of fifteen students suggested they wouldn’t change a word. One commented “This sentence makes absolutely no sense at the end.” Another wrote “This is a difficult sentence to read, should be completely redone.”
One student suggested this rewriting:
Like the writers whose work appeared in the magazine, its readers were unafraid of the first-person singular, to look for words that could settle their experience with a beginning, middle, and end.
In explaining why the phrase “willing to think out loud, to bet the pot on a metaphor” should be dropped, he wrote “None of this adds to the sentence. It’s just filler.”
Out of the mouths of babes …
Words of the Day
They’re Scaramucci and Truss.
We’ve now seen a couple of instances where these words have entered the conversation. Here is an example taken from a NY Times opinion piece:
That what Mr. Musk has called the global town square can be eviscerated in a time period somewhere between a Scaramucci and a Truss makes one wonder if we should be more skeptical of all the other billionaire geniuses with ideas for our schools, public health systems and politics. (From “This Week, Billionaires Made a Strong Case for Abolishing Themselves” by Anand Giridharadas, NY Times, Nov 19, 2022)
He is using “Scaramucci” and “Truss” as a unit measurement of time. The Urban Dictionary defines a Truss to be “a unit of time, approximately 44 days in length.” A Scaramucci would be a period of 10 days. Of course these words come from the short periods that Anthony Scaramucci (Press Secretary for Trump) and Liz Truss (British Prime Minister) spent on the public stage.