History Gets Some Press

Historical comparisons were all over the news this week. Here's a quick round-up of the best of the bunch:

• From the The New York Times: a look at Newt Gingrich's constant use of history in his rhetoric. Read to the bottom of the article for an interesting examination of whether the history that he taught as a college professor was factually accurate.
• Politico looks at Obama's polling numbers and sees a comparison to President Carter. Bad news for BHO?
• The Times "Caucus" blog also compares, in a detailed post, this election to 1992's election.

#fourthgenerationproblems

On Thanksgiving evening, after the last slices of pumpkin pie were put aside for breakfast and the uncles washed the dishes and the cousins settled down to watch the Ravens game, my father’s mother told me about her mother. It was a long story and one that I’d heard before, but parts of it would ring true in many American households.

The immigrant generation was my great-great-grandfather, the baker. The first generation born in America, my great-grandmother’s generation, had a bakery. In the second generation, my grandmother went to college, became a teacher, married a lawyer. For the third generation, the professional class gave way to the creative class and their children became an actor and an author and a producer and a food stylist. After that, you stop counting. Ask this fourth generation American where her family is from and she will say Baltimore, not Poland.

As a student of American history, I recognized the story as a typical immigrant narrative. It’s a story of assimilation and moving forward and every generation sticking pretty close to what it was supposed to do—until now. There is no typically fourth-generation life.

My generation, the millennials, is famous for its aimlessness. I can’t get behind accusations of laziness or slackerdom, but the general sense of not knowing what to do with one’s life—especially considering the recession and trends in emerging adulthood—is all around.

Sure, plenty of families have been in the U.S. for more than five generations and they’ve managed to survive, and plenty of families came more recently and also suffer from millennial malaise, but the late 1800s saw a major wave of immigration and there are a good chunk of young Americans in the same boat as I am. So maybe our generational problems have to do less with the turn of this most recent century than the turn of the last. History cannot tell us what to do. We are searching in the dark for a narrative thread that doesn’t exist.

But it’s also its own reason to give thanks, isn’t it? We can do anything we want—just as soon as we figure out what that is.

When Politics Get Physical

This week, a video of two Lebanese politicians brawling on live television has gone viral. (The topic of the fight was Syria, although you wouldn't know if you caught the clip here on Fox News, where they don't bother to provide captions or any sort of context.)

Watching two grown men in suits attempt to throw chairs at each other is scandalous, period, but it made me think about political discourse in our own country. We've heard a lot -- particularly in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting -- about the shortcomings in the way politicians address each other and their lack of civility. Maybe if the other option is an altercation, we're not doing so badly.

It's not like this country hasn't seen its fair share of violence in the halls of power. Anyone who paid attention in high school should remember May 22, 1856, and Bleeding Sumner. In the run-up to the Civil War, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner spoke out against "Bleeding Kansas," the pro-slavery tactics that had caused that territory to become a hot zone for brutality and the individual senators he held accountable. In response, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Sumner with a cane. Sumner suffered head injuries but eventually recovered.

Then again -- not that I'd advocate violence in any situation -- there's a reason we learn about that episode in high school. It's rife with political and symbolic meaning, and there's no doubt that Sumner and Brooks felt strongly about the issue. Likewise, for our Lebanese video stars, it's easy to see that Syria is not an abstract notion or talking point or campaign vote-grab. When it comes to fisticuffs, authenticity and sincerity are no longer in question. And that's good.

There must be a way for politicians to show their true beliefs while still using their words (and preferably an "inside voice"). Or maybe not.

It's been 155 years since Sumner was carried from the Senate on a stretcher, but I'm not able to think of a way to judge political sincerity. In the absence of blood, all I have is intuition. Is there a better way to go about it?

Bespeaking of Bespoke

Politics isn't the only arena in which tradition can be forgotten; diction flip-flops too. The word "bespoke" is having one of those moments, and this week I couldn't help but notice a few real crimes against etymology.

First, an ad on my webmail browser pointed me toward the "Bespoke Institute," a company that helps its users find "personal staff," which may or may not mean butlers.

Then, walking near Union Square, I saw a sign for a Definitions gym with quite a slogan: "Creative. Intelligent. Bespoke." It's unclear how gym can be "bespoke," even if their personal trainers are as personal as can be.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal announced a new line of Burberry trench coats, Burberry Bespoke. This one seems pretty close to the actual meaning of the word (leave it to the Brits), since customers get to choose what their coats will look like. But no cigar: the coats aren't made-to-measure and Burberry's taste-makers, probably for the best, have veto power over eyesores.

And once you start looking, it's everywhere. Soho's Bespoke Chocolates is nice and all, but there's nothing bespoke about buying sweets out of a glass case.

Bespoke does not mean "expensive and cool." We already have a phrase for that: "expensive and cool." It means made-to-order (which, to be fair, often leads to things being expensive and cool). The word comes from the obsolete "bespeak," which had many meanings, all to do with talking. Speaking to request goods is the only such definition that has survived, although today it's meeting with new challenges to its history.

Of course, custom-made isn't a new trend. For me, and I suspect for many others, the top word-association pick for "bespoke" is "suit" -- and clothing made for the wearer must predate mass-market ready-to-wear, or else we would have been very chilly for many hundreds of years. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first appearance of the phrase "bespoke tailor" as dating to 1908, with many instances of bespoke cobblers in the decades prior to that. In recent years, the bespoke market has expanded to include not just high-end goods (wedding dresses, fancy drapes, portraiture) but also low-end wackiness. To wit: birthday cards and some great puns.

Which is all fine. Those things are actually bespoke.

This isn't to say that word meanings can't evolve, but it's sad when a perfectly nice word is scrubbed of all meaning. Give bespoke back to the bespeakers -- after all, that's been the custom for centuries!