Our Language Cops Are
a Bunch of Barney Fifes

Andrew Sullivan:

I’ve touched slightly on the term ‘Israel-Firster’ – a shorthand that has an ugly neo-Nazi provenance, which is why I don’t use it…

As Justin Raimondo pointed out Monday, that etymology is false: the term was first used no later than 1953 by Alfred M. Lilienthal, a Jewish American. Not that that fact will change anything. I expect no correction from Sullivan, and I couldn’t care less about his source, Spencer Ackerman, whose views on intellectual honesty you can read for yourself.

But let’s assume that, for once, they weren’t bullshitting and the term was coined by an asshole. And? Does a sorry origin taint a word or phrase for all eternity, even if the term — as Sullivan effectively admits in the aforementioned post — is accurate and useful in certain cases?

Just for kicks, I searched Sullivan’s blog and Tablet magazine, where Ackerman acted out his latest “plate-glass window” fantasy, for “highbrow,” “middlebrow,” and “lowbrow.” It won’t surprise you to learn that the searches turned up plenty of hits. It may surprise you to learn where those words come from:

“Highbrow,” first used in the 1880s to describe intellectual or aesthetic superiority, and “lowbrow,” first used shortly after 1900 to mean someone or something neither “highly intellectual” or “aesthetically refined,” were derived from the phrenological terms “highbrowed” and “lowbrowed,” which were prominently featured in the nineteenth-century practice of determining racial types and intelligence by measuring cranial shapes and capacities. A familiar illustration of the period depicted the distinctions between the lowbrowed ape and the increasingly higher brows of the “Human Idiot,” the “Bushman,” the “Uncultivated,” the “Improved,” the “Civilized,” the “Enlightened,” and, finally, the “Caucasian,” with the highest brow of all.

– Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988)


Ugly, huh? You can find similar histories for several other commonly used terms (though “rule of thumb,” contrary to a popular myth, isn’t one of them). Will Sullivan and Tablet‘s writers ban the -brows? I doubt it, and really, why should they? If they found those adjectives useful before and had no intention of endorsing phrenology or “scientific racism,” then there’s no reason for us to presume evil motives now.

None of which is to say that some words aren’t overused or shouldn’t be used more carefully. But if “Israel-firster” is one of those terms, then “anti-Semite” is a thousand times more so. You have your work cut out for you, deputies.

7 thoughts on “Our Language Cops Are
a Bunch of Barney Fifes”

  1. Well said Matt. Very well said indeed. By the by, Ackerman would be king of "progressive disingenuous intolerance." I have that on first hand experience.

  2. Informative demonstration and yet I have to learn lot of views regarding language cops are a bunch of barney fifes!! I've interest in learning different countries languages and for that matter I'll be back to learn more new topics. Thanks.

  3. Tremendous item.Now for the any crossword solution help we give you the best. This time we give you bunch of stuff crosswords solution clue. Bidden act in response, This is a bunch of stuff. He celebrated presently with the purpose of hand Romney comprise alleged he consider the okay be invented to be unrelenting.Thank you.

  4. "Watching" to learn is a great tip. If there are subtitles in our native language, learning becomes more fun, as we can understand things easily. I used to watch Korean serials with English subtitles and picked up lots of Korean words.
    Managed IT Services

  5. Time period Corrector technologies assures in order to change each of our publishing assignments quick, proper as well as expert. The english language publishing is really a potent software; in the event we all apply it correctly it's going to enable you to realize a lot of aims, no matter whether with regard to personal or even small business reasons. sentence structure check

  6. The picture of the grades of intelligence that is shared here on the webpage is so interesting. I am so happy that the site has shared such an interesting and useful post that can be useful to many of the visitors. sell american airline miles

Comments are closed.