The New Dark Ages
- At July 15, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
29
To describe religions as mind viruses is sometimes interpreted as contemptuous or even hostile. It is both.
Richard Dawkins, “The Infected Mind”
A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love
The Wall Street Journal ran a story today on the increasing mobilization of the scientific community against the Bush administration. In Scientists Take To the Streets Against Bush (free link), reporter Antonio Regalado writes:
In a big shift for the normally docile scientific community, some leading researchers are mounting a political campaign to unseat President Bush this fall, accusing the administration of twisting scientific facts to fit its policies on issues such as global warming, sex education and stem-cell research.
Today the Associated Press reported that “A [U.S. House of Representatives] committee gave abortion opponents a victory Wednesday, voting to making it easier for hospitals, health insurers and others to refuse to provide or cover abortions.”
The reason why the Bush administration, and social conservatives in general, can pursue an anti-science agenda is that Americans are increasingly unfamiliar with, and scornful of, real science. I’m beginning to wonder whether, as a country, we’ve turned our back on the values of the Enlightenment. I was hesitant to use the phrase “dark ages” in the title, because it’s frankly alarmist, but I really am concerned that a new dark ages is where we’re headed.
Shooting Down the Flacks
- At July 14, 2004
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
- 12
This morning MediaBistro.Com posted an article by public relations executive Richard Laermer, Hack vs. Flack, that was so irritating on so many levels that I had to write to the editor.
Dear Ms. Oxfeld:
I worked in PR for ten years, and even I loathe flacks: there is no way to be an ethical, responsible liar. You can call it “putting your client’s best foot forward” or “leveling the playing field” or whatever you want, but the reality is that once you accept money to tell one side of the story–whatever that story is–you’re prostituting yourself and the language. Richard Laermer’s article is no more than an extended plug for his agency, his book, and his self-respect, none of which deserve much consideration.
This apologia was a particularly galling one, by the way. Laermer writes “The “flacks” (the origin is unknown, Webster’s says, for this slang for PR people)…”
First of all, if you’ve graduated from high school and you’re still using dictionary definitions as a rhetorical device in your writing, you need to consider another line of work. Secondly, the derivation of “flack” is neither ancient nor obscure.”Flack” is derived from a German wartime acronym: FLieger Abwehr Kannone (FLAK) for anti-aircraft cannons. During World War II, Americans began using the word to describe the weapons, and the shrapnel they produced, adding the letter ‘C’ in the Anglicized version. PR types were originally called “flack catchers,” for their role in deflecting criticism of their clients. Gradually the expression was shortened to “flacks.” We still use the word in its almost-original meaning in the term “flack jacket,” for armored vests.
Laermer, of course, need not have gone into such detail. He could have disposed of the origins of the word “flack” in one sentence not much longer than the trite reference to Webster’s that he did use. I think his intellectual laziness is especially egregious in a website by and for writers, and undermines his conceit that we’re all writers, after all: “(People who choose to work as writers, believe it or not, tend to value clear sentences and words with real definitions. Imagine.)”
So please, give us a break from the self-promoting flacks.
Best Wishes,
Bob Howe