The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time (29 page)

Bill Clinton promptly adopted the metaphor, leaving the Republicans sputtering. In the 2000 campaign, Al Gore made it central to his stump speech and debate appearances: “I think we need to put Medicare and Social Security in a
lockbox
. The governor”—Bush—“will not put Medicare in a
lockbox
.”

The meaning was taken to be “a box with a lock on it; a small safe.” The more specific definition is “a safe-deposit box in a bank.” Especially in the central states,
lockbox
is an old-fashioned word for “safe-deposit box.” A
lockbox
is to a safe-deposit box what an icebox is to a refrigerator.

The origin is “a postal box with a window requiring a key for the postal customer to open.” In 1906, Mary E.W. Freeman, in her novel
By the Light
of the Soul,
wrote: “She saw one letter slanted across the dusty glass of the box. It was not a
lock box,
and she had to ask the postmaster for the letter.” That is, it was a box unlocked to the postal worker, as distinct from a locked box rented by the customer.

Now, it means, generally, “strongbox,” or more specifically, “a political metaphor for a trust fund that cannot be spent for purposes other than specified in the politician’s promise.”

Lookism.
Communism is all but dead, and socialism is passé. Capitalism is doing fine, but as an attack word it has been replaced by
market economy
. Has the suffix
-ism
lost its sting?

In politics,
ism-itis
is receding, but in reference to forms of discrimination, the beatism goes on. On the analogy of
racism,
a term that began as
racialism
in 1907 but dropped the second syllable in 1935, we have
sexism
(1968) and
ageism
(1969). And now a relatively new entry:

“We face a world,” says Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, “where
lookism
is one of the most pervasive but denied prejudices.” She is author of
Survival of the Prettiest;
though her title is Darwinian, her message bewails the evolution of the power of beauty.

Oxford’s 1999
20th Century Words,
by John Ayto, defines
lookism
as “prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of appearance (i.e., uglies are done down and the beautiful people get all the breaks).” The lexicographer’s earliest citation was from 1978 in the
Washington Post Magazine,
which reported that fat people coined a defensive word: “
lookism
—discrimination based on looks.”

When the GOP candidate George W. Bush flashed a half-smile that struck some as a smirk, he was widely derided for this facial expression. “Bush isn’t the only presidential candidate to suffer from this elaborately sanctioned
lookism,
” wrote Julia Keller in the
Chicago Tribune
. “Former Republican hopeful Steve Forbes endured numerous remarks about his blinkless stare … while Al Gore has been called ‘wooden’ so often that he probably measures himself by the board foot.”

The word’s usage is transatlantic. “
Lookism
is a crime,” a writer in London’s
Daily Telegraph
observed in 1991, “on the same level as racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, classism, etc.” In Barre, Maine, last year, a workshop was held on the topic “Today’s Pressures: Drugs, Alcohol, Sex and
Lookism
.”

A Reuters reviewer of the new
Oxford Compact English Dictionary
had a bright lead: “So there you are, all decked out in chuddies, carpenters and a shrug with a brand-new buzz cut, and for some reason your best friend refuses to talk to you. It is probably a serious case of
lookism
.”

OK:
chuddies
are underpants,
carpenters
are pants with loops for tools, a
shrug
is a tight-fitting cardigan and a
buzz cut
is a close crew cut. I’ll also pass along the OCED’s
screenager,
“Internet- or computer-addicted teenager.”

The extension of
lookism
is already in circulation: if you call out to someone you consider in any way attractive, “Hey, good-lookin’,” you are a
lookist
.

There is no Barre, Maine. There is a Barre, Vermont, a lovely town near
Montpelier, a likely site for a drug workshop. Or, there is a Barre, Massachusetts,
a village near Worcester. No powwow here.

I’d guess you meant Barre, Vermont!

Dickson Scott

Wallingford, Connecticut

I’ve always thought that the correct term should be
looksism,
since the offense
is invidious discrimination on the basis of looks. It was as
looksism
that I first encountered the concept, during the mid-’70s, in the form of a
wisecrack by my then wife, Michele Slung, who was doing a “where-will-itall
end” riff inspired by the proliferation of racism-based grievance words such as “ageism.”

Lookism,
strictly speaking, should refer to invidious discrimination on
the basis of a look on a person’s face. Negative responses to Bush’s alleged
smirk, Cheney’s alleged sneer, Clinton’s alleged pout, and Quayle’s alleged
deer-in-headlights expression would, thus, all fall into the category of
lookism.
On the other hand, disliking Lieberman because he’s kind of funny-looking, or liking John Kerry because of his Dudley Do-right chin, would be
looksism.
But I guess I’m fighting a losing battle on this one.

Hendrik Hertzberg

Editor in Chief,
The New Yorker

New York, New York

You identified
blond/blonde
as a potentially new lookism, declaring that
blond
is used “to impute fun-loving characteristics.” It is my understanding
that
blond/blonde
is the only term in the English language taken directly
from the French,
blond
being the masculine,
blonde
the feminine.

I have several blonde daughters none of whom embody the flightiness implied in your use of the word.

Frank O’Donnell

Rockville Centre, New York

An inveterate ogler is a
lookist.
A man who hires a woman because she is pretty should be called a
looksist.

Professor Morton G. Wurtele

Berkeley, California

The suffix “itis” always refers to the presence of an inflammatory condition
(e.g., appendicitis: inflammation of the appendix; tonsillitis: inflammation of the tonsil, etc.).

The suffix “osis,” on the other hand, merely denotes the presence of a condition (e.g., thyrotoxicosis: the presence of a toxic condition of the thyroid gland; diverticulosis: the presence of pouches known as diverticula in the wall of the intestine … if, however, the diverticula become inflamed, we then have diverticulitis).

In your second paragraph, therefore, we should be referring to ism-osis, although I must admit that it can be inflammatory in another sense!

Noel H. Seicol, MD

Rye, New York

Lounge Act.
The opening salvo at the phrase
foreign service
was fired by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He proposed to strike those words from the medal established by Congress in 1999 to honor federal employees killed or injured while serving under chiefs of mission abroad. It was Powell’s plan to change the name of “the Foreign Service Star” to “the Thomas Jefferson Star.”

That triggered a protest to the secretary from Marshall P. Adair, president of the outfit that still calls itself the American Foreign Service Association. “I write to express AFSA’s strong disagreement,” he began, “with plans … to strip the words ‘Foreign Service’ from the Foreign Service Star.” Like a good diplomat, he suggested a compromise: “The Thomas Jefferson Star for Foreign Service.”

Powell went along with this suggested fallback position, but grudgingly: in reply, he wanted foreign service officers to know that the medal, a kind of civilian Purple Heart, was for “recognizing the risks and dangers to
all
United States government civilians assigned to our embassies and consulates” and not just FSOs alone. That playing down of the phrase
foreign
service
was what civil service employees wanted. (Everybody denies it, but many civil servants, derogated as bureaucrats by the elite
foreign service
corps, still refer to the diplomats as
cookie pushers.
)

But in his campaign to expunge
foreign service
from the Foggy Bottom vocabulary, Powell then went a couple of bridges too far. After seventy-seven years of referring to “Foreign Service and Civil Service employees” in official documents, State Department testimony began substituting the phrase “International Affairs Officer,” lumping the two groups together. And “Foreign Service Day” was mysteriously postponed for renaming.

The spark that ignited the fury of our diplomatic corps-and enlisted the support of the American Academy of Diplomacy as well as the Council of American Ambassadors—was an act that offended the dignity and ruffled the feathers of everyone with a pair of striped pants in the closet. The State Department, protested Adair of the AFS in a follow-up letter to Powell, “has removed the name
‘Foreign Service Lounge’
from that facility (after a half-century of usage).”

And what was the former
Foreign Service Lounge,
whose name recalls the camaraderie and easing of tensions of generations of diplomats, to be called? It would be rechristened the
Employee Service Center
.

“Some foreign service officers believe the new name has the charm of an auto repair shop,” wrote Steven Mufson of the
Washington Post,
who broke the story and fingered Patrick Kennedy, assistant secretary for administration, as the perpetrator of the name change. Others did not like the implicit put-down in
employee;
I am told that others hypersensitive to harassment found a barnyard allusion to the verb meaning of
service
in the new title.

With his left flank crumbling, Powell pulled back. He explained that his onetime use of “international affairs officers” was merely “to shorten the sentence in which the phrase appeared” and denied that he was trying to merge the two services. As for the former
Foreign Service Day,
he thought it would “enhance teamwork” to be more inclusive and invite the civil servants.

“Assistant Secretary Kennedy did change the name from
‘Foreign Service
Lounge
’ to ‘
Employee Service Center,
’” he confirmed. “His motive was to update the name from something that connotes a bar or rest area to an accurate reflection of what the area truly is—i.e., a center that provides services for all employees.”

Now to the crux of the controversy, in which lexicologists can elbow aside diplomatists: Is the noun
lounge
taken to mean
cocktail lounge,
denoting “bar”—that is, a place where alcoholic beverages are served, life histories are recounted to bartenders and singles mingle and tingle? Does it also connote, in Powell’s genteel usage, “rest area” (derived from
restroom,
euphemism for “toilet, loo, lavatory” or “baby changing-room”)? Or is it just a place in which to sit around, to loll about dreamily or, in more up-to-date parlance, to hang out?

In the language of languor,
lounge
leads all the lollygagging. The intransitive (very inactive) verb is from the 15th-century Scottish dialect noun
lungis,
meaning “laggard, lingerer,” rooted in the Latin
Longinus,
the apocryphal name of the soldier who lanced Jesus in the side, and was influenced by
longus,
“long,” associated with “slow.” The easygoing verb is defined in the
OED
as “to move indolently, resting between-whiles or leaning on something for support,” which grew out of an earlier meaning, “to skulk, to slouch.”