When the news of Emmanuel Macron’s triumph in the French presidential election broke, I embarrassed myself on social media by confessing I hadn’t “got” the fact that the initials of his campaign En Marche! (“onward” or “on the move”) were the same as his own initials, and that this was a deliberate, if subliminal, branding exercise.
The image of the young, forward-thinking, boldly striding Macron was conceptually fused with the concept of dynamic progress, intertwined with the letters EM. Most people responded with a “duh!”. But some confessed they actually hadn’t got it either.
A friend of mine in film criticism admitted recently that it was only in the 1990s that he realised something about the Beatles: that their name is a pun on the insects, that is, beetles, because they are, like, a beat combo!
I have to admit that it was only in my early 20s that I realised this myself because the Beatles are themselves a fully formed phenomenon with an identity above and beyond an insect pun, and probably above and beyond the insects themselves.
But it was only quite a few years after that that I realised “sex pistols” means penises. In a good way, naturally, a dynamic potent ironic sex-gods way, not … dicks. The name itself is a metaphor. But because it has never to my knowledge been used in any way other than to denote the punk legends themselves, this has been lost. So I suppose I’m not that mortified about EM.
The King of Comey-dy
In 1973 protesters showed up outside the US Embassy in London bearing placards that declared: “Sack the Coxsacker”. This was after President Richard Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the notorious “Saturday night massacre”.
Even in this digital age, placards haven’t become entirely redundant. So now that Donald Trump has whacked FBI chief James Comey, what could they be now?
“Fire the Combover Who Fired Comey”; “Blow Me, You Comey-Firing Phoney”; “Sack the Political Salome Who Dissed Comey”; “Baloney, You Comey-Sacking Putin Crony”; “Dismiss the Comey-Dismissing Co-Conspirator”; “Remove the Anti-Comey Comedian”; “Know Me, You Hater of Comey”; “Come Friendly Bombs and Fall on the Oppressor of Comey”.
Hmm. It’s not quite the same thing if your surname can’t be made to sound vaguely rude.
Reach out? I’ll be gone
It is customary to notice new pieces of office jargon or management-speak with a wry shrug; but recently my shrug became so wry that my right shoulder-blade ended up lodged snugly behind my left earlobe, and my left eyebrow ended up just above my right buttock. It was on grasping the new use of the phrase to “reach out”.
Reaching out used to be a dramatic, emotional thing to do, a passionate thing to do, a compelling rhetorical gesture that indicated a deep need or yearning, opening up your own vulnerability in the process. It was what Adam did to God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Or it could be used in phrases such as “We need to reach out to our young people …”
Now it means to phone up. Or email. Basically get in contact with someone in another department in your office with a whingeing request. “Could we reach out to HR about that?” “Could we reach out to accounts to generate another invoice?”
The modern workplace has the Four Tops’ Reach Out (I’ll Be There) on a permanent loop: “If you feel that you can’t go on / Because all of your hope is gone / And your life is filled with much confusion / And your world is crumblin’ down / Reach Out … for a copy of that P60 you lost.”
