Here comes Kamala!

I suspect that were Mencken alive today having attained the respectable age of 140 years, he would be busy preparing The American Language: Fifth Edition and contemplating titling the book ‘The New American Language’ in recognition of the media-speak developed over the past couple of decades by news broadcasters and commentators, chiefly those belonging to the television industry. Each trade has its specialized lingo, due to the functional need for the terminology required to describe its unique operations. The electronic commentariat is no exception to this tendency of particular occupations to invent a vocabulary and idiom all their own. Where it does differ from a great many of them has to do with its reasons for doing so.

You’ll find them all over the boroughs of New York City. Multiple-dwelling buildings, usually large apartment blocks, slapped with a faux-Tudor façade defined by fake gables hiding a flat roof. They aren’t particularly attractive buildings. Even 100 years after most were built, they come off as self-conscious, a bit tacky, imparting to the viewer a dreaded feeling of secret working-class shame — a befuddling reproduction of a reproduction. They say New Yorkers never look up. But even during short journeys through Queens or parts of Brooklyn, New Yorkers are bound to have noticed examples, even if they don’t give it much thought.