I may not be a big fan of the Seattle Times editorial board’s prose, but it turns out it’s better than their verse.
“HOW do you solve a problem like Pamela?” reads the Times’ lede on the latest Pam Roach soap opera, apparently thinking they’ve made a clever reference to the iconic song “Maria” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The Sound of Music.
But they haven’t. Because “Pamela” and “Maria” don’t rhyme. They don’t even share the same meter.
“Maria” is a double or feminine rhyme, with the accent falling on the second to last syllable, whereas “Pamela” is a triple rhyme (or antepenult) with the accent falling on the third to last syllable. To rhyme with “Maria” you’d need a word that mimics its final two syllables, like “Korea” or “diarrhea” or “onomatopoeia.” To rhyme with “Pamela,” you’d need a word that mimics all three syllables, absent the “P.”
Not only doesn’t “Maria” rhyme with “Pamela,” offhand, I can’t think of another word in the English language that does.
And to make matters worse, not only isn’t the Times lede singable as written, nobody but nobody refers to Pam Roach as Pamela. So this supposedly clever reference fails on two fronts. (Not to mention the fact that 95% of non-gay-male readers under the age of 40 probably aren’t even familiar enough with the song to get a properly made reference in the first place.)
Fail, fail, fail.
And even as a fail, the Times’ reference is unoriginal. Indeed, I castigated Newsweek on similar lines just a couple months ago, for attempting to force “Sarah” into the same lyric in a feeble cover headline.
Of course, it is possible to make this lyrical reference work, as I did in a headline not too long ago. My secret? Having the discipline to only make the allusion where it fits.
So my advice to the Times’ editorialists is to leave the rhyming verse to the experts, and stick to… well… I’d prefer they leave the editorializing to experts as well, but I suppose we can’t have everything.
How do you solve a problem like a wingnut?
How do you catch a clod and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means a wingnut?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!
Ummmm, is my memory failing me or has the Seattle Times usually been a supporter (endorser) of Sen. Roach?
How about spatula as a rhyme for Pamela?
Alki @1,
See, now that parody would work, because it properly fits the meter, and by continuing with the lyrics you make a clear reference to the original song.
Though, in a song that keys on a single word like this one (so much so that it serves as its title), rhyming with the original word is that much more powerful and evocative.
How do you solve a problem like terrible url’s? I know wordpress can support it, have you ever considered upgrading so instead of ?p=24353 it might list the title? It would help readers when you link to articles and help search engines rank your site higher. Anyway sorry for being off topic, but it’s been bugging me for a while.
Also one other thing, if you pronounce Pamela like Borat then it ryhmes.
Q: what rhymes with orange
A: door hinge
@1
Awesome.
@Goldy, You need to sell the Times a copy of your ryming software.
Erpublicans now suck, says Pamela
“I’m gonna smack’m wit’ my spatula”
says she,
“and it’s gonna be spectacula!!”
Eh, just trying to come up with something ryhming with “Pamela”. Obviously not my strong suit.
@8 You need to sell the Times a copy of your ryming software
Yea, good idea, it’ll supplement HA’s “revenue stream,” such as it is!
ps Do you offer spellcheckers?
Hey Goldy–
How about this one…something you unmotivated, unemployed KLOWNS can relate to:
Andy @7,
Only if the “h” is silent. And it isn’t.
@11
Yeah, that explains why I have two jobs, a photography business (just large enough to pay for my habit.), and I’m helping raise a kid that isn’t mine.
You really need to give that one up.
@1 Man, I didn’t see the last line coming until I got there, and it’s a beaut! There’s a clear demographic dichotomy on this blog: The liberal literati, and the illiberal illiterati. Of course, the latter won’t even get it.
Just as they won’t get the elegiac alliteration in “liberal literati,” “illiberal illiterati,” or “Roger Rabbit.” Hell, they’ll misspell it as “illiteration,” and think it refers to a nation of people who can’t read (i.e. themselves).
@3 Spamela rhymes better with Pamela and is more contextual. Sure, it’s a made-up word, but you can’t have everything. Shakespeare made shit up, too.
Shakespeare’s mistake was not setting his stuff to music and selling it on the internet. He would have been one megarich bastard if he had tried humming his couplets on the radio instead of reading them from the stage in the Globe.
@11 Stick in a few bars about stock flipping and you’re there. Why would anyone want to work, Klown? You don’t work, and I don’t work, we’re the smart money. Nobody ever got rich by working for it.
@12 It is if you’re Cockney.
@11 I don’t see anything wrong with being unmotivated and unemployed. It pays better than working.
As long as we’re on the subject of Sarah, an AOL News article contains some intereting tidbits about how Sarah sits with Alaskan Republicans these days:
“There is a weariness. Why don’t we just turn the page?” said Michael Carey, an Anchorage public television host.
Lynn Gattis, 53, a self-described and unabashed “tea bagger” … could do without all the fuss. “We have so much happening with our economy, jobs and whatever, she’s not necessarily front and center,” Gattis said. “And I don’t mean that in a negative fashion. But holy smokes … Sarah probably isn’t in our top 10 list.”
In July 2008 … 80 percent of Alaskans viewed Palin favorably. A new poll of Alaskan voters found fewer than half now do so. If there’s a central cause for her decreased home-state popularity, it’s expressed by Mary Lowrey, 55, a nurse from Kotzebue, above the Arctic Circle: “She was a quitter.” In interviews with dozens of Alaskans, the quitter theme came up often ….
“It’s mellowed a lot” since Palin resigned as governor. “It used to be really extreme — they loved her or hated her.” Gerald McBeath, a political scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, credited the de-escalation to Palin’s successor, Gov. Sean Parnell. “He’s laid-back, taciturn. He doesn’t come up with a press release every day,” he said. “And he can write and speak in complete sentences, sort of like other people.”
Moments earlier, another woman, who called herself a conservative Republican, spoke incredulously about the “cynicism” of national Republicans in choosing someone clearly unqualified for the vice presidency. “How in the world could they?” she asked. “The phenomenon of Sarah Palin exists because people are uninformed politically.”
Palin has “what any politician out there would kill for,” said Andrew Halcro, who competed against Palin as an independent gubernatorial candidate in 2006 and is challenging U.S. Rep. Don Young in the Republican primary this year. “And that is the ability to make substance irrelevant.”
http://www.aolnews.com/politic.....a/19341641
The above article suggests healthy skepticism and a dose of reality about Sarah even among hard-core Republicans up in Alaska, of all places.
But they seem a bit better grounded than their Republican compatriots in the Lower 48 — the folks who still swallow Sarah whole — if a new poll is any indication.
The poll by Research 2000 is stunning.
“Most Republicans think Barack Obama is a socialist and Sarah Palin is more qualified than him to be president. Most either think Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. or aren’t sure. Nearly 40 percent want him impeached.”
“21 percent [of Republicans] believe the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) stole the 2008 election and 55 percent aren’t sure.
“31 percent [of Republicans] believe Obama is a racist who hates white people and 33 percent aren’t sure.
“23 percent [of Republicans] want their state to secede from the U.S. and 19 percent aren’t sure.”
“‘If this poll is accurate (and Research 2000 has a good reputation for accuracy), the Republican base has an absurdly high percentage of wackos of all stripes, from religious fanatics to creationists to secessionists to conspiracy theorists,’ said Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs.”
http://www.aolnews.com/the-poi.....m/19343356
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Geez, you don’t need a poll, anyone who reads the troll comments on HA could have told him that.
Now, getting back to Pamela, you come full circle. Gun-waving, tantrum-throwing, conspiracist Roach and her screwball son embody the inbred wackiness of the GOP — and of the idiot voters in her district who have sent her back to the legislature again and again. If those rubes want to secede from Washington, I say let ’em go. I’ll help them pack!
this obsessiveness with the Times is getting comical….
Pam Roach is a living, breathing, argument for gun control. Considering her demonstrated temper and control obsessions, she shouldn’t be allowed to come anywhere close to having a weapon.
And this is the state senator which championed a call for harsh penalties for drug offenders, but her own son was release from jail 100 days early without a complted home inspection despite protests from the corrections officers in charge of him. It seems that shortly before the arrest, Pam Roach called the Corrections director to, in her words, complain that the corrections officers inspecting her home prior to her son’s scheduled release hadn’t removed their shoes.
“this obsessiveness with the Times is getting comical….”
Well, since the P.I. has stopped publication, and the Times editorial board obviously isn’t independent of the publisher’rs management, somebody’s got to provide a countervailing viewpoint.
13. Michael spews:
Michael–
If the Birkenstock don’t fit…then don’t wear it! Plenty of your leftist brethren here however are a perfect fit.
Republicans so love this country that 42% of them either desire or contemplate their state’s secession. When trolls tell us that progressives hate America, they’re merely indulging in their insipid Psych 101 projection. They’re the true America haters. They’re just too fucking full of shame and cowardice to admit it. Shame and cowardice. We see that shame and cowardice when they abandon the “Republican” brand for “prefers GOP”, and now as they move on to proclamations here of their faux libertarianism. Asswipes. All of them.
Cynical @ 27 said:
“Michael–
If the Birkenstock don’t fit…then don’t wear it! Plenty of your leftist brethren here however are a perfect fit.”
Nope, I’m not going to let you get away with that trite sort of dismissal. It’s been the Republican game for decades, trying to paint Republicans as hard-working taxpayers, and Democrats as jobless leaches. When challenged with the facts, you just claim that these are exceptions to the rule, but insist that your general (unsupported) characterization still applies to just about everyone else.
Not having any statistics available, let me describe the situation with respect to my own circle of acquantences. It’s surprisingly a pretty fair sample, as about half are Democrats and the other half are Republicans (or the Tea Party equivilants).
Among them, there are about an equal number on both sides who work hard at one or more jobs (or are retired after working long careers).
There are also an equal number on both sides who are generally hard-working, but currently unemployed, through no fault of their own. They look for work every day, and are willing to accept just about anything they might find.
There are also a few (not many) on BOTH sides who are unemployed because they are generally lazy or undisciplined or just have low expectations for themselves.
It’s ironic to hear the right-wingers who DON’T WORK complain about how “their” tax money is going to pay for people on welfare, while they themselves are currently on some form of state aid or another. But they claim their situation is “different”.
@26…where is the same obsession with The Stranger?
Goldy is mad because he doesnt work for the Times…’nuf said.
# 28: Clearly, the trend toward home-schooling among wingnuts (“you jist can’t trust them thar’ librul teachers”), has created a generation of red-state Republicans who didn’t bother to learn much about civil war history. If they did, they would recognized that the Tea Party’s call for “States Rights” and secession goes back to the 1840’s, and that the ultimate result was the economic devestation of the South from which it is only recently beginning to fully recover.
At least when I was growing up in the South, we honored the courage of the Confederate soldier who fought for his homeland irregardless of politics, but we just about uniformly agreed that losing the war was the best result for both the South and the nation as a whole. These days they apparantly haven’t thought that process through very well.
#31 studies show that most home-schooled children outperform their public school counterparts…
…just the facts man, just the facts….
to quote one report – a study done in 1998 in Iowa:
Major findings include: the achievement test scores of this group of home school students are exceptionally high–the median scores were typically in the 70th to 80th percentile; 25% of home school students are enrolled one or more grades above their age-level public and private school peers
Racist Roger Rabbit @ 22
DailyKos poll numbers.
Who cares??
They are phoneys
@28 “Republicans so love this country that 42% of them either desire or contemplate their state’s secession.”
It’s very practical. If they’re not Americans, they have an excuse for not serving in the military to defend America.
@33 You mean the percentage of Republicans who are secessionists is higher than 42%? I probably could be persuaded of that.
# 32: Home schooling has a lot of divergent results, perhaps more so than even public schools. I’ve personally known several families (five) that home-schooled their children, some of them are close friends of mine.
Of the five families:
Family # 1 started the kids out in home schooling. Unfortunately, the mother was in charge of that task, and she isn’t very organized. After two years of home schooling, she decided to place the kids in public school. The school tested them to see where they needed to be placed. The eight-year old had to be placed in first grade (starting all over), the six-year-old had to start at kindergarden.
Family # 2: Parents kept kids in home school their entire childhood. Mother was diligent in teaching her kids, but the parents are on the extreme side of religious apocolyptic teaching (they’ve been arguing that the world is going to end any day now – certainly before the week is out, and have been doing so since the late 1970’s when we first met them). They didn’t allow their kids any contact with others outside of church. I lost track of them about ten years ago, but the kids then (five of them) ranged from age 15 to 22, and were pretty strange – socially awkward, introverted, and with no knowledge of anything other than the 3 R’s and lots of hymns – which I guess is sufficient if you think the world is going to end tomorrow anyway.
Family # 3: This family kept the kids in school through middle school, at which point they started home schooling, also for religious reasons (they wanted to keep them from peer pressure and temptation). These kids actually turned out pretty well, in part because the mother was actively involved in a network of home-schooled families which utilized lots of resources to give them a well-rounded education. The lack of sports, however, was a big drawback, which they admitted.
Family # 4 kept their kids home-schooled throughout their childhood, for both religious and political reasons. The kids did well in reading and math, but their science education consisted almost entirely of a repudiation of Darwinism (they believed that its’ a scientifically proven fact that dinosaurs and man existed together in the Garden of Eden), and their history and social studies education was rather, shall we say, unique (they believed God gave white men the priviledge and responsiblity of ruling over lesser men of color, women were to be subordinate to men, the founding fathers were all Evangelical Christians, and the current government is illegal and has been since the introduction of the Federal Researve and the Income Tax).
Family # 5 home-schooled their children after elementary school, and did a very good job – their kids spent their high-school years earning college credits, one is now about to graduate college and the other has scholarship offers.
Like I said, very different results. I’m not sure if the “averages” in any survey take that into account.