{"id":168,"date":"2004-02-03T13:06:03","date_gmt":"2004-02-03T17:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/02\/03\/classless-crass-and-deplorable\/"},"modified":"2004-02-03T13:06:03","modified_gmt":"2004-02-03T17:06:03","slug":"classless-crass-and-deplorable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2004\/02\/03\/classless-crass-and-deplorable\/","title":{"rendered":"Classless, Crass and Deplorable"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Janet’s titty has the nation atwitter!<\/p>\n

Michael “Fair and Balanced” Powell sez: “That celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation’s children, parents and citizens deserve better.”<\/p>\n

It is always interesting when someone calls something “classless”. Exercise for the reader.<\/p>\n

“Crass” is interesting too. The root word, Latin crassus<\/i>, means “solid, thick, fat”. It comes to refer to things in the material realm, as opposed to spiritual things. Remember, kids – spiritual and physical are different! Iesus rex est! <\/p>\n

We’ve also got another version of the word from the French. In Old French, the initial “c” of crassus<\/i> became a “g”, giving the French the antecedent of their modern word gras<\/i>. I haven’t checked a historical French dictionary, but I assume the sense developed in French pretty early into fat, or fatty tissues. English appears to have picked it up, like so many other hunting or eating words, in the Middle English period, when those fat, classy Normans were running the show. It is now our “grease”.<\/p>\n

The translation in Le Monde picks up more on the class aspects of Powell’s speech, and seems to ignore his attempt to backhandedly pun on French cognates to suggest that Americans are too fat (you’re not so skinny yourself, Mr. Powell!). They have his speech as<\/p>\n

\nComme des millions d’Am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet’s titty has the nation atwitter! Michael “Fair and Balanced” Powell sez: “That celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation’s children, parents and citizens deserve better.” It is always interesting when someone calls something “classless”. Exercise for the reader. “Crass” is interesting too. The root word, Latin crassus, means “solid, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}