I mention this after an afternoon of watching various pundits and their farflung correspondents ponder What Bernie Wants on the day that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders formally announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.- Charlie Pierce, on the woefully predictable coverage of the official launch of Sanders' presidential campaign.
When first I came across this, in bad ambient light on a tablet, I misread that line as "various pundits and their farfling correspondents."
Who knew? Pierce loves to turn a phrase, and he doesn't mind sprinkling his prose with archaisms every now and then. "Farfling" could have been some polite insult he picked up from his sainted Irish grandmother. Or it could be a reference to this fellow – and I think I might have liked that even more. A comparison with a cheesy puppet dog who plugs drink mixes for kids is not the worst characterization imaginable of the political press as it preps itself for the 2016 season.
Still, however pleasing the mistaken possibilities, it's unfair to hold him responsible for my reading error. So, for the record or until we hear otherwise, those correspondents are merely farflung.
No comments:
Post a Comment