Year+13+Columns

Have a look at the following columns. **Tarnation Heck!**
 * Find 10 language features in each.
 * Identify the main idea and justify your anwer.
 * Look at the structure of the piece. Think about paragraphing and sentence structure.
 * What is the tone of the piece?

**By WILLIAM SAFIRE** Published: February 12, 2006 "Brownie, you're doing a //heck// of a job." That unfortunate premature assessment, made to bolster morale at a stressful time, remains on the record of famous Bush statements like a piece of spinach on a toothy smile. Boosting what critics regarded as fecklessness, the remark will be recycled by his critics in gleeful derision for generations to come, like Calvin Coolidge's "The business of America is business" and [|Richard Nixon's] "I am not a crook." Language mavens, however, will focus on the president's repeated use of the euphemism heck. Revisiting the scene of Hurricane Katrina's devastation last month, he sought to help regenerate the New Orleans tourism industry by recommending the city as "a heck of a place to bring your family." The Washington Post editorially sniffed at the way he was "deploying the same infamous turn of phrase." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane warned viewers of the State of the Union address, "If Bush uses '//darn//' or //'heck'// as an adjective to describe a person, place or thing, have a drink. If he uses heck or darn more than once. . .that means he's in his folksy mode." We have a language anomaly here: the euphemism is taken to be offensive, while the harsh word being avoided — in Bush's case, and with apologies to the sensitive or reverent reader, //hell// — is presumably more acceptable. //Heck// appeared during our Civil War and was popularized by novelists in the first third of the 20th century: Sinclair Lewis in the 1922 novel "Babbitt" had a character say "by //heck//," and James T. Farrell, in his 1932 book "Young Lonigan" — which some of us, in puerile passion, read for the "hot parts" — wrote, "He would have the heck of a time explaining his shiner to the old lady." There was a time when //hell// was Hell, the place where you burned throughout eternity, and the religious connotation clung even as the word became a general intensifier. To take a conscious step away from giving offense to the religious, while preserving the adverbial emphasis, //heck// was adopted. //Darn// — as in Bush's observation about the Muslim news media that "their propaganda machine was pretty //darn// intense" — was at the time of the American Revolution a less offensive way of saying //damn//. But Noah Webster reported in a 1789 dissertation that //dern//, pronounced "darn," "is now used as an adverb to qualify an adjective, as //darn sweet//; denoting a great degree of the quality." Damnation was serious stuff, but //darn it// and its variants //dang it// and //dad-blast// it were taken as secular, therefore milder, expressions of disappointment. I ran my wonderment at the darned rise of //heck-//resentment past Prof. John Algeo, a philologist whose next book is "British or American English?" He recast my query in a salute to my penchant for alliteration: "Why, after all the louche language of the sinful seventies, evil eighties, and naughty nineties, is there a resurgence of decorous diction in this decade of the zealous zeroes?" Algeo's articulate and awesomely apt answer: "Could it be linked with the rise of the righteous Right?" As lefties would say, damn right. The effusion of porn and profanity in movies and on the Internet, the weakening through repetition of copulation terminology on cable TV and the shrugging acceptance of the way excrement "happens" in every medium of communication caused a vocabulary backlash. Political figures recognize this and bend the language of emphatic imprecation over backward, ostentatiously refusing to let even such long-tamed terms as //hell// and //damn// escape their lips in public. "Keep in mind that the original words, particularly religious profanity, were once considered extremely strong," notes Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "People who now use the euphemistic alterations are more folksy, likely to be older, more rural or conservative, so the words suggest an older and less urban worldview. Speakers who are younger, urban and nonconservative would use the uneuphemized words, or even stronger words." Here comes the beauty part: this reheckification of hell and redarnification of //damn,// so pleasing to residents of the "red states" with conservative majorities, have caused a linguistic counterreaction. Liberals now recognize the cultural appeal of ostentatious gentility in language and are deriding it as Machiavellian manipulation; sometimes it is, but it can also be a guileless manifestation of cultural affinity. In political discourse, adaptation is the sincerest form of battery. If down-home hecking and darning works, and if elitist derision doesn't strangle the verbal folksiness in the cradle, odds are that it will be co-opted by the other side. Examining Judge [|Samuel Alito] at confirmation hearings, Senator [|Charles Schumer] of New York, who determinedly goes by the name of "Chuck," challenged some of the nominee's blandly conciliatory responses with a folksy "Know of any nominees who came before the Senate and said, 'The //heck// with you guys'?" And consider this citation only weeks ago from the editorial page of The New York Times, a bastion of propriety in usage but hardly a bastion of conservatism. In denouncing the state political leaders in Albany for failure to put new voting systems in place, The Times demanded, "What in //tarnation// are those people doing?" Not "what in the hell," which would have caused gasps at the copy desk, but the dialectically delicious "what in //tarnation//." This is a colonial New England regionalism, later picked up and still used in the South and West. The //tarn// is from //tarnal//, a corruption of the mild oath //eternal!,// and is joined with the last two syllables of //damnation// to form //tarnation!// Thus is eternal damnation rendered inoffensive. What in hell comes next? Danged if I know.  **The Way We Eat: The Sweet-Tooth Fairy**

**By CHRISTINE MUHLKE** Published: February 12, 2006 Sure you love chocolate. But do you store dated bars in your cellar and wake up at 5 in order to taste them with a fresh palate? Do you wear custom-made dresses with pockets in the front so you can nibble during meetings? Did Pierre Hermé name five cocoa-based confections after you? Then sorry, you've got nothing on Chloé Doutre-Roussel. In chocolate circles — yes, they exist — the twinkly Frenchwoman is a goddess, its Bella Abzug, Julia Child and Isabelle Huppert foil-wrapped into one. A tireless enthusiast for the stuff (what's known in France as a //chocodépendante//), the former agronomist has parlayed her passion into a very sweet career. As the chocolate buyer and taster for Fortnum & Mason since 2003, she has worked her way through more than a pound of samples daily. ("I spit," she admitted.) Later this year, she will also become a consultant for the store while honing her business plan. The objective is to bring her chocolate revolution to America — a movement that's already under way thanks to independent chocolatiers like Michael Recchiuti, Dagoba, Steve De Vries and Scharffen Berger (which was recently bought by Hershey). In the coming year Doutre-Roussel will conduct her chocolate-tasting classes and conferences here, with dreams of someday revamping the selection at a major U.S. supermarket chain and broadcasting a regular informative sweet spot on TV. "Americans have to learn that chocolate is a gourmet food with their body and not just because they read it everywhere," she explains. The revolution begins tomorrow, when she takes over the Charbonnel et Walker Chocolate Cafe at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York for two days to lead tastings and sign copies of her book, "The Chocolate Connoisseur." A breathily written, lightly edited manual to taking your relationship past the flirtation phase, the book also marks the debut of the Chloé Chocolat line. For if Doutre-Roussel has her way, those 70 percent Lindt bars that we smugly keep in our desk drawers are going to taste to us like sweetened crayons. Soon we'll be seeking small-production chocolate whose aromas of mushrooms, wood, jasmine and leather can linger on the tongue for up to five minutes. Doutre-Roussel, who weighs a smidge over 100 pounds, speaks of the sweet in near-mystical terms; "choco-" is her favorite prefix. "Chocolate is like my best friend and the most intense pleasure at the same time," she says, clarifying, "perhaps not the most intense, but the most regular and reliable one." Her path began at 3 weeks old in Mexico, where her mother put chocolate on her lips and told her she smiled like an angel. Sent to Paris to attend high school, she used her pocket money to buy as many new bars as she could and made rigorous tasting notes before breakfast. Years later, she landed in the office of Pierre Hermé, who was revitalizing the fabled patisserie Ladurée. "Nobody speaks, eats, breathes chocolate like you," he told her less than a year later when he promoted her to confectionery manager. (He wasn't kidding: this is a woman who has kept rooms in her apartment at 65 degrees, the ideal temperature for storing chocolate.) At Fortnum & Mason, she tried to wean Brits off of sugary truffles and low-quality bars (mere "candy" to her) and toward what she believes is the real deal: dark chocolate bars made with care and enjoyed without guilt. (A chapter of her book is dedicated to alleviating chocolate-induced anxiety, since she says she believes that it triggers enzymes in the saliva that make things taste bitter.) Part of Doutre-Roussel's role as chocoambassador involves dispelling the snobbish myths that have arisen as chocolate has become the new cheese. "Some say that people who like milk chocolate are not real connoisseurs or that percentage is crucial to the quality or even the origin of the beans," she says, referring to the status appeal of single-estate bars from Venezuela, Madagascar and other tropical climes. Pooh-poohing percentagism, she adds, "When you buy wine, do you select the bottle according to the percentage of alcohol?" What people need to do in order to understand the power of good chocolate, she says, is a taste test. She instructs students to let a fingernail-size piece dissolve on the tongue and take note of the flavors that emerge. By sampling four artisanal brands of chocolate of the same percentage (which can be ordered through Web sites like [|Chocosphere.com] ) alongside a bar of your favorite supermarket chocolate, you can build "a database of available chocopleasure." Her "desert island bars" — including Valrhona Manjari, Pralus Madagascar and Steve De Vries Costa Rican Trinitario — are included in her limited-edition Journey Into Chocolate box, sold by Fortnum & Mason and promoted through her Web site, [|Chloechocolat.com]. Next, she plans to make customized accessories available through the site. "Everybody has little pockets for the mobile, and I think we should also have one for a chocolate bar," she says. Chocodépendants, unite.  **Freewheeling the family in a Kiwi motorhome** **By William Gray** Will takes his brood onto the open roads of New Zealand Are we really going to sleep in this? Really, really?” Yes, really. It took some time for our four-year-old twins, Joe and Ellie, to grasp the idea that you could have bedroom, kitchen, playroom and car rolled into one. But that’s exactly what you get with a motorhome, and it’s what made it such a perfect choice for our free-roaming tour of New Zealand’s South Island. At Hanmer Springs (our first night’s stop, 90 minutes’ drive from Christchurch), we discovered that all sorts of people have motorhomes. It’s not just stereotypes – grumpy old men and New Age travellers – but young couples and families. The facilities at the motorhome park were excellent. There was everything from an internet café to a communal barbecue area. While my wife, Sally, and I hooked up to water and power points, the children tackled state-of-the-art playgrounds with aerial slides and giant trampolines. Inside our motorhome, the facilities were no less impressive. The six-berth model boasted three double beds, fridge-freezer, microwave, cooker, DVD player, flat-screen TV, shower and toilet. Despite these home comforts, however, jetlag and the novelty of ‘sleeping on wheels’ conspired against sleep for Joe and Ellie that first night. Not that it mattered. One of the big advantages of this type of family holiday is its flexibility. In the morning we simply tweaked our plans and dawdled at Hanmer Springs’ water park, with its thermal lagoons, waterslides and children’s pool. Part of the fun of a motorhome holiday is planning your route. Grab a map and pencil and you’ve got the ultimate dot-to-dot. Even in February (late high season), we rarely found any need to book a site at a motorhome park. And when we underestimated how long it would take to drive the Catlin’s Coast, we simply pulled off the road and spent a night sans hook-up. Three weeks living, travelling and sleeping in a motorhome inevitably caused the odd stressful moment. Fortunately, you can stick your children in seats seven metres away from the driver’s cab so that you don’t have to hear them whingeing on long journeys. And when it rains, you can at least park where there is some kind of view and keep warm and dry while you rustle up a meal. Best of all, you can explore an entire country without having to lug suitcases in and out of hotels. You only have to unpack once and you only have to get used to one bed. But remember when you flush the toilet, you can forget about it only for as long as the ‘full’ sign remains green on your waste tank. Don’t worry when it turns red, though. Just hold your breath and think of it as changing a giant nappy...

 Raybon Kan: In defence of the Tiger By Raybon Kan I don't want to listen to Tiger Woods' phone messages. The media in 2009 is an outrage. Did Henry VIII have to deal with this kind of invasion? Caesar? Elvis? In my view, Tiger Woods has behaved impeccably, and utterly without reproach, in the relevant category: Superstars Married to Someone Hot But Not Famous. I don't see how can we hold Tiger Woods to a standard different from other rock stars. Adulation is part of the job description. It's like marrying Superman and expecting him to walk everywhere. Mrs Woods - a nanny (ie illegal immigrant guest worker), not even a member of the Spice Girls - knew, pre-marriage, that Tiger was worshipped globally. To this life-lottery, Powerball-windfall of a union, she brought zero fame, and only three sexual-fantasy points, she being (1) Swedish (2) Nanny (3) Model. Yet, are we to believe that for this meagre investment - which would only diminish over time, especially with Florida sun damage - she expected 100 per cent of the worldwide rights to Tiger's entire body, even in countries she wasn't in at the time.

She expected rights in Melbourne? New York? Las Vegas?!? Surely, the most she could expect were the Swedish rights to Tiger, in perpetuity, and events where they were both on the premises and arrived on the same flight. (It wouldn't surprise me if these were the exact words of their wedding vows.) Who did she think she was? Jennifer Aniston? Sarah Jessica Parker? Good grief, we're talking about Tiger Woods here. Tiger is in his own category, like Elvis. Would we be surprised, or judgmental, that Elvis cheated on Priscilla? No. People had class in those days, even the media. People knew to turn a blind eye. Even Priscilla looked away. She didn't act all trashy, chasing his car out of Graceland, smashing the windows with blue suede shoes. Mrs Woods, on the other hand, used the golf champion's signature club to attack the sponsor's luxury vehicle, after scratching his face, no doubt with sponsored nail polish (he's worth it). Has there ever been domestic violence with this much product placement? Life for Tiger is completely unfair: You can be the best-looking billionaire on the planet, a global monarch. Here are all the women who want to have sex with you right now, this instant, as soon as they wrap from their underwear shoot, but don't touch them. What sort of deal with the devil is this? Let's be honest, the puritanical media reaction is pure envy. We would love a deal with the devil, but we can't even get an appointment. It's so easy to say, don't cheat on your wife. Of course Tiger knew he was married. But have you never forgotten something you knew? Everyone knows not to lift their head on contact with the golfball, but they all seem to forget when there's a club in their hand. So it is with groupies when you're famous and married. Jesper Parnevik, shame on you. How dare you say you regret introducing Elin to Tiger? The only reason we care what you think is because you knew Tiger. (I suspect he's deleted your number now.) And thanks to that introduction, eight years ago - several lifetimes in celebrity years - Mrs Woods is set for life. And since when did the Swedish people get so morally uptight? Not to mention turbulent, and fingernail-attacky, like Latin Americans at an election? Good grief, the French President met his previous wife when he was celebrant at her wedding. Let's get with the times. And credit where credit is due. What about all the women Tiger hasn't had sex with? Do we have any idea what it's like to be Tiger Woods? Imagine being in a room where 100 people all try to hit you at the same time, with 100 tennis balls. A few would hit, right? Well, if you're Tiger Woods, it's not tennis balls being thrown your way: it's women. Beautiful, sexually aggressive, competitive women. Sure, he's had a few affairs. But as a percentage of all the beautiful women who have offered to sleep with him, I'd guess his uptake is somewhere between celibate, homosexual or dead. I bet the Dalai Lama doesn't have as clean a record as Tiger. Anyone who wears bed sheets constantly is obviously sending out the glad eye. Maybe we should call him the Glad Eye Lama.

Let's look further at what else Tiger didn't do. Faced at 2.30am with anger and violence, and indeed shame - his mother was right there - he didn't contribute violence. A lover, not a fighter, he drove away. Indeed, in a hybrid, for the planet. As Michael Jackson implored us to do, Tiger beat it. Like Gandhi, he chose the path of non-violence. If only, like Mandela, he'd chosen a long walk to freedom instead. By Raybon Kan