Nattering nabobs redux

[Nancy Friedman]

On Sunday, Newark (NJ) mayor Cory Booker delivered the commencement speech
at Stanford University, his alma mater. My local public-radio station, KQED,
played a clip from the end of the speech that included the unattributed
phrase "nattering nabobs of negativity." (http://bit.ly/3KIGEi starting at
about 49:32 <http://bit.ly/3KIGEi%20starting%20at%20about%2049:32> )



In a similarly alliterative but more original vein, Booker also exhorted the
graduates not to join "the denizens of divisiveness"-and he pronounced that
last word "dih-VISS-ive-ness." (I think this pronunciation has been
discussed on this list.)



Was Booker, a Democrat, channeling the ghost of Nixon's vice president?
"Nattering nabobs of negativism" was famously coined by William Safire for a
speech given by Spiro Agnew to the 1972 Republican Convention in San Diego.
That speech also included "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history."
More about the Safire/Agnew collaboration here: http://bit.ly/L8R2Mv



Nancy



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