Gravitas

[Gregory {Greg} Downing]

At 11:10 PM 7/26/2000 +0800, you wrote:
>I fear there's a long road to travel from this
>particular use of gravitas, or the ones in Fred's and the MoA quotes
>relating to an attribute of Roman culture, to the quality that
>everyone seems to think that George W. and Clinton may not have
>enough of and that Dick Cheney and Al Gore are dripping with an
>overdose of.
>
>larry [horn]
>

I have a vague recollection that the dissemination of "gravitas" as a term
in American political discourse was contributed to by John McLaughlin -- an
erstwhile Jesuit who was trained before the Catholic Church's shift from
Latin to modern vernaculars in the 1960's. McL would have used the term on
his weekend television program way back in the 1980's. Is my memory accurate
on that? Anyway, the show was popular viewing with political and
political-reporting types. One might want to investigate McLaughlin's
possible role in popularizing this as a political term. I imagine Wm. Safire
would have some information on this. (Didn't his assistant posted the
original query, or am I remembering that wrong?)


Greg Downing, at greg.downing at nyu.edu or gd2 at is2.nyu.edu