"Nixonomics," or, Safire fails to mention an ADS member's work yet again

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 01:13:38 -0400, bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>William Safire's Sunday "On Language" column mentions "Nixonomics" and
>others like that. However, Ben Zimmer discussed that on May 13th. And he
>discussed it better.

Thanks, Barry.

>What goes through Safire's mind? Oh, here's an ADS member! He gives out
>his work to other scholars for free! Well, SCREW HIM! NO CREDIT FOR YOU!
>...
>Amazing. Join the club, Ben. He'll recognize you in ten years, if he's
>still alive. This is a disgrace.

Eh, whaddayagonnado. I was credited in a Safire column last year about
"stay the course," but he misconstrued some of my points, so perhaps it's
better to remain uncredited. And if Safire or his assistant had actually
read my post in its entirety, then the column wouldn't have included some
errors, e.g.:

>Here's my advice to White House aides of all stripes: If your
>president's name ends with an n, brace yourself for an -omics branding.
>Thus did we have Nixonomics, Reaganomics and Clintonomics.

It's not enough for the name to end in an 'n' for the -omics suffix to be
attached. If McCain is elected, would we have McCainomics?  Nope, because
the final syllable is stressed. It would have to be McCainonomics, which
isn't quite as mellifluous.

>We did not have Fordonomics or Carternomics or Bushonomics, nor would we
>have had Dukakisonomics or Gorenomics or Kerrynomics.

Ah, but we did have Fordo-/Carter-/Busho-nomics. Citations abound. The
terms just didn't catch on as much as Nixon-/Reagan-/Clinton-omics (chalk
it up to euphony).

>It has nothing to do with politics; it's the elision quality of the last
>letter of the president's last name.

The "elision quality"? Hmmmm. I think that sentence has a certain "elision
quality"-- if you restore the elisions, it might actually make sense.


--Ben Zimmer