“A hippie white student at an elite university with a guitar and a Hezbollah terrorist flag. This isn’t exactly Woodstock is it.” — Amanda Jane Brown on Facebook
“If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you’ve probably chosen the wrong something.” –Roger Rosenblatt
“When you catch an adjective, kill it.” –Mark Twain
This piece is about adjectives. Except where I’m commenting about the sniping taking place on social media over student protests on many (but many more not) college campuses. The protesters have a number of demands, but none of them call for the singing of “Hatikva.”
As the demonstrators and their opposition have generated enough moral outrage to power a medium-size city, they’ve succeeded in obscuring the real death and destruction still playing out in Israel and Gaza.
Meanwhile, inquiring minds have been trying to suss out the reasons that the demonstrators’ tents — from sea to shining sea — all look the same; about how their parents must feel now that their tuition money has gone to liberate tracts of lawn on campus (“Wonder if his Woodstock-aged mom is ashamed of him,” is one snarky comment I saw. In this war snark has been perfected) and when someone is going to tie George Soros to this conspiracy.
Years from now, when today’s campus radicals have retired after careers on Wall Street, we’ll still have the adjectives — and the adverbs — that pockmarked our age.
For example:
“We are pleased that radical anti-Israel and antisemitic activists have failed so spectacularly in trying to intimidate the Jewish community and prevent us from enjoying musical and cultural celebrations. Matisyahu was targeted simply because he is Jewish and proudly pro-Israel. But like Jewish people in our region and across the world, he will not be silenced. Our message to antisemites anywhere is simple: you will never succeed. Not on our watch.” –Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington
It was Strunk and White who called on writers to “omit needless words” in their work. They must have assumed that writers were savvy enough to recognize the words to omit. Well, you know what happens when you assume.
Another example:
Lesley J. Lopez, a Maryland state delegate, is running for Congress in this month’s Democratic primary. Asked by the adjective-heavy Jewish Community Relations Council for her strategy to end the Israel-Hamas conflict, Lopez launched a fusillade of adjectives and adverbs.
“The October 7th terrorist attack was a horrific act
of violence by Hamas and I strongly believe Israel
has the right to defend itself. Since the brutal attack
against innocent Israeli citizens, there has been a
significant military response to free Israeli hostages
taken by Hamas and root out the terrorist leaders who
perpetrated the attack. As a result, we’ve tragically seen significant civilian casualties in Gaza and many more displaced from their homes and living in dangerous conditions, even lacking basic needs. I support the Biden Administration’s ongoing diplomatic efforts and firm commitment to protect innocent life, provide humanitarian aid, secure the release of hostages, and work towards a durable and secure peace.”
“One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions,” wrote H.P. Lovecraft. “Words or compounds which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential.”
As a journalist, I spent years quoting people, and I won’t claim that I never misquoted anyone. It’s a hazard of being the first draft of history. In the following first draft, the Columbia Spectator attempted to ask a protester “What are you rebelling against?”
“Catherine Elias, SIPA ’25, one of the protesters, told Columbia Spectator when the encampment began at 4 a.m. that the occupation is meant to demonstrate that the students ‘won’t be moved until they meet our demands and that our demands are in the path and carrying the movement that has been set on this campus for over 60 years since 1968 to the 1980s to the ’90s to 2024 today.’”
The collapse of Godwin’s Law
Time was, the universe followed Godwin’s Law, which posits: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”
In the free for all surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, Godwin’s law seems to have collapsed, with the Holocaust comparison coming immediately after or even before the event to be compared. This meme, for instance, skips over the denial of education to women under the Taliban and school segregation in the United States and goes straight to the Nazis.
On Facebook, the first reactions were strictly warm ups:
“Unreal”
“So sad”
Then came the comment that pushed Godwin’s law off a cliff:
“yeah, but it’s worse because the Nazis didn’t have social media to organize and propagate their hatred and lies”
Worse than the Nazis?
Is that even possible?
A letter from the Jewish communal world
“Hi David,
“It’s Friday, and like so many in our community, I have been closely watching the alarming pro-Palestinian protests that erupted on way too many college campuses this past week, including in the Greater Washington area.
“As we end the year and look toward a joyous Spring Commencement this weekend, I wanted to share with you some thoughts on this eventful semester and the road ahead…” –Gil Preuss, CEO, The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington
Professor Ben Yagoda wrote a book called “When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse” and an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education called “The Adjective — So Ludic, So Minatory, So Twee.”
In a 2004 interview on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Yagoda offered “a great use of adjectives.” He quoted philosopher Thomas Hobbes’ description of the life of man in his book “Leviathan”:
“Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
This was the state of humanity while at war, without government, law, society, culture — what Hobbes called “a state of nature.”
We shouldn’t be in a rush to reach it.
David Wrote This 
