How to improve writing (no. 123)

In The New York Times today, in an article about the attempted assassination:

The crack of the bullets are heard as they pass the microphone that Mr. Trump speaks into.

Subject and verb should always agree. Sheesh, Times : this sentence has been standing as is since early this morning.

*

8:13 p.m.: I’ll be more expansive. What makes the sentence especially awkward is that you can't fix it by writing “the cracks of the bullets” — that sounds downright strange. I would choose something like this:

Three sounds are heard — crack, crack, crack — as the bullets pass the microphone that Mr. Trump speaks into.

Or simpler:

Three sounds are heard — crack, crack, crack — as the bullets pass Mr. Trump’s microphone.

The Times sentence is still standing as is.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 123 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

“Competitive floating”

From the BBC: “The extinct Olympic sport that was the ’dullest’ of all time,” the distance plunge, derided as “competitive floating.”

Apple Calendar

Does everyone already know that you can reschedule events in Calendar by moving them with a finger or a mouse? I just learned by doing.

Apple System Status

A helpful page for Apple users: Apple System Status. That’s how I know there’s a problem with iCloud Private Relay right now. It’s not me; it’s them.

Bad Faith

A documentary urgently worth watching: Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy (dir. Stephen Ujlaki and Christopher Jacob Jones, 2024). It’s available from Amazon, Apple TV+, and Tubi. We watched via Tubi (for free) last night, with just three minimal commercial interruptions.

I was surprised by how many matters in this documentary were news to me. Just four: the role of Paul Weyrich, the so-called “Cyrus prophecy,” the hateful appropriation of the acronym LGBTQ, and the long-standing talk of a coming civil war. George Lang’s remark is just a recent instance. And the Christian nationalist emphasis on the conflict of light and darkness, the godly and the demonic (which includes anyone in government who is not “of God”), reminds me that Manichaeism is alive and well in these here United States.

I think that many people who will vote for Donald Trump understand very little about the future they’re voting for.

Toumani Diabeté (1965–2024)

The kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté has died at the age of fifty-eight. The New York Times has an obituary.

Here is a sample of his artistry, with the guitarist Ali Farka Touré. It’s the kind of performance that should go on forever, if it could.

Paul Harvey redux

From a New York Times article by Peter Baker about last night’s presidential address to the nation:

He always knew that he would be delivering a speech like this. He just thought, or hoped, that it would be more than four years from now. Yet while it was not technically a farewell address, with six months still to go in office and more presidenting to do, it was the beginning of Joe Biden’s long goodbye.

Mr. Biden’s address to the nation from the Oval Office on Wednesday night was all Joe, love him or hate him — the paeans to American exceptionalism, the evocations of family, the selective boasting about his record, the favorite lofty phrases about an “inflection point” and “saving our democracy,” and yes, the soft, raspy old man’s voice that no longer commands the room the way it once did.

“And yes, the soft, raspy old man’s voice”: it sounds as though Peter Baker is attempting to channel Paul Harvey.

I read these paragraphs aloud in the Orange Crate Art test kitchen. Elaine had the same gah! reaction.

[A belated thought: Baker’s prose is also reminiscent of H. V. Kaltenborn in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: “But those tired Boy Ranger legs are buckling.”

Saving our democracy

“Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I‘ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation”: President Joe Biden, a few minutes ago.

“It’s pathological”

In the news: a revelation from Fred Trump III that his uncle Donald told him that people with several medical conditions “maybe ... just should die,” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.” Fred Trump III has a son with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. Fred says that on a later occasion his uncle told him, “I don’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”

The historian Eddie Glaude on MSNBC a little earlier this afternoon:

“It’s pathological. My sister — my mother’s been changing diapers for sixty years. Had German measles when she was pregnant as a young woman. My sister can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t hear. She’s never had a bedsore. She’s never been instiutionalized. My mother’s been changing her diapers for sixty years. And this man is going to say something like that to her? It gives you a sense of the depth of the depravity of him, right? — and how he thinks about the most vulnerable.”

The story of Donald Trump’s attempt to end medical benefits for his nephew’s son is already well known.

What did I think about Kamala Harris?

I searched these pages to see what they (I) have said about Kamala Harris. Her name appears in thirteen — and now fourteen — posts. From a January 2, 2019 post:

The last thing Democrats need to do is to turn the 2020 presidential election into a battle between oldsters. Such a battle will do little to spark voter interest and much to spark parody. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren: no. What the Democratic Party needs is a candidate who offers a sharp contrast to Donald Trump not only in policy but in affect. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke: yes.

On January 27, 2019, I was happy to see that Harris was running. And on August 12, 2020, one day after Joe Biden named Harris as his running mate, I wrote, “she will (almost certainly) make a great nominee for president in 2024.”

[And, yes, there was a “How to improve writing” post about campaign e-mails, which were certainly not written by Harris.]