Misattributed
When you think you’re quoting Voltaire (or Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King or Confucius) but you’re actually quoting an obscure white nationalist from 1993:
On Sunday, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky tweeted out criticism targeting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, containing a political cartoon superimposed with a quote that has been often misattributed to the French philosopher Voltaire.
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize,” the quote said.
Which is kind of a stupid thing to quote anyway, because of the inelegant syntax. The “who” should be “whom” but that would make a very awkward clunky sentence so the whole thing needs to be reworked, so whoever said it isn’t all that clever.
No (to take the Rep literally) Fauci isn’t science, but then he doesn’t say he is, either. But he knows more about the relevant science than most people, because that’s his job, and because he’s good at it. It does make more sense to listen to him than to angry screamers on Twitter.
USA Today fact-checked the quote’s attribution in May of last year as it gained traction on Facebook. It found no trace of the phrase in Voltaire’s correspondence from 1742 to 1777, which is logged in the University of Southern California’s digital library.
The etymologist Barry Popik traced the quote — with slightly different wording — back to a 1993 radio broadcast with the white nationalist Kevin Alfred Strom, USA Today reported.
Big expert on novel viruses is he?
“Attributing a stupid quote to a famous dead person makes fools look wise to other fools.”
–Dorothy Parker
And there is no real reason to think that one cannot ask Fauci relevant questions. It doesn’t make sense to ask him repeatedly about nonsense fake cures that have sprouted up since the advent of the pandemic, nor to demand an answer to how we can achieve “herd immunity” without a vaccine.
Ask him, though, about the VAERS, or myocarditis or any of the other contraindications of the vaccines, and he can answer the questions.
The only time I see or read about Fauci these days is when he’s being criticized. I consider him well-qualified and a reasonably good communicator, and I give him credit for continuing to do this work when many in his position would be tempted to just pack it in and quietly retire, but I don’t really pay much attention to him.
I suppose maybe there are some Fauci fans who eagerly await his every appearance on CNN or wherever and hang on his every word, but certainly not as many as his detractors imagine.
For decades we had the luxury of not paying any particular attention to Fauci because of the scarcity of pandemics. I think I probably saw his name some during the Ebola and Zika alarms, but not otherwise.
For you, Screechy, Anthony Fauci definitely not being criticised:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUiDLcp_hIw
“Whom” seems to have died out. I’m not sure I’ve ever used it and the only occasions I can recall hearing it used are in set phrases like “to whom it may concern” or “for whom the bill tolls” . Also Vincent Price’s narration in Thriller uses “whomsoever” but I think that’s meant to sound deliberately archaic. I’d be much more likely to find the usage of “whom” slightly mannered than to find “who” jarring when used in its stead.
It certainly hasn’t in the stuff that I read, which includes mass media reporting. However, I will admit that it’s totally misused by many gumbies on the Internet. I got a good laugh out of the one who told me once that “whom is just a fancy way of saying who” and who made a point of using it everywhere, including in nominative-case situations. That guy was a real hoot!
“Whom” can sound/read very awkward, but its absence in formal-ish writing is also not ideal. What I generally do is just avoid constructions where it could/should appear. In conversation I don’t worry about it, of course, hardly anybody says “whom” in talking.
Whoops James got there first. What he said, except that I don’t know that guy.
That was William Safire’s advice as well.
Anyway, English has slowly been sloughing off its case system (along with much of the rest of its inflectional morphology) for centuries. In a few centuries the genitive will likely be the last remnant.
“Whom”, while not technically dead, is certainly a zombie — or, perhaps more aesthetically pleasingly, a living fossil; it is a relic of a case system which English grammar really no longer possesses, much like putting the “s” on third-person verbs is a relic of a declension system which English grammar (otherwise) no longer possesses. You certainly don’t have to apologise if it is still an active part of your vocabulary, but the vast majority of English speakers alive today lack a working knowledge of what it is, what it’s for, and how to use it.
But we’re also allowed to be Don Quixotes, raising our lances at windmills with draconic aspirations… ;)
WaM, I’d be surprised if there is English in a few centuries. Twitter is rapidly killing it. My students seem unable to write outside the Twitter/TikTok style.
Maybe I’m overstating things to say it’s died out. Certainly in speech it’s almost extinct and I’d say it’s endangered in written English. I don’t use it, although possibly that makes me look like an oaf to prople who do. I don’t find “who did you ask?” strikes my eye as being obviously incorrect, whereas “Joe and me did it” does. “I should of done it” is a separate issue but makes me physically flinch.
Searching for whom on the Guardian site produces ten results on the first page, five of them about the distinction with who.
iknklast,
People have been predicting the demise of English for centuries. It’s still going strong–more speakers than ever. No reason to think that Twitter will kill it.
Sure, it’ll still be around. It’ll be LOL and ROTFLMAO and OMG, but…I suppose it will be the next phase…post modern English.
I’m not sure how new textspeak really is, broadly speaking. In biographies, museums, etc., I’ve seen plenty of examples of historical correspondence between friends and family that are full of abbreviations, shortcuts, and imprecise language.
I say this as someone who texts in full sentences with proper punctuation. I don’t love all the “r u ok? lol” stuff, but it’s not a sign of decline, just a different version of stuff that’s always been with us.
The grammar of “who/whom” isn’t even obscure. It maps directly to “he/him” and “they/them”, so if you understand how … pronouns … work …
Oh.
Oh, well.
I must say I’m an admirer of proper writing, and I try to emulate this, but not when texting. I detest spell check, auto correct and predictive text, so my texting usually consists short blurts with no caps or punctuation, save for a comma here and there to separate ideas (with a moderate sprinkling of emojis). I think this evolved from not using a proper keyboard combined with sheer laziness. By contrast, my writing on paper consists of all cap shorthand with minimal punctuation. I prefer a proper keyboard for proper writing which makes it so much easier. I can make a good show of cursive longhand when I have to, but it seems less and less.
As an aside, I haven’t been able to use talk to text or any voice command software either. I spend so much time looking to see if the damned thing translated what I said exactly that I might as well type it in. Neurotic I suppose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I always think of “whom” as the object of a preposition and it does sound a bit better when used that way, as in Lilly Tomlin’s greating as Ernestine the operator:
“Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”
Even outside of genderspeak, people don’t consistently understand how pronouns work. “It’s him at the window”; “He gave the book to Jim and I”; and so on. There was a NYT article many years ago entitled “I favor whom’s doom (except after a preposition)”; even that writer was equivocal on the matter.
I’d argue that “it’s him at the window” is and always has been correct, as a an example of euphonia. The same sort of thing can be seen in other languages, such as Japanese. Or, if we want extreme, consider those languages with lenition or eclipsis, like Irish. On the other hand, “it is he” is the result of fetishizing Latin.