A passionately socialist Anglican priest and proud member of the LGBTQ+ Community no longer approves of Moz:
The song I can no longer listen to
“This Charming Man”. Much as I like the song, Morrissey has ceased to be charming for me.
• ‘No Jacket Required would be the soundtrack of hell’: the Rev Richard Coles’s honest playlist, The Guardian, 10i22
In terms of my core ambitions for 2022, I hope to continue the fight against such things as the reprehensible and repulsive phrase “in terms of”, the pretentious and throbbingly urgent adjective “core”, and the cheap trick of trailing dots… I know that I won’t win and that the Hive-Mind will continue to buzz deafeningly at core venues like The Guardian, The London Review of Books and The Shropshire Advertiser, but so what? In the core words of Samuel in terms of Johnson:
[I]t remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. — Samuel Johnson, Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
Elsewhere Other-Accessible
• Ex-term-in-ate! — core interrogation of why “in terms of” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting…
• Don’t Do Dot — core interrogation of why “…” is so despicable, deplorable and downright disgusting dot dot dot
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
How should the first line of this incendiary intervention begin? I suggest: “In terms of my core ambitions for 2022…” → “Among my main ambitions…”
Van Halen’s Diamond Dave fails to sparkle:
In terms of music, it’s all Brit. It’s Freddie, Bowie and the guy in Zeppelin. Theatrically, you’re looking at Spider-Man, with a little Groucho thrown in. […] Pushing boundaries in terms of what [Van Halen] wore was never an ambition of ours, but it always seemed to be where we would end up. — David Lee Roth: ‘My advice for aspiring artists? Breathable fabrics’, The Guardian, 25vi2019.
Note that he said “Theatrically…” rather than “In terms of theater…” So he should’ve said “Musically, it’s all Brit.” Rather than using the ugly and pretentious “In terms of music…”
• Hal Bent for Leather — Rob Halford talks like a Guardianista too
Like all minimally decent and politically aware people, I am keyly — and corely — committed to anti-racism on a maximal basis by any means necessary. Monkey-funker.
This is also why I am a corely — and keyly — committed member of the Guardian-reading community. If I am ever tempted to relent a micrometre in terms of the maximality of the metrics of my core commitment to anti-racism, the Guardian is there to remind me of what anti-racism is corely committed to achieving…
• It’s been a turbulent year for race in Britain. So what next? — At the end of Black History Month, we ask prominent Black British figures to assess where the UK stands in terms of equality and cohesion, The Guardian, 30×21
“In terms of those ideas, there’s been specific policies that are intersecting in terms of racist and sexist policies that have targeted and harmed black women. The same thing with black men, in terms of them being a racial group that have been affected by racist ideas and policies. […] So, in terms of assessing other people, we should allow for people to essentially make racist mistakes.” — Ibram X Kendi, The most extreme racists say, ‘I’m the least racist person anywhere in the world’, The Guardian, 30viii2019
Elsewhere other-accessible:
• Ex-term-in-nate! — incendiarily interrogating issues around “in terms of” dot dot dot
• All O.o.t.Ü.-F. posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”…
“When it comes to Harry Potter, JK Rowling just can’t leave it alone. This is not necessarily a bad thing – fans have got to see Harry and friends all grown-up in the Cursed Child plays – but she’s also managed to muddy the waters by her constant rejigging of the original narrative furniture.” — Fantastic Beasts isn’t racist, but JK Rowling should stop tweaking the source material, Hannah Flint, The Guardian, 28ix2018.
• Oh My Guardian #7 — the previous entry in this award-winning series
• Reds under the Thread more on mixed metaphors… in terms of The Guardian…
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates
I don’t know any exceptions to the rule that someone who likes William Burroughs will also be a member in terms of core issues around the hive-mind. From Kurt Cobain to Will Self: if you get a buzz outa Burroughs, that won’t be the only buzzing you’re corely acquaintanced with… And I predict that you’ll frequently use, hear and read core items from the hive-mind term-set such as “in terms of”, “prior to”, “issues around”, “engagement with”, “spike”, “skill-set”, “core”, “key”, “toxic” and “edgy”… You’ll also like italics and trailing dots…
“There was a certain edgy excitement to turning on the computer every morning and immediately checking to see what Mark had thrown down in terms of an ideas-gauntlet.” – Simon Reynolds in the foreword to K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), edited by Darren Ambrose, Repeater Books 2018.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• Ex-term-in-ate!
• Don’t Do Dot…
• Prior Analytics
• Spike-U-Like?
In terms of ugly, pretentious phrases used by members of the Guardian-reading community, the “signature” phrase is undoubtedly “in terms of”. But there’s another phrase habitually deployerized by Guardianistas that is perhaps even worse in terms of its core Guardianisticity. To get to it, let’s first engage issues around the title of this post: “Prior Analytics”. I took it from the title of a book on logic by Aristotle, Prior Analytics, known in Latin as Analytica Priora.
Are you surprised to learn that Prior Analytics has a companion called Posterior Analytics, or Analytica Posteriora? No, of course you aren’t. “Prior” and “posterior” are high-falutin’ words that go together: when the first appears, the second naturally follows. And you might think that this obvious pairing would alert Guardianistas to the ugliness and pretension of another of their signature phrases, “prior to”:
• Foreign press warn over dangers of new UK media laws prior to Leveson report — headline in The Observer, 24xi2012
• “Prior to its emergence the trend was not to talk truth to power but to slur the powerless.” — The Great Gary Younge in The Observer, 6xi2011
• “Prior to a prang outside Tesco which, for insurance purposes, wasn’t actually my fault”… — The Great Zoë Williams in The Guardian, 8ii2005
Why do I think “prior to” may be even worse than “in terms of”? There are times when “in terms of” isn’t particularly bad English. I don’t like to admit it, but there are even times when it’s the best phrase to use. But “prior to”? It’s almost always just an ugly and pretentious way of saying “before”. I say “almost always” because you can make an exception for a technical usage like “Existence is logically prior to essence.” But that’s a rare exception, so I repeat: “prior to” is almost always just an ugly and pretentious way of saying “before”.
And guess what? You’ll find this in the Guardian and Observer style guide under “P”:
prior to, previous to
the word you want is “before” (see Guardian and Observer style guide: P)
Guardianistas should be able to realize that for themselves, because “prior to” naturally suggests “posterior to”. However, even Guardianistas don’t habitually say “posterior to” instead of “after”. Even a Guardianista’s ugliness-and-pretension-o-meter is tripped by “posterior to”. But only in the flesh, as it were. Guardianistas are apparently incapable of two-step logic: first, noticing that “prior to” rather than “before” naturally suggests “posterior to” rather than “after”; second, deciding that because “posterior to” is ugly and pretentious, they shouldn’t use “prior to” either.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates
It isn’t the best possible phrase to be governed by “in terms of” in the pages of
The Guardian, but the combination below may be the archetypal item of Guardianese:
And what about the leather? Was that also a signal? [Rob Halford:] “It wasn’t conscious. But how ironic that I chose that look – Glenn, the biker from the Village People. That wasn’t my attachment, in terms of the gay community, but I understood the power of that look.” — How Judas Priest invented heavy metal, The Guardian, 10×2010.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates
Poovy Postscript
The title of this post was originally “Highway to Hal”, which is feeble. I don’t know why I didn’t think a bit longer and come up with the present title, which has a double entendre (your actual French, ducky).
As I pointed out in Ex-Term-In-Ate!, my excoriating interrogation of “in terms of”, this ugly and pretentious phrase is especially “popular among politicians, who need ways to sound impressive and say little”. But I’ve rarely seen even a politician blether like this:
Cox’s predecessor, Mike Wood, the town’s Labour MP from 1997 to 2015, has said he felt it prudent not to rise to Lockwood’s provocation while in office. But, breaking his silence, [he] told the Observer: “Lockwood has never been anything other than a major issue in terms of trying to unstick what a lot of people were trying to do in terms of community relations.” — Tommy Robinson and the editor: how a newspaper ‘sows division’ where Jo Cox died, The Observer, 2ix2018.
Elsewhere other-engageable:
• Oh My Guardian #6 — the previous entry in this award-winning series
• All posts interrogating issues around “in terms of”
• All posts interrogating issues around the Guardian-reading community and its affiliates
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 