Fall Guy
Posted at 5:24 AM on March 26, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(26 Comments)
Pity poor Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. He doesn't have the same freedom with words that you and I have. We are allowed to express ourselves with sincerity. And if we have to fumble around to get to the point, it's generally harmless.
But when Geithner speaks, he walks across a minefield. Any misstep will be examined under a microscope and extremely fearful people will react instantly, based on what they think he means.
Witness yesterday's drop in the dollar after Geithner's off-the-cuff remark about whose money should be the world's dominant reserve currency.
Any Treasury Secretary or Federal Reserve Chair would be wise to approach the job like Clara Belle or Harpo Marx, and say nothing at all. Yet today Tim Geithner will testify before Congress. About what? Who cares! He'll probably be asked to predict the future. Just don't say anything upsetting!
Here's a list of ten words for the Treasury Secretary to avoid:
- Fall
- Sluggish
- Drop
- Bomb
- Crash
- Depression
- Crater
- Chinese Currency
- Nationalize
- And Panic
- Lounge
- Candy
- Friday
- Laugh
- Friend
- Extra
- Warm
- Pie
- Play
- And Puppies
"Our sluggish economy is in a free fall. It will drop like a bomb until the inevitable crash leaves a depression-sized crater in the world economy. I predict we will convert to Chinese Currency, nationalize everything, and panic."
I hope to hear:
Our lounge has free candy. I predict on Friday we will laugh with our friend, have extra helpings of warm pie, and play with puppies.
That's better!
Feel free to make your own happy and unhappy word nominations.
Comments (26)
And I just played with a puppy last night -- very restorative. Only happy words for me today (we hear enough unhappy words relentlessly these days):
Tulips, hot cocoa, weekend, books, zoo, ribbons, warm chocolate chip cookies, Radio Heartland!
Have a great day Heartlanders!
good morning
ice cream, health, hot coffee, high ground, baby goats, clean barn, spring, peace
With apologies to Fyder and Everhart for trying to remember their names instead of looking them up... Here's the url for their Going up North CD: http://www.fyderandeverhart.com/ For all you Minnesotans who are caught between seasons, dreaming of the fishing opener or longing to put on your mukluks and tromp in some real snow.
Good morning, all you & us Heartlanders!
Happy words:
Purr, fleece, sunny, bloom, balance
Unhappy words:
Toilet, handbasket, shrivel, telemarketer, Joe Bfstplk (pronounced by "blowing a raspberry")
I really had to laugh at the idea of converting to Chinese currency. Let me quote from Leonard Cohen's novel "Beautiful Losers" where he is talking about constipation. (Pardon the imagery, but you will never think of a Chinese coin the same way!)
"...The squatting man bargains with God, submitting list after list of New Year's Resolutions. ... If sphincter must be coin let it be Chinese coin..."
Greetings Heartlanders:
Other happy words include hot tea, pancakes, friends, family, blankie, teddy and fireplace.
More words to avoid: tank or tanking, desperate, volatile, toxic assets or taxpayer revolt.
I'll never understand how "smart" investors get so emotional that the stock market rises or falls if Geithner or (before) Greenspan so much as sneezes.
Good morning, all! I'm super busy this morning. Might not hear much of the show. Wishing everyone a good Thursday! --Elinor
Good Morning!
My career has revolved around the meaning and use of words for quite some time now and if there is one thing I have learned it's that words mean different things to different people. In one case I spent several months working on the difference between License and Registration finally arriving on Authorization as the concept behind them both and it was a career high. I'm sure y'all are quite thrilled not to have followed my career path but for me it works.
Some of my favorite words are:
Touch, kiss, hug, smile, laugh, sing, play, agree, sweet, melody, dance, and lottery.
Some of my least favorite are:
Crash, break, road rash, failure, scum, cheat, AIG (OK, technically not a word but I'm just sayin'...)
There may be some animal images that Geithner should avoid and others he could use. The bull image might have worked in the past but I think not now and of course bear is not a good one. He might want to swim up stream with the fish and try to find something to crow about. I think refernces to snakes should be avoided and even a favorite of this group, the goat, probably should be avoided. He needs to find a way to soar with the eagles.
Well, there was the time when I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for quite a while. I offered congratulations to her, as I noticed she was expecting a baby.
No, she corrected me...her baby had been born 3 months prior. She just still had not lost all of her weight.
Ok....I learned my lesson. Won't do that again.
Happy Words: egg coffee, golden retriever, gardens, white sand, down comforters.
Unhappy Words: alarm clock, thistles, blue screen, sunburn.
Good Morning all,
Lots of happy words this morning. Lots of them are my favorites. But after thinking about this for an hour & a half, I want to offer my favorite Norwegian word, the one that always makes me smile just saying or hearing it: Hyggelig (HIGG ah ligg). The bonus is that it means cheerful, comfortable, cozy, pleasant, nice.
Lund's Killer Brownies-- Very good words if you only have them once a month.
Also, books, tea, quilt, cat, walks and prayers.
Bad, bad words- mandatory month off for all state employees with no pay. Bad, bad....
just in from an early morning walk with the goats - that's pure joy. and the the perfect word, cynthia - hyggelig
i know the song Red River Valley isn't about the Dakots/Minnesota river, but in sixth grade on the centennial of MN entering statehood, we sang it and new nothing else except it was "our" river. if time, Dale, please play for those valiant folks and their Red River.
apologies to all for the bad typos (didn't preview) and especially to Mark! sorry for the sloppiness. and sorry for filling the blog with apologies. now i feel so bad about going on (do i sound familiar?) i love that "worry" song :-)
Watching the birds out my window...8 blue jays puffed up against the cold...and another good word comes to mind "chickadee--dee---dee---dee."
Have a warm, fuzzy, pleasant and "hyggelig" day all!
Barb- LOL, no apology needed, unless we are building a database, I don't have any issues and prefer to see folks getting their imperfect messages out rather than withholding their contributions waiting for them to become perfect.
As a general rule, I think Alfred E. Newman had it right:
What, me worry?
Jim - Funny you reference soaring with Eagles as that's the title of my latest blog post!
thanks, dale, for another laugh-out-loud posting :-) just what i needed on this gray day.
i love all the happy words---i'm going to put them all together in a document and print them out and hang them up so if i'm feeling bad, i can just read through them and instantly feel better ! i've always felt that words are magical...
(i'm a word person too, mark, editor and writer, so i totally get the career-high of "authorization"---do you enjoy browsing roget?)
and hyggelig is wonderful! my norwegian grandparents all wanted their children to be Americans, so they didn't teach the kids any Norwegian...but i enjoy learning a word here and there, just to sprinkle into the occasional conversation.
happy day, all!
okay, i made the document, and it IS fun to read---i put the words in alphabetical order to make easy use of alliteration, and i did discover we had no happy words so far that begin with the following letters:
J, N, O, U, V, X, Y
okay, fellow English majors and other dictionary fans and heartlanders of all kinds---
fill in those letters with one or two happy words, and we'll have a Heartlanders ABC as our next product idea :-)
i'm thinking, off the top of my head and with no reference-book help, that we could put in xylophone, yellow, jump, opal, what else?
by the way, whoever put in "teddy", i assumed that meant "teddy bear" as opposed to lingerie (allthough i'm not really opposed to lingerie in the right circumstances)---tell me if i'm wrong!
J -- Joy!
Y -- Yes!
velvet
nutmeg
uffda meg -- my grandma would say it... not as warm and fuzzy as hyggelig, but can be very expressive -- it's the Norwegian equivalent of "oy vey", so it can kind of swing either way...
Hello Heartland,
More happy talk:
Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows
Peace, love, and understanding
Fun - as in let's put the 'fun' back in dysfunctional.
My students came up with a pretty darn good goat verse to Swingin' On a Star. Will post tomorrow.
Don't miss it!
Kay -- you sent me to the dictionary. (And I'd love to have a copy of the list...)
x = xeric. dry or desertlike conditions, which would be a very happy word for those sandbaggers right about now
u = ukelele. Always makes me happy to hear.
o = oatmeal. Had it for breakfast... was smooth and warm!
I knew this was a group of word nerds!
Kay, I'd like to have the list also. I can post it in the main body of the blog tomorrow, if you'd like.
Just send it to dale@radioheartland.org
FYI, we will also be giving away some tickets to Saturday night's Duo Show as part of Trial Balloon, so be sure to check back on Friday morning!
will do, dale---
feel free to modify, alter, augment, decorate, illustrate, etc.!
i put in a few of my own, since i could and i'm just that way--
like "welcome"--that's a happy word
It will be great to see the list tomorrow but in the mean time how about these additions:
Jubilation
Nuzzle
Ovation,
Uma Thurman?
Victory, vanilla,
X-Prize
Yodel
Kay - I stopped reading Roget's when I discovered they couldn't come up with another word for thesaurus...
Wow!
Yay!
Hi,
I look forward to Kay’s list. Some happy words that occur to me: free, fresh, smooth, warm, exuberant, scintillating. An unhappy word is taxes, my next project, made tolerable accompanied by RH.
I wonder what other listeners do as they listen to RH. I’ve learned that goats are being tended, warm beverages consumed, and blog entries posted—but what else? So far I’ve listened to RH while working, cooking, baking chocolate chip cookies, laying out a 337-page book, doing dishes, and now taxes. I better hop to it.
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