Vocaboly.com

[Emil Veit]

I have come across a sentence which really puzzles me. Could a native
speaker give some advice, please.
"national insecurity plays to partisan prejudices".
Now, is "partisan" a verb, is "play to" an unusual phrasal verb, (unknown to
me) or is it all dead easy?

kind regards
Emil

[Alan OBrien]

If you replace 'partisan' with 'patriotic' - an adjective - you will see the
general meaning.

[meirman]

Another reason why people should include their entire subject in the
text of the message, and not rely on people to read the Subject line.

Not doing this so much annoys me, Emil -- I consider it childish --
that I'm suprised I'm answering you at all. And usually I don't read
the subjbect line. But I did this time and it mentions Newsweek, a US
magazine.

In the US partisan usually refers to "related to the political
parties". So the story probably talks about how Republicans are
taking advantage of "national insecurity", concern about another
attack like the one at the World Trade Center. And trying to convince
voters the Democrats won't do as good a job or better. What the
prejudice would be is harder to guess, and you didn't ask, but it
would be a half sentence in the news article and it probably refers to
the long time allegation by the Reps that the Dems are soft on
defense.

Others talk about verbal phrases, but I tend not to use the term, even
though I'm sure it's ok. "Play" with a prepositional phrase starting
with "to" and ending with an emotion is common. The documentary
played to the viewers' love of animals. The auto dealer talked about
the safety features of the car to play to the buyers concern for the
safety of his baby. Etc.




s/ meirman If you are emailing me please
say if you are posting the same response.

Born west of Pittsburgh Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis, 7 years
Chicago, 6 years
Brooklyn NY 12 years
Baltimore 20 years

[Don Phillipson]

[meirman]

You're right. It probably started with that, and it almost certainly
still has that connotation of directing one's performance to the cheap
seats or the poor or dumb people.

And "plays to" also calls up ideas of "theatrical" and "performance",
both words that you used, and I agree with you.

And prejudice is a negative word, not just because it is closely
related in American minds to really terrible things done to members of
minorities, but also because in its intrinsic and best meaning, it
refers to coming to a conclusion by judging the same thing in earlier
times, or more likely related things in earlier times, and using that
judgment to come to a conclusion *now*, about something likely
different. In this case almost everything is somewhat or very
different. So prejudice refers almost universally in American English
to making judgments based on faulty information.

And all three of these are reasons why the whole sentence shouldn't
have been used in a news story, although it would be fine in an
editorial or opinion piece.

Was it a news story or an opinion piece? Was it labelled somehow or
did they give an author's name when they don't normally do so, or do
so in smaller print than this time? Emil, do you have the whole
article or a web address you can post?

(AFACT so far "national insecurity" is ok, even though it is a play on
"national security".

So it should have read "national insecurity is thought to appeal to
partisan feelings".

Or maybe "is directed at partisan feelings", which would be even
better but I'm not sure it would fit what else is already there.

I could rewrite it better if I knew the whole sentence and the one
that preceded it.

Even though I agree with the negativity of all 3 elements of the 2
phrases of the original sentence, it's no way to write a news story.

For example, 2) I do think the Republican campaign, as with most
campaigns, is performing and what they are saying often doesn't
reflect what they believe. 1) Whether they are appealing to the cheap
seats would depend on whether the speech or ad being discussed
actually gave true information related to the current war, or whether
it depended on the expected ignorance or lack of logical thinking of
those hearing the ad. 3) I do think that Republican statements and
ads, including miststatements and overstatments, in the past have
largely been responsible for a false impression which is the prejudice
they are talking about, and that they are using that this time, as
well as anything else, true or false, they can add on.


I haven't been reading either magazine much for years. But Time
magazine had a reputation for stuffing opinions in their supposed news
strories, and I saw it done blatently at least once. In maybe the
late 60's and certainly the 70's and maybe later, Newsweek's slogan
was "the one newsweekly that separates fact from opinion.", which iirc
it certainly did at the time.

I don't know yet if this clause appeared in the news or opinion
section, and 'm not prepared to judge Newsweek from only one example,
and for that matter, even at the time of their ads, I never heard
allegations that U.S. News & World Report did what Time did. (In
those days, no one would mention the competition by name. It was
tasteless. (and still is.) Maybe they didn't really mean US News but
didn't want to say "that other newsweekly". I don't know any details.

Since the TV "news"weekly and "news"broadcasts and some magazines and
almost all radio, and probably some newspapers can't be relied on to
be neutral, people have to learn to recognize a false or dubious
statement as false or dubious. One shouldn't go as far as Judge Judy
very often does in deciding things are false, but dubious should be a
big category.


BTW, I've told people for more than 20 years that "60 Minutes" is
trash. They rely on, and they were the precursor to regular news
shows using, tone of voice to make points that they can't fairly make
with words, and in at least one case they used words to make a false
point they knew or absolutely should have known was false. It
referred to a charge and a lawsuit against a not large Illinois
newspaper for libel, because its publisher wrote a false letter to
someone that prevented the plaintiff from getting a contract or a job
or something. And the plainfiff won, and according to 60 Minutes that
was outrageous, and the main or the only reason they thought so was
that "the letter had not been published in the [defendant] newspaper".
Since this was 60 Minutes's big complaint, they should have asked how
the plaintiff was able to win. And the answer was in their very
story, that the Publisher in his capacity as Publisher had sent a
letter with his false allegation to someone else, and that is
"publication" for the purpose of libel. That it's not necessary to
"publish" libel in a newspaper or post 100's of copies. You only have
to libel someone to one other person for it to be actionable libel.
They devoted 15 minutes minus one commercial break to this story, and
they should have asked how did he win if the newspaper didn't publish
the story. In fact, I'm sure every tv newsweekly has a lawyer on staff
or retainer who is there to keep the show from committing its own
libel and who knows the law regarding it. But the staff at 60 minutes
didn't care then and I don't think they care now. As I've said to my
other friend's, one may put things in the category of dubious, but one
shouldn't believe anything you hear on 60 Minutes.

[meirman]

In alt.english.usage on Tue, 14 Sep 2004 21:13:23 -0400 meirman
<meirman@invalid.com> posted: