[Peace-discuss] James Petras fulminates…

Fri Dec 19 13:57:53 CST 2008

It's actually an entwined bit of history, involving a rare mistake by Erasmus of 
Rotterdam (one of my intellectual heroes -- a Chomsky of his age, the 16th 
century).

The OED explains the phrase "to call a spade a spade" as "to call things by 
their real names, without any euphemism or mincing of matters; to use plain or 
blunt language; to be straightforward to the verge of rudeness." It says that 
the source seems to be an adage found in the Greco-Roman historian Plutarch (1st 
cent. CE) that uses the Greek word "skaphe."  Erasmus translated it as "the 
Macedonians were fellows of no fine wit in their terms, but altogether gross, 
clubbish, and rustical ... they had not the wit to call a spade ["skaphe"] by 
any other name then a spade."  But, the OED remarks, "There is no evidence that 
'skaphe' (a trough, basin, bowl, boat, etc.) had the sense of ‘spade’ [= 
shovel]; in rendering it by [Latin] 'ligo' Erasmus evidently confused it with 
... derivatives from [a Greek stem meaning] 'to dig.'"

So the unwitting Macedonians called a bowl a bowl, but we call a spade a "bloody 
shovel," thanks to Erasmus.

The mark on the playing card however is not a shovel but a sword, called a spade 
from the Italian (cf. Sp. espada = sword).  From the black color of the 
playing-card mark, the word comes to mean (as the OED says) "A Black person, a 
Negro, esp. male: freq. in White use, as a term of contempt or casual reference. 
Formerly among U.S. Blacks, a very dark-skinned Negro. slang (orig. U.S.)."

But he earliest literary examples are post-WWI:
   1928 C. MCKAY Home to Harlem: "Jake is such a fool spade ... She was of the 
complexion known among Negroes as spade or chocolate-to-the-bone."
   1929 W. THURMAN Blacker the Berry: "Wonder where all the spades keep 
themselves?"
   1945 L. SHELLY Jive talk Dict.: "Spade, colored person."
   1957 C. MACINNES City of Spades [set in Notting Hill, London]
   1971 N. SAUNDERS Alternative London:"On Saturdays try Brixton market -- 
nearly as big, more genuine, lots of spades," etc.

I mentioned the '60s because I had in mind the counter-culture's ironic use of
the term. (See, e.g., the Firesign Theatre.)

The best line comes from a poet whom Erasmus would have appreciated and restores 
the issue of class: in Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" 
(1895), Cecily declares "When I see a spade, I call it a spade"; to which 
Gwendolen responds, "I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade".  --CGE

Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> I thought its origin was from card games, like Bridge. --mkb
> 
> 
> On Dec 19, 2008, at 11:41 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 
>> Mort, I was severely criticized when I sat on an animal care committee over
>>  at the University for using the expression "calling a spade a spade" as
>> some misguided and misinformed administrators felt that I had used a racist
>> term.  (They didn't appreciate my blunt critique of their lack of
>> discernment in management either, so criticizing my language presented them
>> a convenient diversion.)
>> 
>> The expression about spades dates back to the ancient Greeks and refers to 
>> some lack of sophistication in one's description of a hog trough.
>> 
>> But some think it refers to a racial slur that dates from the 1920's. No
>> amount of googling and etymology would change the minds of these 
>> administrators...
>> 
>> 
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> I thought you'd be sympathetic :-)=
>>> 
>>> I believe the refusal to lambast Obama for his various choices of 
>>> advisors at the UFPJ has to do somewhat with not offending those 
>>> African-Americans (many on the steering committee), so proud and happy
>>> that Obama was elected. Only Ali Abunimah of those on the podium called a
>>> spade a spade, infuriated that Obama supported the strangling of the
>>> Palestinians, especially in Gaza. Also, I can surmise that the relief of
>>> so many that the Bush regime was repudiated with Obama's election has
>>> tended to attenuate their impulse to then immediately attack the
>>> beneficiary. --mkb
>>> 
>>> On Dec 19, 2008, at 12:54 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Why should Petras fulminate?  Obama is planning to kill a lot of people
>>>> and immiserate more, just as he said he would.  And Petras seems so
>>>> upset at the prospect that he can't even get straight why our rulers
>>>> would do such things.
>>>> 
>>>> He seems to ascribe it to stupidity: "They blindly back a small, highly
>>>> militarized and ideologically fanatical colonial state (Israel) against
>>>> 1.5 billion Muslims living in oil and mineral resource-rich nations
>>>> with lucrative markets and investment potential and situated in the
>>>> strategic center of the world. They promote total wars against whole
>>>> populations, as is occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and,
>>>> which, by all historical experience, cannot be won."
>>>> 
>>>> That's wrong both as to cause and effect.  The Clinton-Bush-Obama 
>>>> regime has in fact done rather well in achieving its real goals and 
>>>> will probably continue to do so, despite the danger to humanity. And
>>>> they are generally quite rational in the Weberian sense of fitting
>>>> means to ends (with occasional foul-ups, like the Coalition Provisional
>>>> Authority, but they can be corrected, with more deaths). They're
>>>> vicious, not stupid, as the rest of the (shoe-throwing) world
>>>> recognizes.  But Americans who see that can be strangled in the bath of
>>>> propaganda.
>>>> 
>>>> I find myself quoting Thomas Pynchon a lot these days: "If you can get
>>>> them asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about 
>>>> answers."  --CGE
>>>> 
>>>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>>>> Worth pondering. I would like to ask Petras whether would have 
>>>>> preferred McCain.Palin to the here reviled Obama. I asked a panel at
>>>>> the UFPJ, which  included Tom Hayden, why there were no real
>>>>> progressives nominated to Obama's team, and received no answer. I
>>>>> thought this was a gross omission, because it must have implications
>>>>> for the anti-war movement. James Petras gives his interpretation of
>>>>> those implications. The panel at UFPJ were not willing to consider
>>>>> them.  (Maybe it was too late in a long session.) --mkb 
>>>>> <http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1766&more=1&c=1>
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Yes, indeed, “our greatest intellectual critics”, our ‘libertarian’ 
>>>> leftists and academic anarchists, used their 5-figure speaking 
>>>> engagements as platforms to promote the con man’s candidacy: They 
>>>> described the con man’s political pitch as “meeting the deeply felt 
>>>> needs of our people”. They praised the con man when he spoke of 
>>>> ‘change’ and ‘turning the country around’ 180 degrees. Indeed, Obama 
>>>> went one step further: he turned 360 degrees, bringing us back to the
>>>> policies and policy makers who were the architects of our current
>>>> political-economic disaster.
>>>> 
>>>> The contrast between Obama’s campaign rhetoric and his political 
>>>> activities was clear, public and evident to any but the mesmerized 
>>>> masses and the self-opiated ‘progressives’ who concocted arguments in
>>>> his favor. Indeed even after Obama’s election and after he appointed
>>>> every Clintonite-Wall Street shill into all the top economic policy
>>>> positions, and Clinton’s and Bush’s architects of prolonged imperial
>>>> wars (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense
>>>> Robert Gates), the ‘progressive true believers’ found reasons to dog
>>>> along with the charade. Many progressives argued that Obama’s
>>>> appointments of war mongers and swindlers was a ‘ploy’ to gain time now
>>>> in order to move ‘left’ later...
>>>> 
>>>> The electoral scam served several purposes above and beyond merely 
>>>> propelling a dozen strategic con artists into high office and the White
>>>> House. First and foremost, the Obama con-gang deflected the rage and
>>>> anger of tens of millions of economically skewered and war drained
>>>> Americans from turning their hostility against a discredited 
>>>> presidency, congress and the grotesque one-party two factions political
>>>> system and into direct action or at least toward a new political
>>>> movement...
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
> 
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