Boehner Gives "Louche" a Bad Image

9/4/2015

Louche

Seedy

LOUCHE

See definition in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary
Syllabification: louche
Pronunciation: /lo͞oSH/
Definition of louche in English:
adjective
Disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way: the louche world of the theater

* * *
I thought I knew the word “louche” when I read that Sidney Blumenthal had used it for John Boehner in an email unearthed in the Hillary Clinton frolics.

It is a word I would have expected to see describing Noel Coward – his life, his writing – but not John Boehner.

Blumenthal wrote to the Secretary of State:

"Boehner is despised by the younger, more conservative members of the House Republican Conference. They are repelled by his personal behavior. He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle." He added: "Boehner has already tried to buy the members with campaign contributions and committee assignments, which he has already promised to potentially difficult members. His hold is insecure. He is not [Newt] Gingrich, the natural leader of a 'revolution,' riding the crest into power. He is careworn and threadbare, banal and hollow, holding nobody's enduring loyalty."

I would certainly agree with most of that. Boehner comes off as a stumblebum, a traveling salesman who spent the previous evening in a gin mill. The only definitive thing about him is the hard edge he takes on when talking about President Obama. Boehner and his down-river compatriot Mitch McConnell come off as contemporary border-state versions of the old Deep South - or South Africa. The sneer, the tone. Otherwise, Boehner is inarticulate, inscrutable.

I would expect somebody truly louche to be wearing a top hat or a monocle, a smoking jacket or a cape – not sporting man-tan coloration and slurred speech.

With the clown-car scramble going on at the moment, I would surely settle for louche.

Brian Savin

9/4/2015 07:05:23 pm

I agree with you on definitions, George. Blumenthal is wrong and comes across as little more than a bounder. The current Speaker comes across as an old Democrat to be honest. A pox on the lot.
Here's my favorite Coward line: Question: why is getting up at six in the morning like a pig's tail? Answer: T'wirly!

George Vecsey

9/5/2015 09:19:17 am

Brian, bounder, haven't heard that word in a while.
You are right...From covering news for 10 years (including some stuff in and around Congress), I can say, stumblebum is not a political label.
GV

sam toperoff

9/5/2015 05:15:08 am

George--I thought I'd settle the matter on what is truly louche and what is merely crumby. You see, I've just gotten home--it's six AM--and I'm typing this while dressed in a tux (don't know where my monocle fell) after a night at a brothel in Marseille where absinthe is the boisson of choice. The girls there love me because I know all the words to "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo," which I sing in the style of a Berlin cabaret performer (think Joel Grey). They call me Monsieur Louche. And to prove my decadence and sophistication, I have no idea who the hell this man, John Beaner, John Boorer, is. But clearly from your description, he lacks both class and wit, necessary louche requirement.. Now I must be off for my bubble bath, steaming and massage. Ah, the loucheness of it all.... Oh, there's my monocle, it fell on my velvet robe..

George Vecsey

9/5/2015 09:21:20 am

une réponse très drôle, m'sieur
merci
G

Alan Rubin link

9/6/2015 07:17:01 am

It is a very sad indeed when "louche" is too good a word for the Republican Speaker of the House.

I would have enjoyed hearing Will Rogers comments on today's political cast of characters.

SAM--do you live anywhere near Evian. I'm friendly with the owner Alta Restaurant & Wine Bar in Lenox, MA who is from Evian. He and several key French members of his organization are avid soccer fans. His father is on the board of Evian Thonon Gaillard F.C.

George Vecsey

9/6/2015 08:10:52 am

Alan, I can answer this way: Sam lives a few hours south of there, near the Alps.
Funny, I know three Americans named Sam who live in France -- one in Paris, one in the SW, and one in the SE. I once thought of connecting the dots, but I've done enough travel for a while.
I like to stay home and survey our American grotesques.
GV

Peter Kennedy link

9/7/2015 08:40:35 pm

Another, Sam, a piano player, lived in Paris for a spell. Did show tunes and standards in a saloon run by another American, named Rick something or other...

;)

George Vecsey

9/7/2015 09:58:03 pm

Play it again, Peter. (Bogart didn't really say that, did he?)
Well done. GV

Sam Toperoff

9/7/2015 02:11:59 am

Alan--I'm very high up in a small former farming village in the French Alps transitioning to a summer and ski tourist area, equidistant from the Italian and Swiss borders, so only about four hours from Evian. Here the locals root half and half for L'Om and half for L'Ol and I'm learning my soccer at the feet of GV and the guys on this blog. I don't see Evian play often; they've been competitive in the past, but without a salary cap French (and European) foot is hard for me to stomach in terms of true competition.. Evian--and lots of other teams--are at a distinct disadvantage...and besides the team color is pink.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Boehner Gives "Louche" a Bad Image

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