“Behold the Midnight Rambler. What have you been doing so late into the night, my dear?” ‘My dear’, when uttered with such asperity, is not to be taken literally. Indeed, it means the very opposite. Much in the spirit of “you’ll forgive me for saying …”, “with the greatest of respect …” or “you are clever enough to know …”.
I imagine English grammarians have a name for expressions so loaded. If so, I would love to discover it. It’s not litotes – I’ve just looked this up.
Returning to bed after writing my replacement piece on Arday, I have made every effort to slip unnoticed between the covers. There is a range of reasons why I prefer not to wake Noah in the dead of night, not all of them altruistic. Plainly, my efforts have been crowned by failure. Noah is awake, has turned on the light, and is now fixing a slumbrous eye on me.
I explain that I have been writing a replacement piece on Arday. I tell him why.
“Heaven help him,” he says. I recount, at this request, what I have written.
“Heaven help us,” he says, rather unkindly, I think. I would give him the cold shoulder if he hadn’t, by now, turned over and cold-shouldered arms.
Next morning, he reads my published piece, and groans. “The Daily Friend is a serious publication. Your quick quips, silly sallies and puny puns are infamously lowering its tone. But this … what … expostulation, diatribe, fulmination or philippic – yes, that’s it, philippic – will sully its name and destroy yours.”
The DF can look after its own reputation, I think. As for mine, it is irrefragable – I simply have no good name to destroy. But, sensibly, I decline to make this point. Some illusions should not be shattered.
“Try in future to be serious,” says my paramour, drawing himself up his full height. Noah is being stern. Naturally, I prefer him to be for’ard. When he is stern, I am taken aback. This stands to reason.
I tell him I shall try, but I cross my fingers at the same time, a trick that worked when I was a girl. Arday may be in his grave, but I fail to see why I should be grave in turn. Life is to be lived jocular. What did Descartes say? “I think, therefore I ham.”
I jest, but I can be serious, too. This furore over Arday has made me so.
“Noah, why did Cambridge hire such a bullshitter?”
“‘Bullshitter’ is vulgar”
“You mean ‘fabulist’, I imagine. You can say ‘bull’ if you must, but ‘bullshitter’ is vulgar.”
“Fabulist? What kind of word is ‘fabulist’?” I exclaim. “The word is precious nonsense dreamt up by Grey Lady journalists who prefer not to be vulgar. At least, not in print”
“Sorry, you are quite wrong, my dear.”
Oh dear, Noah is ‘my dearing’ again.
“I grokked it. The English word fabulist (a writer of fables or a teller of untruths) entered the language in the 1590s. It derives from the French fabuliste, coming from the Latin fabula (‘story, tale, or chatter’), which traces back to the root fari (‘to speak’).”
“I asked you a question: give me a proper reply.”
“Ask yourself what really pleases the governing body of a modern British university, and you’ll have your answer.”
I mull. Lovely buildings? Good facilities? Fine teachers? Thoughtful students? Great alumni?
Noah agrees to none of these.
“Plenty of black faces in faculty photos,” he proclaims. “That’s what presses their cerebral buttons.”
Nonsense, I say, you’re being racist. “DEI is what they seek.”
“List and learn, Wanda. DEI is just code for black. D stands for ‘diversity’, but they don’t want a divergent white Pole or a diversified Oriental – they want a black. Likewise and ditto the inclusivity denoted by ‘I’: here too it is blacks they want.”
“What about ‘E’? Surely they have a case on equity? Haven’t blacks been unfairly treated?” I feel I am on firmer ground here.
Black skin
“In Britain? Perhaps, but I struggle to see how. There are, so far as I can see, two possible rationales for bringing black skin into account in selecting candidates.
- First, blacks are every bit as good as whites, but selection committees, being racist, never appreciate as much. Bringing negritude into account is, in fairness, only right if the imbalance is to be corrected.
- Secondly, blacks are less capable than whites, but this is because they are the victims of societal discrimination. Giving them a leg up is, in fairness, only right to eliminate the discrimination.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “Both seem rational to me.”
“For goodness sake, Wanda! You can’t have both. It’s either one or t’other.” Noah can be fretful sometimes.
“Actually, it is neither.”
“No university will concede the first proposition, namely that their selection committees are racist. Nor will they concede the second, namely that blacks are intellectually inferior. They simply welcome blacks into the pool and, when they arrive, let them sink or swim.”
“Isn’t this stupid, even downright harmful?” I ask. Pretending to be naïve is often the best antidote to Noah’s portentousness.
“Yes, it is. But they think it is worthwhile. Why, you ask.”
As it happens, I didn’t, but there is a tide in the affairs of men that, taken in the flood is, erm, unstoppable.
“I shall tell you. It is a matter of optics. The faculties fear they will be condemned as racist if they have no blacks on the staff. Unrest will result. No one in the Establishment wants this. So they make skin colour the touchstone.”
“Supposing this is so, is this so bad?”
“Well, no, not if you are running a finishing school for blacks. But it is, if you are determining the destiny of a top-class university. One, mind, of which you are not the owner, but a mere custodian.”
“Can I write all this in my weekly column?”
“Publish and be damned. You have nowhere to go but up.”
Rumbled me
He’s rumbled me, I see.
In future I think I shall stick to witticisms. So much easier: published and be hammed.
I tell Noah that I propose to concentrate on humour. I brace myself against a withering response. I fear I am fast becoming a bracist.
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