The New York Times-20080127-Change Machine
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Change Machine
Full Text (870 words)Love is not love, observed Shakespeare in a sonnet, which alters when it alteration finds. That crush on constancy placed the Bard against the windiness of change, and therefore outside the raging mainstream of modern sloganeering.
It's time for a change! boomed Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York at the Republican National Convention of 1948. His rallying cry inspired the partisan crowd, but Truman supporters reminded voters of Lincoln's admonition when running for re-election in 1864 -- not to swap horses while crossing the river -- which could not be overcome by the Republican counterslogan Change horses or drown!
Undeterred, Republicans trotted out the old time-for-a-change slogan in 1952, which met Adlai Stevenson's riposte: They talk of change. These days they do little else but talk of change. But where were the Republicans when the great changes of these 20 years were made? I'll tell you where they were. They were trying to stop the changes. But Stevenson was up against the heroic Eisenhower, and the majority went for a change in Washington.
In their 1988 convention, it was the Democrats' turn to latch onto time-for-a-change. The retiring Ronald Reagan told the G.O.P. conventioneers his policy changes had been resisted by the liberal elites who now loudly proclaim that it's time for a change. . . . Well . . . we are the change.
In 2008, both major parties have decided to stick with -- indeed, adhere relentlessly to -- the theme of change. 'Change,' the word, if not the deed, keeps proliferating in both parties like kudzu, Frank Rich wrote in The Times two weeks ago. In last weekend's twin ABC debates, Mr. Obama's 14 invocations of 'change' or 'changes' were surpassed by Mrs. Clinton's 25 and nearly matched by Mitt Romney's 10. An Obama campaign poster reads, Change We Can Believe In, while Romney signage heralds, Change Begins With Us.
The word is so much in demand that it has acquired an agent: Romney declared he was the change agent that voters say they want. The same day, former President Bill Clinton described his wife as a world-class change agent and an Obama backer was reported deriding the assumption that because Bill was a change agent in 1992, that she is now a change agent in 2008. (If you were starting a political-talent agency in Hollywood, what would you call it?)
Climate Change
As a phrase, global warming is slowly, inexorably cooling, and if something is not done quickly and on a worldwide basis -- hang the cost -- the planet will be in the grip of the collocation climate change.
The 50th anniversary of the coinage of both global warming and global climate change came and went with no commemorative rock concerts or scientific Sanhedrins. My earliest citation of both phrases is a report in The Hammond Times (of Indiana) dated Nov. 6, 1957, about California scientists studying the possibility that this continued pouring forth of waste gases may upset the rather delicate carbon-dioxide balance in the earth's general atmosphere and that a large-scale global warming, with radical climate changes, may result. (There must be earlier citations in print, which I welcome from the Lexicographic Irregulars and will pass along.)
For a time, the phrase global warming dominated the discussion; of late, there has been a surge in usage of climate change. Why is the phrasal competition getting hotter? Not merely the desire to be less judgmental; rather, I think, due to worldwide ensorcelling by the noun change. A Google count shows the latter percentage of change enchantment creeping up to 33 percent against the 66 percent of global warming. (But we may know more after results are in from other states on Tsunami Tuesday.)
Regime Change
In the old days, we used to overthrow governments; in the Era of Change, we bring about regime change. Some consider the action an affirmation of human rights, others deride it as a cuckoo coup but all embrace the phrase containing today's magical vogue word.
The O.E.D. tracks the phrase to 1925. It became the policy of the United States toward Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, as expressed in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (though not authorizing military action) and the phrase was later popularized by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on her travels to moderate Arab states. Opponents of the Iraq war displayed bumper stickers reading, Regime Change Begins at Home in 2004, but these are seen in less profusion in this year's primaries; their future use depends on the outcome of the surge.
Chump Change
In the kudzu of change, chump began as a block of wood, and a person off his chump was a blockhead. But the change jingling in the chump's pocket had to do with the exchange of low-denomination money for larger coins or bills. Black English melded the two words into a phrase that is now used mainly in irony: A quarter of a million pounds, wrote The Guardian of Britain in 2001. As public spending goes, it's chump change.
Will the current bubble of change use be followed by its recession? Dare we hope for a change in change? As the French say. . . .
[Illustration]DRAWING (LETTERING BY SIGGI EGGERTSSON)