Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

"Wow. Not a word about Dilbert. I thought I could return to Althouse for the straight skinny on the bizarre Scott Adams meltdown. Guess there?s a lid on Dilbert."

Wrote jacksonjay, in last night's Sunrise Café.

It's more work to pick up an issue that is presented in audio. Am I supposed to transcribe and explain? It's not like blogging the written word, where I can cut and paste and edit down to what's important. When people speak in podcasts, they expand and repeat themselves, so even if I were willing to transcribe, I wouldn't get the kind of text I can get from the written word. So there's a big disincentive to blog.

As for this recent thing ? which I take it is Adams's assertion the day after the debate that Trump just lost his vote by not denouncing white supremacy forcibly enough ? I thought it was the audio equivalent of clickbait, so I had some resistance to it. I'm supposed to explain it and have a reaction to it? Why? Wait a day and everything changed. He explained that he didn't like that jerks of the left didn't welcome him into their fold, so he was back on Trump's side, because righties, being the unpopular kids, are happy to have anybody halfway like them.

Yeah, that's not a verbatim transcription. That's just my vague memory after listening to 2 or 3 podcasts. Podcasts are evanescent. The written word, now that's something. Just the other day on one of my podcasts ? I forget which one ? Meade and I were talking about how Trump has built real-world things that have to work and hold up, while the editors of the NYT could not even get from the beginning to the end of a single column without it collapsing into incoherence. The column metaphor was noted at the time. You see it when a physical thing like a building lacks structural integrity, but words are so strong, they stay there on the page exactly as written, no matter how irrational.

But in blogging, you can take that text and demonstrate what's wrong with it. You attack text with text. But if you're doing text ? blogging ? it's hard to get at anything other than text. It's a text-on-text endeavor, mostly. You could blog podcasts... but for the most part, that's a mug's game.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ralph L questioned jacksonjay's phrase "straight skinny":

The standard term is "inside skinny," though that's actually redundant because the skinny is always inside, and I doubt Althouse has any about Adams. It also implies written knowledge.

That made me look up "skinny" in the OED. The relevant meaning ? "slang (originally and chiefly U.S.)" ? which requires the "the" ? is "Detailed and esp. confidential information about a person or topic, ?the low-down?; (also more generally) news, gossip."

1938 R. Hallet Rolling World 287 Had she really given me the skinny of an actual legend from the archives of her race, or was she wafting me the native poetry of her soul?
1957 A. Myrer Big War 94 I'll cut you in on some hot skinnay.
1974 E. Brawley Rap (1975) ii. xxiii. 363 Come to lay some skinny on you that I picked up off the vine.
1979 D. Anthony Long Hard Cure xxi. 162 Who killed her, Butler? Let's have the skinny.
1980 ?L. Cody? Dupe xxiii. 165 Give them the skinny but keep the kudos.
2006 Loaded Dec. 168 We get the skinny on the hectic world of the Virgin Mobile Cup?and the TV show that's captured all the action.

Only one of those examples has an adjective between "the" and "skinny" and it's neither "straight" nor "inside" ? it's "hot." So I don't think there's a "standard term," which, as Ralph acknowledges, would be redundant if it's "inside." I like "straight skinny" better, because it's not redundant and it's good alliteration... and because it makes me think of Olive Oyl.

She's hot skinny/hot skinnay....

Full post as published by Althouse on October 03, 2020 (boomark / email).