Why I've backed off (somewhat) the use of nicknames when writing about public figures

Taking an accurate bead of someone is essential to productively dealing with with him or her

I’m thinking about nicknames. I don’t have much in common with Donald Trump, but I, like him, have a penchant for nicknames. I like to think mine are considerably more imaginative. (For that matter, Bush 43 was known for the monikers he’d give people, and I think those on whom they were conferred, and people generally, found them endearing.)

I’ve always given nicknames to co-workers on jobs I’ve had. There was a restaurant where I worked whose staff included the Anaheim Lotus Blossom, the Divine Miss V, Dust Storm, Mateo Magnifico, and AlGee. I’ve left a similar legacy at several other workplaces.

I started my blog, Late in the Day, in 2012, deep in the middle of the Obama administration. It’s difficult to recall now, but Barack Obama was sharply more leftist than any previous Democrat president, and most Democratic politicians. His mentors and associates throughout his life had shaped a worldview that regarded America as in need of fundamental transformation and obligated to atone for a history of arrogance and oppression. Nicknames I coined in that era include The Most Equal Comrade, for Obama, as well as Secretary Global Test (John Kerry, who in a debate in 2004, when he was running for president said that America needed to “pass a global test” for responding to any threats to US interests with force), and Madame Bleachbit (Hillary Clinton, of course).

It was great fun at the time and served as shorthand to new readers getting acquainted with my orientation.

In recent days, I’ve become much less inclined to trot out the nicknames, though. Part of it is definitely the way the juvenile nature of Trump’s style of assigning them, which has tainted the whole notion of nicknames, reinforces their use as a tool of raw political combat.

It’s hard to ratchet back down from the way one regards a political figure as indicated by a nickname once frequent use has cemented it into a pundit’s lexicon. It leaves no room for extending any grace to someone whose full and multifaceted humanity one has had occasion to consider.

To be sure, I’m not suggesting that I’ve changed my mind about who any of the above-mentioned Democrats basically are. I’m most definitely not advocating compromise with them on matters of policy and principle. It’s just that the nicknames I’ve given them stake out a position that makes viewing them in any context other than as a threat difficult at best.

To keep employing the nicknames with the regularity that I once did would contribute to the tribalism that characterizes the societal air we all breathe. It increases the sum total of polarization, which doesn’t move our predicament off dead center.

There are times, and they’re not rare, when you want to discuss someone in an objective manner - perhaps discuss the region of the country where they were raised, or a set of circumstances from some period of their lives that colored their views - rather than set them up merely as a target to be eliminated. Wikipedia-entry type stuff.

But in an era in which everything has been reduced to shorthand - NeverTrumper, elite, Deep State, and, of course, that conversation-stopping tag “racist” - we lose some of our capacity for accuracy.

Furthermore, the risk of indulging in gimmickry in furtherance of one’s brand is now great. I want people to read my work, but I have no interest in giving them a dog and pony show.

I’ve had to tweak my style in the interest of letting my writing be a force for both greater accuracy and greater humanity. We ought to be cultivating a mindset in which we ask ourselves, upon determining whether someone is friend or foe, whether, even if it’s the latter, we can both occupy this piece of land called America without one of us having to eliminate the other - and I mainly mean that politically and culturally, although it increasingly applies to a more visceral level. (That said, anyone in an adversarial position vis-a-vis me or those with values common to mine who can't see beyond an aim to eliminate me will find me on my hind feet with teeth bared.)

It’s a good thing if we can deal with actual others rather than caricatures of them, and maybe using their real names more frequently is a start toward that posture.