Here is the opening paragraph of Hendrik Hertzberg's most recent Comment in The New Yorker:
Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom of the barrel. The problem for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party is that the bottom was scraped clean long before it dropped out. Back when the polls were nip and tuck and the leaves had not yet begun to turn, Barack Obama had already been accused of betraying the troops, wanting to teach kindergartners all about sex, favoring infanticide, and being a friend of terrorists and terrorism. What was left? The anticlimactic answer came as the long Presidential march of 2008 staggered toward its final week: Senator Obama is a socialist.
I don't know of a political journalist who consistently writes better English prose than Hertzberg. Take a look at that first sentence, the way the first long subordinate phrase and then the second much shorter one achieve a straining, deliberative effect that prepares the way for the monosyllabic march to the conclusion. Well, not entirely monosyllabic: there is the homey alliteration of "bottom barrel," a possible cliche that nevertheless emphasizes the rat-a-tat-tat of the author's derision.
If the charge is bardolatry, I plead guilty. Follow the link and read the whole little essay. Hertzberg is the best.
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