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Critics are debating whether Double Down illuminates, or just dishes gossip, but I’m not addressing its substance today. I’m merely marveling at some of the damning evidence Kinsley presented that the writing is unintentionally hilarious, although Kinsley, editor at large of the New Republic, didn’t seem amused. (This isn’t a review of Double Down. I haven’t read the book, and in light of Kinsley’s review, probably will spare myself the pleasure.)
Kinsley listed some of the ones dumped on readers in Double Down: acuminate, appetent, pyretic, hoggery, noisomeness, coriaceous, vomitous, and freneticism. “There’s nothing wrong with fancy words if they help to refine your meaning,” Kinsley observed. “In the hands of Halperin and Heilemann, though, they have the opposite effect.”
And here’s my favorite of Kinsley’s examples, also in the alliterative genus. Romney wasn’t fond of the family of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, the Double Down authors inform readers, and the Huntsmans “vice versa’d the vitriol.”
I suppose the phrase can also be used positively. If someone treats me nicely, I can vice versa the valentine. I might want to do that even with a person who’s different from me, because opposites attract. And vice versa.
