Snack

Snack (pronounced snak)

(1) A small portion of food or drink or a light meal, especially one eaten between regular meals.

(2) In the phrase “go snack”, to share profits or returns (mostly archaic).

(3) In slang, someone physically attractive and sexually desirable (regionally limited).

(4) To have a snack or light meal, especially between regular meals.

1300–1350: From the Middle English verb snacchen, snacche, snache & snak & noun snacche, snak & snakee (to snap at, bite, seize (as of dogs) and cognate with the Middle Dutch snacken (to snap (as of dogs), from snakken and a variant of snappen (to snap)) and the Norwegian dialect snaka (to snatch (as of animals)).  In many European languages, snack is used in the same sense though in Swedish technically it’s deverbal of snacka (to chat, to talk).  The pleasing recent noun snackette is either (1) A small shop or kiosk selling snacks or (2) smaller than usual snacks (the word often used by dieters to distinguish their snacks from the more indulgent choices of others).  The synonyms include morsel, refreshment, bite, eats, goodies, nibble, pickings & tidbit (often misused as "titbit").  Specific classes of snack include "halal snack" (one which would be approved by a ayatollah, mufti, mullah etc as conforming to the strictures of Islam) and kosher snack (one which would be approved by a rabbi (or other rabbinical authority) as conforming to the dietary rules in Judaism).  Snack is a noun, adjective & verb, snackability, snackette & snackery are nouns, snackable is a noun & adjective snacking & snacked are verbs and snacky, snackish & snakelike are adjectives; the noun plural is snacks.

Cadbury Snack.

The original Middle English verb (to bite or snap (as of dogs), probably came either from the Middle Dutch or Flemish snacken (to snatch, snap; chatter), the source of which is uncertain although one etymologist traces it to a hypothetical Germanic imitative root snu- used to form words relating to the snout or nose.  The sense of "having a bite to eat; a morsel or light meal” dates from 1807.  The noun snack (a snatch or snap (especially that of a dog) developed from the verb and emerged circa 1400.  The meaning extended to "a snappish remark" by the 1550s and "a share, portion, part" by the 1680s (hence the now archaic expression “go snacks” which meant "share, divide; have a share in").  The familiar modern meaning "a small dish morsel to eat hastily" was first noted in 1757.  The first snack bar (a place selling snacks) seems to have opened in 1923 and the similar (often smaller, kiosk-type operations) snackettes were a creation of US commerce in the 1940s.  Snack bars could be either stand-alone businesses or something operating within a stadium, theatre, cinema etc.  The commercial plural form "snax" was coined in 1942 for the vending machine trade and the term “snack table” has been in use since circa 1950.

Nestlé Salted Caramel Munchies.

Functionally (though not etymologically) related was munchies (food or snack) from 1959, the plural of the 1917 munchie (snack eaten to satisfy hunger) from the 1816 verb munch (to eat; to chew).  The familiar (to some) phrase “got the munchies” in the sense of "craving for food after smoking weed (marijuana)" was US stoner slang which was first documented in 1971 but Nestlé corporation’s Munchies weren’t an opportunistic attempt to grab the attention of weed smokers.  The chocolate Munchies pre-date the slang use of the word by over a decade, introduced in 1957 by the Mackintosh company, Nestlé acquiring the brand in 1988 when it acquired Rowntree Mackintosh and it’s not known if the slang use can be attributed to some stoner coming back from the shop with a bag-full of the snacks and telling his grateful and ravenous companions “I’ve got the Munchies” but it's such a good explanation it should be accepted as verified fact; etymologists who disagree have no soul.  Munchies were originally milk chocolates with a caramel and biscuit centre but the range has in recent years proliferated to include centres of mint fondant, chocolate fudge, cookie dough and salted caramel.  The latest variation has been to use a white chocolate shell; this described as a “limited-edition” but it’s presumed if demand exists, it will become a standard line.

Lindsay Lohan stocking up her snack stash, London, 2008.

This is use of the word "snack" in the most modern sense: pre-packaged items designed usually for one or for a small group to share.  Although most associated with "treats and indulgences" (chocolate bars the classic example), not all snacks can be classified as "junk food" and there's a whole sub-section of the industry dedicated to the production (and, perhaps more to the point, marketing) of "healthy snacks".  Critics however caution that unless it's simply a convenient packaging of a "whole food" (such as nuts which have been processed only to the extend of being shelled), the label should be studied because even food regarded in its natural state as a "healthy choice" can be less so when processed.  The markers to assess include the obvious (fat, salt, sugar) as well as chemicals and other additives, some with names only an industrial chemist would recognize.

Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the Australian Liberal Party 2022-2025) enjoying a “Dagwood Dog”, Brisbane Ekka (Exhibition), August 2022.  Because of the context (event, location, not sitting at a table, dish, time of day), this he would probably have regarded “a snack” rather than “a meal”.  The “Dagwood Dog” was a local variant of the “HotDog” or “Corn Dog” and Mr Dutton never denied being a Freemason.

A “snack” is by definition both (1) of a lesser quantity than a “meal” and (2) eaten at a different time than the meal (as conventionally defined: breakfast, lunch, dinner) but there are nuances.  For some, the infamous “midnight snack” (a late-night or early-morning trip to the bridge for those who awake with hanger pangs or who can’t sleep because they are so hungry) sometimes evolves, ad-hoc, into what others would call “a meal” while the curious “supper” can be anything from a “light snack” to a synonym for “dinner”.  Additionally, it’s variable by individual: what a Sumo wrestler calls a “snack” might well for a week feed a ballerina.  So there’s nothing which exactly defines the point at which a “snack” should properly be called a “meal” because it’s something geographically, culturally and individualistically deterministic.  A hot dog presented on a plate might be called “a meal” whereas one eaten while wandering around the Minnesota State Fair might be though “a snack”.  It’s tempting to imagine (at least in Western culture) that if utensils (knife, fork, chopsticks et al) are used it must be a meal and snacks are inherently finger food but the list of exceptions to that will be long.

Snack-shaming: A specific sub-genre of "fat-shaming", the modern convention is that when seen with shopping carts laden with processed snacks, fat people may be photographed and posted on social media, provided their identity adequately is concealed.

A snack for one can also be something like an apple or banana (the latter pre-packaged by nature with its own bio-degradable wrapping) and "snack" was used to describe such quick and easy "bites to eat" by the early eighteenth century, building on the slightly early use meaning "a quickly prepared meal" (as opposed to an elaborate dish) and the term became popular to describe meals carried by workers (the sandwich the exemplar) to eat on their break.  Prior to that "to snack" was to suggest one was having just part of the whole (such as a "slice of cake") and that use was from the traditional use of the word to mean "a portion" of just about anything (land, money, food etc).  As English evolved, the word came to be associated almost exclusively with food and the now rare slang use in the finance industry is the only survivor of earlier use.  It has though become an idiomatic form: (1) A person with an obviously high BMI (body mass index (ie looks fat)) can be "snack-shamed" if (1a) observed eating unhealthy snacks or (1b) with supermarket cart loaded with them; (2) A "snack-slut" is one who can't resist snacking and is used as a self-descriptor (socially acceptable and usually amusing if subject has low BMI); (3) A "snaccident" (a portmanteau word, the blend being snac(k) + (ac)cident)) refers to a snack eaten "by accident" and the validity of such excuses must be assessed on a case-by-case-basis (again, tends to be BMI-dependent); (4) A "snackery" is (4a) a place where one buys one's snacks or (4b) an informal term used to describe the place where dead fat people are sent (on the model of "knackery" (a slaughterhouse where animal carcasses unfit for human consumption or other purposes are rendered down to produce useful materials such as adhesives)); (5) A "snackette" is variously (5a) an especially small snack, (5b) a small outlet selling snacks (on the model of "luncheonette" (a small restaurant with a limited range of dishes)) or (5c) a (usually one-off) sexual partner about whom one has no future plans.               

Veto

Veto (pronounced vee-toh)

(1) In constitutional law, the power or right vested in one branch of a government to cancel or postpone the decisions, enactments etc of another branch, especially the right of a president, governor, or other chief executive to reject bills passed by a legislature.

(2) The exercise of this right.

(3) In the UN Security Council, a non-concurring vote by which one of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK & US) can overrule the actions or decisions of the meeting on most substantive matters.  By practice and convention, in the context of geopolitics, this is "the veto power".

(4) Emphatically to prohibit something.

1620–1630: From the Latin vetō (I forbid), the first person singular present indicative of vetāre (forbid, prohibit, oppose, hinder (perfect active vetuī, supine vetitum)) from the earlier votō & votāre, from the Proto-Italic wetā(je)-, from the primitive Indo-European weth- (to say).  In ancient Rome, the vetō was the technical term for a protest interposed by a tribune of the people against any measure of the Senate or of the magistrates.  As a verb, use dates from 1706.  Veto is a noun, verb and adjective, vetoless is a (non-standard) adjective and vetoer is a noun; the noun plural is vetoes.  In the language of the diplomatic toolbox the related forms pre-veto, re-veto, un-veto & non-veto, used with and without the hyphen.

The best known power of veto is that exercised by the five permanent members (P5) of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).  The UNSC is an organ of the UN which uniquely possesses the authority to issue resolutions binding upon member states and its powers include creating peacekeeping missions, imposing international sanctions and authorizing military action.  The UNSC has a standing membership of fifteen, five of which (China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA) hold permanent seats, the remaining ten elected by the UNGA (UN General Assembly) on a regional basis for two year terms.  P5 representatives can veto any substantive resolution including the admission of new UN member states or nominations for UN Secretary-General (the UN’s CEO).  The term “united nations” was used as early as 1943, essentially as a synonym for the anti-Axis allies and was later adopted as the name for the international organization which replaced the League of Nations (LoN, 1920-1946) which had in the 1930s proved ineffectual in its attempts to maintain peace.  When the UN was created, its structural arrangements were designed to try to avoid the problems which beset the LoN which, under its covenant, could reach decisions only by unanimous vote and this rule applied both to the League's council (which the specific responsibility of maintaining peace) and the all-member assembly.  In effect, each member state of the League had the power of the veto, and, except for procedural matters and a few specified topics, a single "nay" killed any resolution.  Learning from this mistake, the founders of the UN decided all its organs and subsidiary bodies should make decisions by some type of majority vote (although when dealing with particularly contentious matters things have sometimes awaited a resolution until a consensus emerges).

The creators of the UN Charter always conceived the three victorious “great powers” of World War II (1939-1945), the UK, US & USSR, because of their roles in the establishment of the UN, would continue to play important roles in the maintenance of international peace and security and thus would have permanent seats on the UNSC with the power to veto resolutions.  To this arrangement was added (4) France (at the insistence of Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who wished to re-build the power of France as a counterweight to Germany and (5) China, included because Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1940 US president 1933-1945) was perceptive in predicting the country’s importance in the years to come.  This veto is however a power only in the negative.  Not one of the permanent members nor even all five voting in (an admittedly improbable) block can impose their will in the absence of an overall majority vote of the Security Council.  Nor is an affirmative vote from one or all of the permanent five necessary: If a permanent member does not agree with a resolution but does not wish to cast a veto, it may choose to abstain, thus allowing the resolution to be adopted if it obtains the required majority among the fifteen.

Lindsay Lohan meeting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Ankara, January 2017.

As part of her efforts during 2017 drawing attention to the plight of Syrian refugees, Lindsay Lohan was received by the president of Türkiye.  As well as issuing a statement on the troubles of refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons) in the region, Ms Lohan also commented on another matter raised by Mr Erdogan: the need to reform the structure of the UNSC which still exists in substantially the form created in 1945, despite the world’s economic and geopolitical realities having since much changed with only the compositional alteration being the PRC (People's Republic of China) in 1971 taking the place of the renegade province of Taiwan, pursuant to UNGA Resolution 2758, which recognized the PRC as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and expelled “the representatives” of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan.  In an Instagram post, Ms Lohan used the phrase “the world is bigger than five.  Five big nations made promises but they did not keep them.”  Despite her efforts, reform of the UNSC has advanced little because although consensus might be reached on extending permanent membership to certain nations, it remains doubtful all of the P5 (the permanent five members) would achieve consensus for this including the veto.  That would have the effect of replacing the present two-tier structure with three layers and it seems also unlikely a state like India would accept the “second class status” inherent in a permanent seat with no veto.

The Vatican, the CCP and the bishops, real & fake

A well-known and economically significant niche in modern Chinese manufacturing is fakes.  Most obvious are fake Rolexes, fake Range Rovers et al but Peking for decades produced fake bishops.  After the Holy See and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sundered diplomatic relations in 1951, papal appointments to Chinese bishoprics were not recognized by Peking which appointed their own.  In retaliation, popes refused to acknowledge the fakes who in turn ignored him, the amusing clerical stand-off lasting until January 2018 when negotiations appeared to produce a face-saving (sort-of) concordat.  As a prelude, Rome retired or re-deployed a number of their bishops in order to make way for new (once-fake) bishops, nominated by the CCP and, in a telling gesture, Pope Francis (b 1936; pope 2013-2025) re-admitted to "full ecclesial communion" seven living Chinese bishops who were ordained before the deal without Vatican approval, and had thus incurred a latae sententiae (literally "of a judgment having been brought") penalty.  Long a feature of the Catholic Church's canon law, a latae sententiae works as an administrative act, the liability for which is imposed ipsō factō (literally "by the same fact" and in law understood as "something inherently consequent upon the act").  What that means is the penalty is applied at the moment the unlawful act is done; no judicial or administrative actions needs be taken for this to happen.  Thus, at the point of non-Vatican approved ordination, all fake bishops were excommunicated.

On 22 September 2018, a provisional agreement was signed.  It (1) cleared the Chinese decks of any bishops (fake or real) not acceptable to either side, (2) granted the CCP the right to nominate bishops (the list created with the help of a CCP-run group called the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and (3) granted the pope a right of veto.  Although not mentioned by either side, the most important understanding between the parties seemed to be the hints the CCP sent through diplomatic channels that the pope would find their lists of nominees “helpful”.  If so, such a document deserved to be thought "a secret protocol" to the "Holy See-CCP Pact but however the sausages were made, it was a diplomatic triumph for Beijing.  Although Rome at the time noted it was a “provisional agreement”, many observed that unless things proved most unsatisfactory, it was doubtful Rome would be anxious again to draw attention to the matter because, whatever the political or theological implications, to acquiesce to the pope as cipher would diminish the church’s mystique.

Things may be worse even than the cynics had predicted.  In late 2020 the two-year deal handling the appointment of Chinese bishops was extended after an exchange of notes verbales (in diplomatic language, something more formal than an aide-mémoire and less formal than a note, drafted in the third person and never signed), both sides apparently wishing to continue the pact, albeit still (technically) on a temporary basis.  The uneasy entente seems however not to have lasted, Beijing in 2021, through bureaucratic process, acting as if it had never existed by issuing Order No. 15 (new administrative rules for religious affairs) which included an article on establishing a process for the selection of Catholic bishops in China after 1 May 2021.  The new edict makes no mention of any papal role in the process and certainly not a right to approve or veto episcopal appointments in China, the very thing which was celebrated in Rome as the substantive concession gained from the CCP.

Still, Beijing’s new rules have the benefit of clarity and while it's doubtful Francis held many illusions about the nature of CCP rule, he certainly had certainty for the remainder of his pontificate.  Order No. 15 requires clergy of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church (CPCC) to “adhere to the principle of independent and self-administered religion in China” and actively support “the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” and “the socialist system,” as well as to “practice the core values of socialism.”  They must also promote “social harmony” which is usually interpreted as conformity of thought with those of the CCP (although in recent years that has come increasingly to be identified with the thoughts of comrade Xi Jinping (b 1953; paramount leader of China since 2012) which, historically, is an interesting comparison with the times of comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949-1976).  Essentially, the CPCC is an arm of the CCP regime (something like "the PLA (People's Liberation Army" at prayer") and formalizing this is the requirement for bishops and priests to be licensed for ministry, much the same process as being allowed to practice as a driving instructor or electrician.

All this is presumably was a disappointment to the pope though it’s unlikely to have surprised to his critics, some of whom, when the agreement was announced in 2018 and upon renewal in 2020, predicted it would be honored by Beijing only while it proved useful for them to weaken the “underground” church and allow the CCP to assert institutional control over the CPCC.  At the time of the renewal, the Vatican issued a statement saying the agreement was “essential to guarantee the ordinary life of the Church in China.”  The CCP doubtlessly agreed with that which is why they have broken the agreement, and, if asked, presumably they would point out that, legally, it really didn’t exist, the text never having been published and only ever discussed by diplomats.  Although there are (by the Vatican's estimates) only some five million Chinese Catholics among a population of some 1.4 billion, that's still five-million potential malcontents and as the "Godless atheists" of the CCP know from their history books, that's enough to cause problems and if problems can be solved in the "preferred" CCP manner, they must be "managed".

Beware of imitations.  British Range Rover Evoque (left) and Chinese Landwind X7 (right).

Although not matching the original in specification or capabilities, the Landwind X7 sold in China for around a third what was charged for an Evoque and while it took a trained eye to tell the difference between the two, Chinese capitalism rose to the occasion and, within weeks, kits were on the market containing the badges and moldings needed to make the replication closer to exact.  Remarkably, eventually, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) won a landmark legal case (in a Chinese court!), the judges holding the “…Evoque has five unique features that were copied directly” and that the X7’s similarity “…has led to widespread consumer confusion.”  In a decision which was the first by a Chinese court ruling favor of a foreign automaker in such a case, it was ordered Landwind immediately cease sales of the vehicle and pay compensation to JLR.  It was a bit hypocritical for the British to complain because for years shamelessly the British industry "borrowed" styling from Detroit and in the early, cash-strapped, post-war years, the Standard Motor Company (later Standard-Triumph) sent their chief stylist to sit with his sketch-pad outside the US embassy in London to "harvest" ideas from the new American cars being driven by diplomats and other staff.  That's why Standard's Phase I Vanguard (the so-called "humpback", 1947-1953) so resembles a 1946 Plymouth, somewhat unhappily shrunk in every dimension except height.  One can debate the ethics of what Landwind did but as an act of visual cloning, they did it well and as Chinese historians gleefully will attest, when it comes to cynicism and hypocrisy, the British have centuries of practice.    

Beware of imitations.  Joseph Guo Jincai (b 1968, left) was in 2010 ordained Bishop of Chengde (Hebei) today without the approval of the pope.  He is a member of the China Committee on Religion and Peace and was appointed a deputy to the thirteenth National People's Congress.  Because of the circumstances of his ordination as a bishop, he was excommunicated latae sententiae but later had the consolation of being elected vice-president of Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.  In September 2018, Francis lifted the excommunication of Joseph Guo Jincai and other six bishops previously appointed by the Chinese government without pontifical mandate.  What Francis did was something like the "re-personing" granted in post-Soviet Russia to those "un-personed" under communist rule.

Politically, one has to admire the CCP’s tactics.  Beijing pursued the 2018 deal only to exterminate the underground Catholic Church which, although for decades doughty in their resistance to persecution by the CCP (including pogroms during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)), were compelled to transfer their allegiance to the CPCC once it received the pope’s imprimatur.  After the agreement, Chinese authorities rounded up underground Catholic clergy, warning that they would defy the pope if they continued baptizing, ordaining new clergy and praying in unregistered churches; most of those persuaded became part of the CPCC and those unconvinced resigned their ministries and returned to private life.  According to insiders, a rump underground movement still exists but it seems the CCP now regard the remnant as a terrorist organization (a la the subversive Falun Gong) and are pursuing them accordingly.

The central committee of the CCP's politburo contains operators highly skilled in the art of political opportunism and in 2025 they demonstrated their prowess during the brief interregnum between the death of PFrancis and the election of Leo XIV (b 1955; pope since 2025) when unilaterally they “elected” two bishops, one of them to a diocese already led by a Vatican-appointed bishop.  The clever maneuver took advantage of the fact that during this sede vacante (the vacancy of an episcopal see), the Holy See had been unable to ratify episcopal nominations.  The CCP clearly regards its elections as a fait accompli and one technically within the terms of the 2018 provisional agreement (most recently renewed in October 2024), adopting the pragmatic position of “what’s done is done and can’t be undone”.  The Vatican lawyers might demur and even though the terms of the agreement have never been published, the convention had evolved that Beijing would present to the Vatican a single candidate chosen by assemblies of the clergy affiliated by the CCPA; this nominee the pope could the appoint or not.  In 2025, the argument is that no veto was exercised which, during a sede vacante, was of course impossible but it’s no secret that in recent years Beijing has on a number of occasions violated the agreement.  The CCP are of the “how many divisions has he got” school established by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953), practiced with the “take whatever you can grab” ethos of capitalism which modern China has embraced with muscular efficiency.

The files were among the many piled in Leo’s in-tray and keenly Vaticanologists awaited his response and the new pope didn’t long delay, in June 2025 appointing Bishop Joseph Lin Yuntuan (b 1952) as an assistant in Fuzhou, the capital of the south-eastern Fujian province.  Unlike bishoprics elsewhere, analysts made no mention of whether the appointee belong to the “liberal” or “conservative” factions but focused instead on both sides exhibiting a clear desire to “continue on the path of reconciliation”.  In a statement, the Holy See Press Office stressed “final decision-making power” remained with the pope while for Beijing the attraction was the (substantial) resolution of the decades-long split between the underground church loyal to Rome and the state-supervised CCPA although there are doubtless still renegades being pursued.  Lin had in 2017 been ordained a bishop in the underground church and had the CCP wished to maintain an antagonism it could of course declined to countenance the appointment of a character with such a dubious past but the installation’s rubber-stamping in both states seems a clear indication both wish to maintain the still uneasy accord.  During the ceremony, Bishop Lin swore to abide by Chinese laws and safeguard social harmony.

Tatterdemalion

Tatterdemalion (pronounced tat-er-di-meyl-yuhn or tat-er-di-mal-yuhn)

(1) A person in tattered clothing; a shabby person.

(2) Ragged; unkempt or dilapidated.

(3) In fashion, (typically as “a tatterdemalion dress” etc), garments styled deliberately frayed or with constructed tears etc (also described as “distressed” or “destroyed”).

(4) A beggar (archaic).

1600–1610: The original spelling was tatter-de-mallian (the “demalion” rhymed with “Italian” in English pronunciation), the construct thus tatter + -demalion, of uncertain origin although the nineteenth century English lexicographer Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-1897) (remembered still for his marvelous Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894) suggested it might be from de maillot (shirt) which does seem compelling.  Rather than the source, tatter is thought to have been a back-formation from tattered, from the Middle English tatered & tatird, from the Old Norse tǫturr.  Originally, it was derived from the noun, but it was later re-analysed as a past participle (the construct being tatter +‎ -ed) and from this came the verb.  As a noun a tatter was "a shred of torn cloth or an individual item of torn and ragged clothing" while the verb implied both (as a transitive) "to destroy an article of clothing by shredding" & (as an intransitive) "to fall into tatters".  Tatterdemalion is a noun & adjective and tatterdemalionism is a noun; the noun plural is tatterdemalions.

In parallel, there was also the parallel "tat", borrowed under the Raj from the Hindi टाट (ṭāṭ) (thick canvas) and in English it assumed a variety of meanings including as a clipping of tattoo, as an onomatopoeia referencing the sound made by dice when rolled on a table (and came to be used especially of a loaded die) and as an expression of disapprobation meaning “cheap and vulgar”, either in the context of low-quality goods or sleazy conduct.  The link with "tatty" in the sense of “shabby or ragged clothing” however apparently comes from tat as a clipping of the tatty, a woven mat or screen of gunny cloth made from the fibre of the Corchorus olitorius (jute plant) and noted for it loose, scruffy-looking weave.  Tatterdemalion is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is tatterdemalions.  The historic synonyms were shoddy, battered, broken, dilapidated, frayed, frazzled, moth-eaten, ragged, raggedy, ripped, ramshackle, rugged, scraggy, seedy, shabby, shaggy, threadbare, torn & unkempt and in the context of the modern fashion industry, distressed & destroyed.  An individual could also be described as a tramp, a ragamuffin, a vagabond, a vagrant, a gypsy or even a slum, some of those term reflecting class and ethnic prejudice or stereotypes.  Historically, tatterdemalion was also a name for a beggar.

A similar word in Yiddish was שמאַטע‎ (shmate or shmatte and spelled variously as schmatte, schmata, schmatta, schmate, schmutter & shmatta), from the Polish szmata, of uncertain origin but possibly from szmat (a fair amount).  In the Yiddish (and as adopted in Yinglish) it meant (1) a rag, (2) a piece of old clothing & (3) in the slang of the clothing trade, any item of clothing.  That was much more specific than the Polish szmata which meant literally "rag or old, ripped piece of cloth" but was used also figuratively to mean "publication of low journalistic standard" (ie analogous the English slang use of "rag") and in slang to refer to a woman of loose virtue (used as skank, slut et al might be used in English), a sense which transferred to colloquial use in sport to mean "simple shot", "easy goal" etc.

Designer distress: Lindsay Lohan illustrates the look.

Tatterdemalion is certainly a spectrum condition (the comparative “more tatterdemalion”; the superlative “most tatterdemalion”) and this is well illustrated by the adoption of the concept by fashionistas, modern capitalism soon there to supply demand.  In the fashion business, tatterdemalion needs to walk a fine line because tattiness was historically associated with poverty while designers need to provide garments which convey a message wealth.  The general terms for such garments is “distressed” although “destroyed” is (rather misleadingly) also used.

Highly qualified porn star Busty Buffy (b 1996) in “cut-off” denim shorts with leather braces while beltless.

The ancestor of designer tatterdemalion was a pair of “cut off” denim shorts, improvised not as a fashion statement but as a form of economy, gaining a little more life from a pair of jeans which had deteriorated beyond the point where mending was viable.  Until the counter-culture movements of the 1960s (which really began the previous decade but didn’t until the 1960s assume an expression in mass-market fashion trends), wearing cut-off jeans or clothing obviously patched and repaired generally was a marker of poverty although common in rural areas and among the industrial working class where it was just part of life.  It was only in the 1960s when an anti-consumerist, anti materialist vibe attracted the large cohort of youth created by the post-war “baby boom” that obviously frayed or torn clothing came to be an expression of disregard or even disdain for the prevailing standards of neatness (although paradoxically they were the richest “young generation” ever).  It was the punk movement in the 1970s which took this to whatever extremes seemed possible, the distinctive look of garments with rips and tears secured with safety pins so emblematic of (often confected) rebellion that in certain circles it remains to this day part of the “uniform”.  The fashion industry of course noted the trend and what would later be called “distressed” denim appeared in the lines of many mainstream manufacturers as early as the 1980s, often paired with the acid-washing and stone-washing which previously had been used to make a pair of jeans appear “older”, sometimes a desired look.

Dolce & Gabbana Distressed Jeans (part number FTCGGDG8ET8S9001), US$1150.

That it started with denim makes sense because it's the ultimate "classless" fabric in that it's worn by both rich and poor and while that has advantages for manufacturers, it does mean some are compelled to find ways to ensure buyers are able (blatantly or with some subtlety) to advertise what they are wearing is expensive; while no fashion house seems yet to have put the RRP (recommended retail price) on a leather patch, it may be only a matter of time.  The marketing of jeans which even when new gave the appearance of having been “broken in” by the wearer was by the 1970s a define niche, the quasi-vintage look of “fade & age” achieved with processes such as stone washing, enzyme washing, acid washing, sandblasting, emerizing and micro-sanding but this was just to create an effect, the fabrics not ripped or torn.  Distressed jeans represented the next step in the normal process of wear, fraying hems and seams, irregular fading and rips & tears now part of the aesthetic.  As an industrial process that’s not difficult to do but if done in the wrong way it won’t resemble exactly a pair of jeans subject to gradual degradation because different legs would have worn the denim at different places.  In the 2010s, the look spread to T-shirts and (predictably) hoodies, some manufacturers going beyond mere verisimilitude to (sort of) genuine authenticity, achieving the desired decorative by shooting shirts with bullets, managing a look which presumably the usual tricks of “nibbling & slashing” couldn’t quite emulate.  Warming to the idea, the Japanese label Zoo released jeans made from material torn by lions and tigers, the company anxious to mention the big cats in Tokyo Zoo seemed to "enjoy the fun" and to anyone who has seen a kitten with a skein of wool, that will sound plausible.  Others emulated the working-class look, the “caked-on muddy coating” and “oil and grease smears” another variant although one apparently short-lived; appearing dirty apparently never a fashionable choice.  All these looks had of course been seen for centuries, worn mostly by the poor with little choice but to eke a little more wear from their shabby clothes but in the late twentieth century, as wealth overtook Western society, the look was adopted by many with disposable income; firstly the bohemians, hippies and other anti-materialists before the punk movement which needed motifs with some capacity to shock, something harder to achieve than had once been the case.

Distressed top and bottom.  Gigi Hadid (b 1995) in distressed T-shirt and "boyfriend" jeans.

For poets and punks, improvising the look from the stocks of thrift shops, that was fine but for designer labels selling scruffy-looking jeans for four-figure sums, it was more of a challenge, especially as the social media generation had discovered that above all they liked authenticity and faux authenticity would not do, nobody wanting to look it to look they were trying too hard.  The might have seemed a problem, given the look was inherently fake but the aesthetic didn’t matter for its own sake, all that had to be denoted was “conspicuous consumption” (the excessive spending on wasteful goods as proof of wealth) and the juxtaposition of thousand dollar distressed jeans with the odd expensive accessory, achieved that and more, the discontinuities offering irony as a look.  The labels, the prominence of which remained a focus was enough for the message to work although one does wonder if any of the majors have been tempted to print a QR code on the back pocket, linked to the RRP because, what people are really trying to say is “My jeans cost US$1200”.

1962 AC Shelby American Cobra (CSX 2000), interior detail, 2016.

The value of selective scruffiness is well known in other fields.  When selling a car, usually a tatty interior greatly will depress the price (sometimes by more even than the cost of rectification).  However, if the tattiness is of some historic significance, it can add to car’s value, the best example being if the deterioration is part of a vehicle's provenance and proof of originality, a prized attribute to the segment of the collector market known as the “originally police”.  In 2016, what is recognized as the very first Shelby American AC Cobra (CSX 2000) sold for US$13.75 million, becoming the highest price realized at auction for what is classified as "American car".  Built in 1962, it was an AC Ace shipped to California without an engine (and apparently not AC's original "proof-of-concept" test bed which was fitted with one of the short-lived 221 cubic inch (3.6 litre) versions of Ford's new "thin-wall" Windsor V8) where the Shelby operation installed a 260 cubic inch (4.2 litre) Windsor and the rest is history.  The tatterdemalion state of the interior was advertised as one of the features of the car, confirming its status as “an untouched survivor”.  Among Cobra collectors, patina caused by Carroll Shelby's (1923–2012) butt is a most valuable tatterdemalion.

Patina plus and beyond buffing out: Juan Manuel Fangio, Mercedes-Benz W196R Stromlinienwagen (Streamliner), British Grand Prix, Silverstone, 17 July 1954.

Also recommended to be repaired before sale are dents, anything battered unlikely to attract a premium.  However, if a dent was put there by a Formula One (F1) world champion, it becomes a historic artefact.  In 1954, Mercedes-Benz astounded all when their new grand prix car (the W196R) appeared with all-enveloping bodywork, allowed because of a since closed loophole in the rule-book.  The sensuous shape made the rest of the field look antiquated although underneath it was a curious mix of old and new, the fuel-injection and desmodromic valve train representing cutting edge technology while the swing axles and drum brakes spoke to the past and present, the engineers’ beloved straight-eight configuration (its last appearance in F1) definitely the end of an era.  On fast tracks like Monza, the aerodynamic bodywork delivered great speed and stability but the limitations were exposed when the team ran the Stromlinienwagen at tighter circuits and in the 1954 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995; winner of five F1 world-championship driver's titles) managed to clout a couple of oil-drums (those and bails of hay how track safety was then done) because it was so much harder to determine the extremities without being able to see the front wheels.  Quickly, the factory concocted a functional (though visually unremarkable) open-wheel version and the sleek original was thereafter used only on the circuits where the highest speeds were achieved.  In 1954, the factory was unconcerned with the historic potential of the dents and repaired the tatterdemalion W196R so an artefact of the era was lost.  That apart, as used cars the W196s have held their value well, an open-wheel version selling at auction in 2013 for US$29.7 million while in 2025 a Stromlinienwagen realized US$53.9 million.  

1966 Ferrari 330 GTC (1966-1968) restored by Bell Sport & Classic.  Many restored Ferraris of the pre-1973 era are finished to a much higher standard than when they left the showroom.  Despite this, genuine, original "survivors" (warts and all) are much-sought in some circles.

In the collector car industry, tatterdemalion definitely is a spectrum condition and for decades the matter of patina versus perfection has been debated.  There was once the idea that in Europe the preference was for a vehicle to appear naturally aged (well-maintained but showing the wear of decades of use) while the US market leaned towards cars restored to the point of being as good (or better) than they were on the showroom floor.  Social anthropologists might have some fun exploring that perception of difference and it was certainly never a universal rule but the debate continues, as does the argument about “improving” on the original.  Some of the most fancied machinery of the 1950s and 1960s (notably Jaguars, Ferraris and Maseratis) is now a staple of the restoration business but, although when new the machines looked gorgeous, it wasn’t necessary to dig too deep to find often shoddy standards of finish, the practice at the time something like sweeping the dirt “under the rug”.  When "restored", many of these cars are re-built to a higher standard, what was often left rough because it sat unseen somewhere now smoothed to perfection.  That’s what some customers want and the best restoration shops can do either though there are questions about whether what might be described as “fake patina” is quite the done thing.  Mechanics and engineers who were part of building Ferraris in the 1960s, upon looking at some immaculately “restored” cars have been known wryly to remark: “that wasn't how we built them then.” 

Gucci offered Distressed Tights at US$190 (for a pair so quite good value).  Rapidly, they sold-out.

The fake patina business however goes back quite a way.  Among antique dealers, it’s now a definite niche but from the point at which the industrial revolution began to create a new moneyed class of mine and factory owners, there was a subset of the new money (and there are cynics who suggest it was mostly at the prodding of their wives) who wished to seem more like old money and a trend began to seek out “aged” furniture with which a man might deck out his (newly acquired) house to look as if things had been in the family for generations.  The notoriously snobbish (and amusing) diarist Alan Clark (1928–1999) once referred to someone as looking like “they had to buy their own chairs”, prompting one aristocrat to respond: “That’s a bit much from someone whose father (the art historian and life peer Kenneth Clark (1903–1983)) had to buy his own castle.”  The old money were of course snooty about the such folk and David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) would lament many of the “jumped-up grocers” in his Liberal Party were more troublesome and less sympathetic to the troubles of the downtrodden than the "backwoodsmen" gentry in their inherited country houses.

Quota

Quota (pronounced kwoh-tuh)

(1) The share or proportional part of a total that is required from, or is due or belongs to a particular district, state, person, group etc.

(2) A proportional part or share of a fixed total amount or quantity.

(3) The number or percentage of persons of a specified kind permitted (enrol in an institution, join a club, immigrate to a country, items to be imported etc).

1660–1670: From the Medieval Latin, a clipping of the Latin quota pars ((a percentage of yield owed to the authority as a form of taxation (in the New Latin, a quota, a proportional part or share; the share or proportion assigned to each in a division), from quotus ((which?; what number?; how many?, how few?)), from quat (how many?; as many as; how much?), from the Proto-Italic kwot, from the primitive Indo-European kwóti, the adverb from kwos & kwís; it was cognate with the Ancient Greek πόσος (pósos) and the Sanskrit कति (kati).  In English, until 1921 the only known uses of “quota” appear to be in the context of the Latin form, use spiking in the years after World War I (1914-1918) when “import quotas” were a quick and simply form of regulating the newly resumed international trade.  Quota is a noun, the noun plural is quotas.

Google ngram: Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Being something imposed by those in authority, quotas attract work-arounds and imaginative techniques of avoidance & evasion.  The terms which emerged included (1) quota-hopping (the registration of a business, vehicle, vessel et al in another jurisdiction in order to benefit from its quota), (2) quota quickie (historically, a class of low-cost films commissioned to satisfy the quota requirements of the UK’s Cinematograph Films Act (1927), a protectionist scheme imposed to stimulate the moribund local industry.  The system widely was rorted and achieved little before being repealed by in the Films Act (1960) although modern historians of film have a fondness for the quota quickies which are a recognizable genre of cultural significance with a certain period charm, (3) quota refugee (a refugee, relocated by the office of the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to a country other the one in which they sought asylum in, in accord with relevant certain UN quotas).

South Park's Eric Cartman (left) and Token (now Tolkien) Black (right).

The writers of the animated TV series South Park (1997) (made with the technique DCAS (digital cutout animation style), a computerized implementation of the original CAS (cutout animation style) in which physical paper or cardboard objects were (by hand) moved (still images later joined or the hands edited-out if filmed); the digital process deliberately emulates the jerky, 2D (two-dimensional) effect of the original CAS) had their usual fun with the idea of a DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) quota as “tokenism” with the creation of the character Token Black (ie the “token black character” among the substantially white ensemble).  However, in 2022, some 300 episodes into the series, the character was retconned to become “Tolkien Black”, the story-line being he was named after JRR Tolkien (1892–1973), author of the children’s fantasy stories The Hobbit (1937) & The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955).  Retonning (the full form being “retroactive continuity” is a literary device (widely (and sometimes carelessly) used in many forms of pop culture) in which previously-established facts in a fictional are in some way changed (to the point even of eradication or contradiction).  This is done for many reasons which can be artistic, a reaction to changing public attitudes, administrative convenience or mere commercial advantage.  What South Park’s producers did was comprehensively retrospective in that the back-catalogue was also updated, extending even to the sub-titles, something like the “unpersoning” processes under Comrade Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) or the painstaking “correcting” of the historic record undertaken by Winston Smith in George Orwell’s (1903-1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) .  Undertaken during the high-point of the BLM (Black Lives Matter) movement, the change did attract comment and most seemed to regard it as an attempt to remove a possible trigger for protest but there was also the argument there may have been concern the use of the given name “Token” might be able to be interpreted as a comment on the sometimes inventive spellings used by African-American parents.  While the use of “Token” as a comment on “white racism” was acceptable, an allusion to the racial stereotyping implicit in the spelling would be classified as at least a microaggression and probably white racism in action.

Gracious Quotes have aggregated Lindsay Lohan’s top ten quotes.

The English word quote (pronounced kwoht) was related to quota by a connection with the Latin quot.  It is used variously: (1) to repeat or use (a passage, phrase etc.) from a book, speech or such, (2) to enclose (words) within quotation marks or (3) to state a price.  It dated from the mid-fourteenth century and was from the Middle English coten & quoten (to mark a text with chapter numbers or marginal references), from the Old French coter, from the Medieval Latin quotāre (to divide into chapters and verses), from the Latin quot (how many) and related to quis (who).  The use evolved from the sense of “to give as a reference, to cite as an authority” to by the late seventeenth meaning “to copy out exact words”.  The use in commerce (“to state the price of a commodity or service” dates from the 1860s and was a revival of the etymological meaning from the Latin, the noun in this context in use by at least 1885.

In Australian politics, there have long been “informal” quotas.  Although Roman Catholics have in recent years infiltrated the Liberal Party (in numbers which suggest a “take-over” can’t be far off), there was a time when their presence in the party was rare and Sir Neil O'Sullivan (1900–1968) who between 1949-1958 sat in several cabinets under Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978; prime-minister of Australia 1939-1941 & 1949-1966), noted wryly that as the ministry’s “designated Roman Catholic”, he: “wore the badge of his whole race.”  That was of course an “unofficial” (though for years well-enforced) quota but the concept appears to this day to persist, including in the ALP (Australian Labor Party) which, long past it’s “White Australia” days, is now more sensitive than some to DEI.  However, the subtleties of reconciling the ALP’s intricate factional arrangements with the need simultaneously to maintain (again unofficial) quotas preserving the delicate business of identity politics seem to have occasional unexpected consequences.  In the first cabinet of Anthony Albanese (b 1963; prime-minister of Australia since 2022), there was one “designated Jew” (Mark Alfred Dreyfus (b 1956).  Mark Dreyfus’s middle name is “Alfred” which is of course striking but there is no known genealogical connection between and the Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), the French Jewish army officer at the centre of the infamous Dreyfus affair (1894-1906).  The surname Dreyfus is not uncommon among European Jews and exists most frequently in families of Alsatian origin although the Australian’s father was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany.  Having apparently outlived his ethnic usefulness, Dreyfus fell victim to factional axe and was dumped from the ministry, some conspiracy theorists pondering whether the ALP might have liked the “optics” of expelling a Jew while the party’s reaction to the war in Gaza was being criticized by Muslim commentators.

Smiles all round.  Official photograph of the new ALP ministry, Canberra, Australia, June 2022. 

The cabinet also had one “designated Muslim” (Edham Nurredin “Ed” Husic (b 1970)), notable for being both the first Muslim elected to federal parliament and thus the first to serve in a ministry.  That had an obviously pleasing multi-cultural symmetry but for a number of reasons the ALP achieved a remarkably successful result in the 2025 election and that complicated things because radically it changed the balance in the numbers between the party’s right-wing, the relativities between the New South Wales (NSW) and Victorian factions significantly distorted relative to their presence in the ministry.  While the ALP is often (correctly) described as “tribal”, it’s really an aggregation of tribes, split between the right, left and some notionally non-aligned members, those alliances overlaid by each individual’s dependence on their relevant state or territory branch.  The system always existed but after the 1960s became institutionalized and it’s now difficult to imagine the ALP working without the formalized (each with its own letterhead) factional framework for without it the results would be unpredictable; as all those who claimed the Lebanese state would be a better place were the influence of the Hezbollah to be eliminated or at least diminished are about to discover, such changes can make things worse.

However, the 2025 election delivered the ALP a substantial majority but what was of interest to the political junkies was that the breakdown in numbers made it obvious the NSW right-wing was over-represented in the ministry, compared to the Victorian right.  What that meant was that someone from NSW had to be sacrificed and that turned out to be Mr Husic, replaced as the cabinet’s designated Muslim by Dr Anne Aly from the Western Australia’s Labor Left.  Culturally, to many that aspect seemed culturally insensitive.  To be replaced as designated Muslim might by Mr Husic have been accepted as just a typical ALP factional power play (a reasonable view given it was the faction which put him in the ministry in the first place) had he been replaced by a man but to be replaced by a Muslim woman must have been a humiliation and one wonders if the factional power-brokers have done their “cultural awareness training”, something the party has been anxious to impose on the rest of the country.  Mr Husic’s demise to the less remunerative back-bench is said to have been engineered by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles (b 1967) of the Victorian Right Faction and his role wasn’t ignored when Mr Husic was interviewed on national television, informing the country: “I think when people look at a deputy prime minister, they expect to see a statesman, not a factional assassin.”  Given the conduct & character of some previous holders of the office, it’s not clear why Mr Husic would believe Australians would think this but, in the circumstances, his bitterness was understandable.  Somewhat optimistically, Mr Husic added: “There will be a lot of questions put to Richard about his role.  And that's something that he will have to answer and account for.”  In an act of kindness, the interviewer didn’t trouble to tell his interlocutor: (1) Those aware of Mr Marles’ role in such matters don’t need it explained and (2) those not aware don’t care.

Richard Marles (right) assessing Ed Husic’s (left) interscapular region.

When Mr Marles was interviewed, he was asked if he thought he had “blood on his hands”, the same question which more than forty years earlier had been put to Bob Hawke (1929–2019; Prime Minister of Australia 1983-1991) who had just (on the eve of a general election) assumed the ALP leadership after the “factional assassins” had pole-axed the hapless Bill Hayden (1933–2023; ALP leader 1977-1983) after the latter’s earnest but ineffectual half decade as leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition.  Mr Hawke, not then fully house-trained by the pre-modern ALP machine, didn’t react well but to Mr Marles it seemed water of a duck’s back and he responded: “I don't accept that, these are collective processes... they are obviously difficult processes.  But, at the end of the day we need to go through the process of choosing a ministry in the context of there being a lot of talented people who can perform the role.”  Unfortunately, Mr Marles declined to discuss the secret factional manoeuvring which led to Mr Husic being sacrificed, the speculation including Dr Ally being thought better value because she could be not only cabinet’s designated woman but also boost the female numbers in the body, a matter of some sensitivity given how many women had joined the ALP caucus, many of them unexpectedly winning electorates to which they’d gain pre-selection only because the factional power-brokers considered them unwinnable.

Still, to be fair to Mr Marles, his anodyne non-answers were a master-class in composition and delivery: “There are so many people who would be able to admirably perform the role of ministers who are not ministers.  What I would say is I'm really confident about the ministry that has been chosen and the way in which it's going to perform on behalf of the Australian people.  But in the same breath, I'd also very much acknowledge the contribution that Ed Husic has made and for that matter, that Mark Dreyfus has made.  Both have made a huge contribution to this country in the time that they have served as ministers. I am grateful for that.”  Whether or not he believed his gratitude would be appreciated, Mr Marles was emphatic about his faction maintaining its Masonic-like cloak of secrecy, concluding his answer by saying: “I'm not about to go into the detail of how those processes unfold.  I've not spoken about those processes in the past obviously and I'm not about to talk about them now.”  It’s a shame politicians don’t think their parties should be as “transparent” the standard they often attempt to impose on others because Mr Marles discussing the plotting & scheming of factional machinations would be more interesting than most of what gets recited at his press conferences.

Although the most publicized barbs exchanged by politicians are inter-party, they tend to be derivative, predictable or scripted and much more fun are the spur-of-the-moment intra-party insults.  Presumably, intra-faction stuff might be juicier still but the leaks from that juicer are better sealed which is a shame because the ALP has a solid history in such things. 

Bill Hayden not having forgotten the part played in his earlier axing as party leader by Barrie Unsworth (b 1934; Premier of NSW 1986-1988) observed of him: “…were you the sort person who liked the simple pleasures in life, such as tearing the wings off butterflies, then Barrie Unsworth was the man for you.”  Hayden had not escape critiquing either, the man who deposed him (Bob Hawke) describing him in the run up to the coup as “A lying cunt with a limited future.”  Another ALP leader (Gough Whitlam (1916–2014; prime minister of Australia 1972-1975)) had a way with words, complaining to Charlie Jones (1917-2003): “You’re the transport minister, but every time you open your mouth, things go into reverse.”  Nor did Whitlam restrict his invective to individuals, once complaining of some of his colleagues: “I can only say we've just got rid of the '36 faceless men' stigma to be faced with the 12 witless men.”  The twelve were members of the ALP’s federal executive who in 1966 were poised to engineer Whitlam’s removal as deputy leader of the opposition and would have, had he not out- maneuvered them.

Sydney Daily Telegraph 22 March 1963 (left) and Liberal Party campaign pamphlet for 1963 federal election (right).

Dating from 1963, the phrase “36 faceless men” (one of whom was the token woman, the ALP having quotas even then) described the members of the ALP’s federal conference which, at the time, wrote the party platform, handing to the politicians to execute.  The term came to public attention when a photograph appeared on a newspaper’s front page showing Whitlam and Arthur Calwell (1896-1973; ALP leader 1960-1967) standing outside the hotel where the 36 were meeting, waiting to be invited in to be told what their policies were to be.  The conservative government used to great effect the claim the ALP was ruled by “36 faceless men”.  In the 2010s, there was a revival when there were several defenestrations of prime-ministers & premiers by factional operators who did their stuff, mostly in secret, through back channel deals and political thuggery.  In an untypically brief & succinct address, Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Prime-Minister of Australia 2007-2010 & 2013) at the time summed up his feelings for his disloyal colleagues: “In recent days, Minister Crean [Simon Crean (1949–2023; ALP leader 2001-2003)] and a number of other faceless men have publicly attacked my integrity and therefore my fitness to serve as a minister in the government.... I deeply believe that if the Australian Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men. Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.”  Otherwise mostly forgotten, Simon Crean and his followers are remembered as “Simon and the Creanites”, a coining by Peter Costello (b 1957; Treasurer of Australia, 1996-2007) who re-purposed “Creanites” from an earlier use by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996).