Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan (pronounced koz-muh-pol-i-tn)

(1) One free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments; an internationalist.

(2) One with the characteristics of a cosmopolite.

(3) A cocktail made with vodka, cranberry juice, an orange-flavored liqueur, and lime juice.

(4) Sophisticated, urbane, worldly.

(5) Of plants and animals, wildly distributed species.

(6) The vanessa cardui butterfly.

(7) A moth of species Leucania loreyi.

1828:  An adoption in Modern English, borrowed from the French cosmopolite (citizen of the world), ultimately derived from the Ancient Greek kosmopolitēs (κοσμοπολίτης), the construct being kósmos (κόσμος) (world) + politēs (πολίτης) (citizen); word being modeled on metropolitan.  The US magazine Cosmopolitan was first published in 1886.  Derived forms (hyphenated and not) have been constructed as needed including noncosmopolitan, subcosmopolitan, ultracosmopolitan, fauxcosmopolitan, anticosmopolitan & protocosmopolitan.  Because cosmopolitanness is a spectrum condition, the comparative is “more cosmopolitan” and the superlative “most cosmopolitan”.  Cosmopolitan is a noun & adjective, cosmopolitanism & cosmopolitanness are nouns, cosmopolitanize is a verb, cosmopolitanist is an adjective (and plausibly a noun) and cosmopolitanly is an adverb; the noun plural is cosmopolitans.

An aspect of Soviet Cold War policy under comrade Stalin

The phrase rootless cosmopolitans was coined in the nineteenth century by Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848), a Russian literary critic much concerned about Western influences on both Russian literature and society.  He applied it to writers he felt “…lacked Russian national character” but as a pejorative euphemism, it’s now an anti-Semitic slur and one most associated with domestic policy in the Soviet Union (USSR) between 1946 and Stalin's death in 1953.  Comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) liked the phrase and applied it to the Jews, a race of which he was always suspicious because he thought their lack of a homeland made them “mystical, intangible and other-worldly”.  Not a biological racist like Hitler and other rabid anti-Semites, Stalin’s enemies were those he perceived a threat; Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Grigory Zinoviev (1883–1936) and Lev Kamenev (1883–1936) were disposed of not because they were Jewish but because Stalin thought they might threaten his hold on power although the point has been made that while it wasn’t because he was Jewish that Trotsky was murdered, many Jews would come to suffer because Stalin associated them with Trotsky.

Comrade Stalin signing death warrants.

It was the same with institutions.  He found disturbing the activities of Moscow’s Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and did not approve them being accepted by Western governments as representing the USSR.  Further, he feared the JAC’s connections with foreign powers might create a conduit for infiltration by Western influences; well Stalin knew the consequences of people being given ideas; the campaign of 1946-1953 was thus more analogous with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) opposition to the Falun Gong rather than the pogroms of Tsarist times.  Authoritarian administrations don’t like independent organisations; politics needs to be monolithic and control absolute.  In a speech in Moscow in 1946, he described certain Jewish writers and intellectuals, as “rootless cosmopolitans” accusing them of a lack of patriotism, questioning their allegiance to the USSR.  This theme festered but it was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, fostering as it did an increased self consciousness among Soviet Jews, combined with the Cold War which turned Stalin into a murderous anti-Semite.

Ten years after: rootless cosmopolitan comrade Trotsky (left) talking to comrade Stalin (right), 1930 and Mexican police showing the ice axe used by an assassin (sent by Stalin) to murder Trotsky.

Before the formation of the state of Israel, Stalin's anti-Semitism was more a Russian mannerism than any sort of obsession.  For years after assuming absolute power in the USSR, he expressed no disquiet at the preponderance of Jews in the foreign ministry and it was only in 1939, needing a temporary diplomatic accommodation with Nazi Germany, that he acted.  Having replaced the Jewish Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951; People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union 1930–1939) with Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986; USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs 1939-1949 & 1953-1956), he ordered him to purge the diplomatic corps of Jews, his memorable phrase being "clean out the synagogue".  Concerned the presence of Jews might be an obstacle to rapprochement with Hitler, Stalin had the purge effected with his usual efficiency: many were transferred to less conspicuous roles and others were arrested or shot.

Meeting of minds: Joachim von Ribbentrop (left), comrade Stalin (centre) and comrade Molotov (right), the Kremlin, 23 August 1939.

Negotiations began in the summer of 1939, concluding with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) leading a delegation to Moscow to meet with Molotov and Stalin.  It proved a remarkably friendly conference of political gangsters and agreement was soon reached, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (usually called the Nazi-Soviet Pact or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) being signed on 23 August.  The pact contained also a notorious secret protocol by which the two dictators agreed to a carve-up of Poland consequent upon the impending Nazi invasion and the line dividing Poland between the two was almost identical to the Curzon Line, a demarcation between the new Polish Republic created in the aftermath of World War I (1914-1918) and the emergent Soviet Union which had been proposed by Lord Curzon (1859–1925; UK foreign secretary 1919-1924).  At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, during the difficult negotiations over Polish borders, Molotov habitually referred to "the Curzon Line" and the UK Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden (1897–1977; thrice UK foreign secretary & prime minister 1955-1957), in a not untypically bitchy barb, observed it was more common practice to call it the “Molotov-Ribbentrop line”.  "Call it whatever you like" replied Stalin, "we still think it's fair and just".  Comrade Stalin rarely much cared to conceal the nature of the regime he crafted in his own image.  Whatever the motives of Stalin, rootless cosmopolitans has joined the code of dog-whistle politics, a part of the core demonology to label the Jews a malign race, a phrase in the tradition of "Christ killers", "Rothschild-Capitalists and Untermenschen (the sub-humans).  Despite that, there are always optimists, Jewish writer Vincent Brook (b 1946), suggesting the term could convey the positive, a suggestion the Jews possess an “adaptability and empathy for others”.  It’s not a view widely shared and rootless cosmopolitan remains an anti-Semitic trope although it's not unknown for Jews to use it ironically.

In August 1942, Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) got to enjoy the rare pleasure of a well lubricated supper in comrade Stalin's private apartment in the Kremlin and also there was comrade Molotov.  By the time the third bottle had been uncorked, the occasion had progressed to the exchange of anecdotes and in the spirit of the occasion, Churchill asked Molotov if it was true he’d delayed his return from a visit to the US so he could spend a night on the town in Manhattan.  Molotov’s expression became even more dour than usual but Stalin explained things by saying: “It was not to New York he went. He went to Chicago, where the other gangsters live.”  More than one astute observer of the human condition has concluded more can be learned about a man from his humor than his more profound pronouncements but there was much also to be learned when comrade Stalin was being candid.  At the Yalta Conference, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) asked Stalin: “Who is the chap with the pince-nez?”.  “That’s Beria” [Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953; head of the Soviet secret police 1938-1946)], Stalin replied, “He’s our Himmler [the Nazi Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945)], and he’s not bad either.”

The Cosmopolitan cocktail

A brace of Cosmos.

The Cosmopolitan was based on the "Cosmopolitan 1934" cocktail, a mix from inter-war New York which included gin, Cointreau & and lemon juice, raspberry syrup lending the trademark pink hue.  The modern Cosmopolitan was also concocted in New York and seems to have appeared first in the Mid-1980s although it was appearances in the HBO (Home Box Office) television series Sex and the City (1998-2004) which made it as emblematic of a certain turn-of-the-millennium New York lifestyle as Manolo Blahnik’s stilettos but, the implications of that connotation aside, the enticing pink drink survived to remain a staple of cocktail lists.  Cosmopolitans can be made individually or as a batch to be poured from a pitcher; just multiply the ingredient count by however many are to be served.

Ingredients

2 oz (¼ cup) vodka (or citrus vodka according to taste)

½ ounce (1 tablespoon) triple sec, Cointreau (or Grand Marnier)

¾ oz (1½ tablespoons) cranberry juice

¼-½ ounce (1 ½-3 teaspoons) fresh lime juice

One 2-inch (50 mm) orange peel/twist

Instructions

(1) Add vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and lime juice to a cocktail shaker filled with ice.

(2) Shake until well chilled.

(3) Strain into a chilled cocktail glass (classically a coupé or Martini glass).

(4) An orange or lemon twist is the traditional garnish.

Notes

(1) As a general principle, the higher the quality of the vodka, the better the Cosmopolitan, the lower priced sprits tending to taste rather more abrasive which for certain purposes can be good but doesn’t suit a “Cosmo”.

(2) The choice of unsweetened or sweetened cranberry juice (the latter sold sometimes as “cranberry juice cocktail”) is a matter of taste and if using the unsweetened most will prefer if a small splash of sugar syrup (or agave) is added because tartness isn’t associated with a Cosmopolitan.

(3) There is however a variant which is sometimes mixed deliberately to be tart.  That’s the “White Cosmo”, made by using white cranberry juice.

(4) Of the orange liqueur: Most mixologists recommend Cointreau but preference is wholly subjective and Cointreau & Grand Marnier variously are used, the consensus being Cointreau (a type of Triple Sec) is smoother, stronger and more complex.  Grand Marnier is also a type of Triple Sec, one combined with Cognac so the taste is richer, nutty and caramelized which some prefer.

(5) Of the lime juice: It really is worth the effort to cut and squeeze a fresh lime.  Packaged lime juice will work but something of the bite of the citrus always is lost in the processing, packaging, storage and transporting the stuff endures.

(6) Art of the orange peel: The use of the term “garnish” of suggests something which is merely decorative: visual bling and ultimately superfluous but because cocktails are designed to be sipped, as one lingers over ones’s Cosmopolitan, from the peel will come a faint orange aroma, adding to the experience as the fumes of a cognac enhance things; spirits and cocktails are “breathed in” as well as swallowed.

(7) Science of the orange peel: When peeling orange, do it over glass so the oil spurting (viewed close-up under high-magnification, it really is more spurt than spray) from the pores in the skin ends up in the drink.  For the ultimate effect, rub the rim of the glass with the peel, down a half-inch on the outside so lips can enjoy the sensation.

The presidential “parade convertible” 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan, parked outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.

In the US, the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo) produced the Lincoln Cosmopolitan between 1949-1954 but only in its first season was it the “top-of-the-range” model, “designation demotion” something which would over the decades become popular in Detroit.  Political legend has it Harry Truman (1884–1972; US president 1945-1953) personally selected Lincoln to supply the presidential car fleet as an act of revenge against General Motors (GM), the corporation having declined to provide him with cars to use during the 1948 election campaign.  It’s assumed GM’s management was reading the polls and assumed they’d need only to wait to wait for a call from president elect Thomas Dewey (1902–1971) but as things turned out, Mr Dewey never progressed beyond president-presumptive so GM didn’t get the commission, the keys to Cadillacs not returning to the Oval Office until the administration of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989).  While it wouldn’t much have consoled the GM board, there was some of their technology in the Lincolns because, FoMoCo was compelled to buy heavy-duty Hydra-Matic transmissions from Cadillac, their own automatic gearbox not then ready for production.

The presidential “parade convertible” 1950 Lincoln Cosmopolitan with “Bubbletop” fitted.

The White House leased ten Lincoln Cosmopolitans which were modified by coach-builders who added features such as longer wheelbases and raised roof-lines.  Nine were full-enclosed limousines while one was an armoured “parade convertible” (a “Cabriolet D” in the Mercedes-Benz naming system) which was an impressive 20-odd feet (6 metres) in length.  The car used a large-displacement version (shared with Ford Trucks!) of the old Ford flathead V8 (first introduced in 1932) and, weighing a hefty 6,500 lb (2,900 kg), performance wasn’t sparkling but given its role was slowly to percolate along crowd-lined boulevards, it was “adequate”.  In 1954, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961), the parade convertible was fitted with a Plexiglas roof (a material the president would have been familiar with because it was used on some World War II (1939-1945) aircraft and in this form the Lincoln came to share the aircrafts’ nickname: “Bubbletop”.  The “Bubbletop” Cosmopolitan remained in service in the White House fleet until 1967.

The Glossies

Lindsay Lohan, Cosmopolitan, various international editions: April, May & June, 2006.

Cosmopolitan Magazine was launched in 1886 as a family journal of fashion, household décor, cooking, and other domestic interests.  It survived in a crowded market but its publisher did not and within two years Cosmopolitan was taken over by another which added book reviews and serialized fiction to the content.  This attracted the specialist house founded by John Brisben Walker (1847-1931), which assumed control in 1889, expanding its circulation twenty-fold to become one of America’s most popular literary magazines.  The Hurst Corporation acquired the title in 1905, briefly adding yellow-journalism before settling on a format focused on short fiction, celebrities and public affairs.  The formula proved an enduring success, circulation reaching two million by 1940 and this was maintained until a decline began in the mid 1950s, general-interest magazines being squeezed out by specialist titles and the time-consuming steamroller of television.

It was the appointment in 1965 of Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) as editor which signalled Cosmopolitan’s shift to a magazine focused exclusively on an emerging and growing demographic with high disposable income: the young white women of the baby boom.  In what proved a perfect conjunction, a target market with (1) economic independence, (2) social freedom, (3) an embryonic feminist awareness and (4) the birth control pill, the magazine thrived, surviving even the rush of imitators its success spawned.  Gurley Brown had in 1962 published the best seller advice manual, Sex and the Single Girl and Cosmopolitan essentially, for decades, reproduced variations on the theme in a monthly, glossy package.  It was clearly a gap in the market.  The approach was a success but there was criticism.  Conservatives disliked the choices in photography and the ideas young women were receiving.  Feminists were divided, some approved but others thought the themes regressive, a retreat from the overtly political agenda of the early movement into something too focused on fun and fashion, reducing women yet again to objects seeking male approbation.

Taylor Swift (b 1989), in purple on the cover of Cosmopolitan, December, 2014.

Still published in many international editions, Cosmopolitan Australia was one casualty of market forces, closed after a final printing in December 2018.  However, surprising many, Katarina Kroslakova (b 1978) in April 2024 announced her publishing house KK Press, in collaboration with New York-based Hearst Magazines International, would resume production of Cosmopolitan Australia as a bi-monthly and the first edition of the re-launched version was released in August, 2024.  Other than appearing in six issues per year rather than the traditional twelve, the format remained much the same, echoing Elle Australia which re-appeared on newsstands in March, ending a four-year hiatus.  Both revivals would as recently as 2023 have surprised industry analysts because the conventional, post-Covid wisdom was there existed in this segment few niches for time consuming and expensive titles in glossy print.

Amelia Dimoldenberg (b 1994) in polka-dots, on the cover of Cosmopolitan Australia April | May, 2025 (Issue 5, digital edition) which is downloadable file (96 MB in Adobe's PDF (portable document format) format.  Where digital titles have a history in print, the convention is to use the traditional cover format.  Even in the digital age, some legacy items have a genuine value to be exploited.

Ms Kroslakova clearly saw a viable business model and was quoted as saying print magazines are “the new social media” which was an interesting way of putting it but she explained the appeal by adding: “We need that 15 minutes to drop everything and actually have something tangible and beautiful in our hands to consume.  If we can present content which is multi-layered and deep and has authenticity and connection with the reader – that’s a really excellent starting point.”  She may have a point because in an age where screen-based content is intrinsically impermanent, the tactile pleasure of the traditional glossy may have genuine appeal, at least for an older readership who can remember the way things used to be done, something perhaps hinted at by her “15 minutes” reference, now regarded by many media analysts as a long-term connection given the apparent shortening of attention spans and after all, bound glossy pages are just another technology.  The revival of the print editions of Elle and Cosmopolitan will be an interesting experiment in a difficult economic environment which may get worse before it gets better.  Whether the novelty will attract enough of the "affluent readers" (what used to be called the A1, A2 & B1 demographic) to convince advertisers that it's a place to run their copy will likely decide the viability of the venture and while it's not impossible that will happen, Cosmopolitan is a couple of rungs down the ladder from the "prestige" titles (Vogue the classic mainstream example) which have maintained an advertising base. Cosmopolitan Australia offers a variety of subscription offers, the lowest unit cost available with a two-year, print + digital bundle (12 issues for Aus$105).

Lindsay Lohan on the cover of Cleo: March 2005 (left) and May 2009 (right).

Published in Australia between 1972-2016, Cleo was a monthly magazine targeted broadly at the demographic buying Cosmopolitan.  It was for decades successful and although there was some overlap in readership (and certainly advertising content), there was a perception there existed as distinct species “Cleo women” and “Cosmo women”.  Flicking through the glossy pages, husbands and boyfriends might have struggled to see much thematic variation although it’s likely they looked only at the pictures.  In the same vein, other than the paint, actual Cleo & Cosmo readers mostly probably wouldn’t have noticed much difference between Ford & Chevrolet V8s so it’s really a matter of where one’s interests lie (just because something is sexist stereotyping doesn’t mean it’s not true).  Had the men bothered to read the editorial content, they wouldn’t have needed training in textual deconstruction to detect both titles made much use of “cosmospeak”, a sub-dialect of English coined to describe the jargon, copy style and buzzwords characteristic of post 1950s Cosmopolitan magazine which contributed much to the language of non-academic “lipstick feminism”.  To summarize the market differentiation in women’s magazines, the industry joke was: “Cosmopolitan teaches you how to have an organism, Cleo teaches you how to fake an organism and the Women’s Weekly teaches you how to knit an organism”.  As a footnote, when in 1983 the Women’s Weekly changed from a weekly to monthly format, quickly rejected was the idea the title might be changed to “Women’s Monthly”.

Martyrdom of the Saints Cosmas and Damian, oil on canvas by Fra Angelico (Guido di Pietro, circa 1395-1455), Musée du Louvre, Paris, France).  Fra was from the Italian frate (monk) and was a title for a Roman Catholic monk or friar (equivalent to Brother).

“Cleo” was a spunky two syllables but “Cosmopolitan” had a time-consuming five so almost universally it was used as “Cosmo”.  In Italy, Cosmo is a male given name and a variant of Cosimo, from the third century saint Cosmas who, with his brother Damian, was martyred in Syria during one of the many crackdowns on Christianity.  The name was from the Ancient Greek κόσμος (kósmos) (order, ordered universe), source of the now familiar “cosmos”.  Cosmas and Damian were Arab physicians who converted to Christianity and while ostensibly they suffered martyrdom for their faith, there may have been a financial motive because the brothers practiced much “free medicine”, not charging the poor for their “cures” so their services were understandably popular and thus a threat to the business model of the politically well-connected medical establishment.  The tension between medicine as some sort of social right and an industry run by corporations for profit has occasionally been suppressed but it’s never gone away, illustrated by the battles fought when the (literally) socialist post-war Labour government (1945-1951) established the UK’s NHS (National Health Service) and the (allegedly) socialist “Obamacare” (Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010)) became law in the US.  By the twenty-first century, the medical establishment could no longer arrange decapitations of cut-price competitors threatening the profit margins but the conflicts remain, witness the freelancing of Luigi Mangione (1998).

The Mazda Cosmo

1968 Mazda Cosmo 110S (110S the export designation).

Although the Mazda corporation dates from 1920, it was another 40 years before it produced its first cars (one of the tiny 360 cm³ “kei cars” (a shortened form of kei-jidōsha, (軽自動車) (light vehicle)) so the appearance at the Tokyo Motor Show of the Cosmo Sport created quite an impression and that it was powered by a two-rotor Wankel rotary engine produced under licence from the German owners added to international interest.  Over two series, series production lasted from 1967 until 1972 but the intricate design was labour intensive to build and being expensive, demand was limited so in five years fewer than 1,200 were sold.  That makes it more of a rarity than a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing (the W198, 1,400 of those built 1954-1957) and while Cosmo prices haven’t reached the level of the German car, it is a collectable and a number are now in museums and collections.  Mazda continued to use the Cosmo name until 1996 and while none of the subsequent models were as intriguing as the original, some versions of the JC Series Eunos Cosmo (1990–1996) enjoy the distinction of being the world’s only production car fitted with a three-rotor Wankel engine (the 1969 Mercedes-Benz C111 was a Wankel test-bed). 

1975 Mazda Roadpacer (HJ model)

The Eunos Cosmo was not the only Mazda with a unique place in the troubled history of the Wankel engine, the Roadpacer (1975-1977) also a footnote.  Most Holden fans, as one-eyed as any, don’t have especially fond memories of the HJ (1974-1976) range; usually, all they’ll say is its face-lifted replacement (the HX (1976-1977)), was worse.  With its chassis not including the RTS (radial tuned suspension) which lent the successor HZ (1975-1980) such fine handling and with engines strangled by the crude plumbing used in the era to reduce emissions, driving the HJ or HX really wasn’t a rewarding experience (although the V8 versions retained some charm) so there might have been hope Mazda’s curious decision to use fit their smooth-running, two-rotor Wankel to the HJ Premier and sell it as their top-of-the range executive car might have transformed the thing.  That it did but the peaky, high-revving rotary was wholly unsuited to the relatively large, heavy car.  Despite producing less power and torque than even the anaemic 202 cubic inch (3.3 litre) Holden straight-six it replaced, so hard did it have to work to shift the weight that fuel consumption was worse even than when Holden fitted their hardly economical 308 cubic inch (5.0 litre) V8 for the home market.  Available only in Japan and sold officially between 1975-1977, fewer than eight-hundred were built, the company able to off-load the last of the HXs only in early 1980.  The only thing to which Mazda attached its name not mentioned in their corporate history, it's the skeleton in the Mazda closet and the company would prefer we forget the thing which it seems to think of as "our Edsel".  The Roadpacer did though provide one other footnote, being the only car built by General Motors (GM) ever sold with a Wankel engine.  

The archbishop and the abdication

Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang (1932), oil on canvas by Anglo-Hungarian society portraitist Philip Alexius László de Lombos (1869–1937 and known professionally as Philip de László).  Lang was christened Cosmo in honor of the local Laird (in Scotland, historically a feudal lord and latterly the “courtesy title” of an area’s leading land-owner, most prominent citizen etc).  The noun Laird was from the northern or Scottish Middle English lard & laverd (a variant of lord).

Scottish Anglican prelate Cosmo Gordon Lang (First Baron Lang of Lambeth, 1864–1945; Archbishop of York 1908–1928 & Archbishop of Canterbury 1928–1942 was a clergyman with uncompromising views about much.  This type was once common in pulpits and although those of his faction exist still in the the modern Church of England, fearing cancellation, they tend now to exchange views only behind closed doors.  He’d probably be today almost forgotten were it not for an incendiary broadcast he made (as Archbishop of Canterbury and thus spiritual head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican community) on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Radio on 13 December, 1936, two days after the abdication of Edward VIII (1894–1972; King of the UK & Emperor of India, January-December 1936, subsequently Duke of Windsor).  The address to the nation remains the most controversial public intervention made by a Church of England figure in the twentieth century, judged by many to be needlessly sanctimonious and distastefully personal, its political dimension the least objectionable aspect.

As a piece of text it did have a pleasingly medieval feel, opening with some memorable passages including: “From God he received a high and sacred trust. Yet by his own will he has abdicated” and “It is tragic that the sacred trust was not held with a firmer grip”.  That set the tone although when he said: “There has been much sympathy with the king in his great personal difficulty, and I do not forget how deeply he has touched the hearts of millions with his warm interest in the homes and lives of his people” his large audience may have thought some Christian charity did lurk in the Archbishop’s soul but quickly he let that moment pass, returning to his theme: “The causes which led to the king's decision are fully known to the nation.  But it has been made plain that the reigning sovereign of this country must be one whose private life and public conduct can be trusted to reflect the Christian ideal."

Unlike many modern Archbishops, there was no ambiguity about Lang so in his defense it can be argued he provided the Church with a moral clarity of greater certainty than anything which has in recent decades emanated from Lambeth Palace.  So there was that but by the 1930s the mood of opinion-makers in the UK had shifted and Lang’s text was seen as morally judgmental and the idea Edward VIII had failed not so much as a constitutional monarch but in his divine duty seemed archaic, few in the country framing things as the king’s personal failure before God.  What was clear was old Lang's point Edward’s relationship with a twice-divorced woman disqualified him morally and spiritually from being king which many critics within the church thought a bleak approach to a clergyman’s pastoral role.  In a sermon from the pulpit to the faithful it might have gone down well but as a national address, the tone was misplaced.  In self-imposed exile, privately Edward privately described the broadcast as “a vile and vindictive attack” and in his ghost-written memoirs (A King's Story (1951)), he accused the archbishop of “cruelty”.

Remembered also from the broadcast’s aftermath was a satirical verse printed in Punch by the novelist Gerald Bullett (1893–1958 (who published also under the pseudonym Sebastian Fox)).  Bullet’s included the words “how full of cant you are!”, using “cant” in the sense of “to speak in a manner speak in a hypocritical or insincere), an allusion to Lang signing his documents : “Cosmo Cantuar” (Cantuar the abbreviation for Cantuarium (Latin for Canterbury)):

“My Lord Archbishop, what a scold you are!
And when your man is down, how bold you are!
Of Christian charity how scant you are!
And, auld Lang swine, how full of cant you are!” 

Etceterini

Etceterini (pronounced et-set-er-rhini)

One or all of the sports cars & racing cars produced in small volumes by a number of “boutique” Italian manufacturers during the quarter-century-odd following World War II (1939-1945).

1980s (though not attaining wide currency until publication in 1990): A portmanteau word, the construct being etcetera(a) + ini.  Etcetera was from the early fourteenth century Middle English et cetera (and other things; and so forth), from the Latin et cētera (and the other things; and the rest of the things), the construct being et (and) + cetera (the other things; the rest).  Et was from the Proto-Italic et, from the primitive Indo-European éti or heti and was cognate with the Ancient Greek ἔτι (éti), the Sanskrit अति (ati), the Gothic iþ (and, but, however, yet) and the Old English prefix ed- (re-).  Cētera was the plural of cēterum, accusative neuter singular of cēterus (the other, remainder, rest), from the Proto-Italic ke-eteros, the construct being ke (here) +‎ eteros (other).  The Latin suffix -īnī was an inflection of -īnus (feminine -īna, neuter -īnum), from the Proto-Italic -īnos, from the primitive Indo-European -iHnos and was cognate with the Ancient Greek -ινος (-inos) and the Proto-Germanic -īnaz.  The suffix was added to a noun base (particularly proper nouns) to form an adjective, usually in the sense of “of or pertaining to and could indicate a relationship of position, possession or origin”.  Because the cars referenced tended to be small (sometimes very small), some may assume the –ini element to be an Italian diminutive suffix but in Italian the diminutive suffixes are like -ino, -etto, -ello & -uccio but etceterini works because the Latin suffix conveys the idea of “something Italian”.  It was used substantively or adverbially.  Until the early twentieth century, the most common abbreviation was “&c.” but “etc.” (usually with a surely now superfluous period (full-stop)) has long been the standard form.   Etcetera is a noun; the noun plural is etceteras

The word “etcetera” (or “et cetera”) fully has been assimilated into English and (except when used in a way which makes a historic reference explicit) is for most purposes no longer regarded as “a foreign word” though the common use has long been to use the abbreviation (the standard now: “etc”).  If for whatever reason there’s a need for a “conspicuously foreign” form then the original Latin (et cētera (or even the Anglicized et cetera)) should be used.  There is no definitive date on which the assimilation can be said to have been completed (or at least generally accepted), rather it was a process.  From the 1400s, the Middle English et cetera was used and understood by educated speakers, due to Latin's prominence in law, science, religion and academia with it by the mid-eighteenth century being no longer viewed as a “foreignism” (except of course among the reactionary hold-outs with a fondness for popery and ecclesiastical Latin: for them, in churches and universities, even in English texts, et cētera or et cetera remained preferred).  Scholars of structural linguistics use an interesting test to track the process of assimilation as modern English became (more or less) standardized: italicization.  With “et cetera” & “etcetera”, by the mid-eighteenth century, the once de rigour italics had all but vanished.  That test may no longer be useful because words which remains classified as “foreign” (such as raison d'être or schadenfreude) often now appear without italics.

The so-called “pronunciation spellings” (ekcetera, ekcetra, excetera & exetera) were never common and the abbreviations followed the same assimilative path.  The acceptance of the abbreviated forms in printed English more widespread still during the 1600s because of the advantages it offered printers, typesetters much attracted by the convenience and economy.  By early in the eighteenth century it was an accepted element (usually as “&c” which soon supplanted “et cet”) in “respectable prose”, appearing in Nathan Bailey’s (circa 1690-1742) An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and gaining the imprimatur of trend-setter Anglo-Irish author & satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745).  Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)) made much use of “&c” in his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and although Bailey’s dictionary was influential in the breadth of its comprehensiveness and remained, over 30 editions, in print until 1802, it’s Dr Johnson who is better remembered because he was became a “celebrity lexicographer” (a breed which today must sound improbable.)

One of the implications of linguistic assimilation is the effect on the convention applied when speaking from a written text.  Although wildly ignored (probably on the basis of being widely unknown), the convention is that foreign words in a text should be spoken in the original language only if that’s necessary for emphasis or meaning (such as Caudillo, Duce or Führer) or emphasis.  Where foreign terms are used in writing as a kind of verbal shorthand (such as inter alia (among other things)) in oral use they should be spoken in English.  However, the convention doesn’t extent to fields where the terms have become part of the technical jargon (which need not influence a path of assimilation), as in law where terms like inter alia and obiter (a clipping of obiter dictum (something said by a judge in passing and not a substantive part of the judgment)) are so entrenched in written and oral use that to translate them potentially might be misleading.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, left), Britney Spears (b 1981, centre) & Paris Hilton (b 1981, right), close to dawn, Los Angeles, 29 November 2006; the car was Ms Hilton's Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (C199 (2003-2009)).  This paparazzo's image was from a cluster which included the one used for the front page on Rupert Murdoch's (b 1931) New York Post with the still infamous headline “BIMBO SUMMIT”.  Even by the standards of the Murdoch tabloids, it was nasty.

So, the text written as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears et al recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, inter alia, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etc.” would be read aloud as: “Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and others recommend that while a handbag always should contain “touch-up & quick fix-up” items such as lipstick, lip gloss, and lip liner, the more conscientious should pack more including, among other things, mascara, eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, concealer, a powder compact, a small brush set & comb etcetera.”  Despite the cautions from purists (including just about every grammar text-book and style guide on the planet), the “choice” between “etc” and “et al” does seem to becoming blurred with many using seemingly using the two interchangeably.  The rules are (1) “etc” (and other things) is used of things (and according to the style guides should always appear with a period (full-stop) even though such use is archaic and another of those “needless tributes to tradition”) and (2) “et al” (and others) is used of people (especially in citations and again, always with a period).  So, “et al” can’t be used for things; strictly, it’s for things; it’ll be interesting to see if these rules survive into the next century.  Really, it's a silly rule and because it's hardly difficult to distinguish between a text string of "people" and one of "things", if used interchangeably, the two abbreviations are unlikely to confuse.  Et al was the abbreviation of the Latin et aliī (and others).

A Unix /etc directory.

In computing, Unix-based operating systems (OS) feature a directory (the word “folder” thought effete by the Unix community, most of whom are at their happiest when typing arcane commands at the prompt) called “etc” (along with /root, /boot, dev, /bin, /opt etc) which is used as a repository for system-wide configuration files and shell scripts used to boot and initialize the system.  Although there are many variants of the OS, typically an /etc directory will contain (1) OS configuration files (/etc/passwd; /etc/fstab; /etc/hosts), (2) system startup scripts (/etc/init.d or /etc/systemd/, (3) network configuration, (4) user login & environment configuration files and (5) application configuration files.  Originally (sometime in 1969-1970), the “etc” name was adopted because it was “an et cetera” in the literal sense of “and so on”, a place to store files which were essential but didn’t obviously belong elsewhere, a single “general purpose” directory used to avoid needless proliferation in the structure.  Rapidly Unix grew in complexity and configurability so the once “place for the miscellaneous” became the canonical location for configuration files, the original sense displaced but the name retained.  It is pronounced et-see (definitely not ee-tee-see or et-set-er-uh).  Despite their reputation, the Unix guys do have a joke (and there are unconfirmed rumors of a second).  Because so many of the files in /etc can be modified with any text-editor, in some documents earnestly it’s revealed /etc is the acronym of “Editable Text Configuration” but as well as a bad joke, it's also fake news; ETC is a backronym.

The Etceterini: exquisite creations with names ending in vowels

1954 Stanguellini 750 Sport.

In the tradition of mock-Latin, the word etceterini was a late twentieth century coining created to refer to the ecosystem of the numerous small-volume Italian sports & racing cars built in the early post-war years.  A portmanteau word, the construct being etceter(a) + ini, the idea was a word which summoned the idea of “many, some obscure” with an Italianesque flavor.  Credit for the coining is claimed by both automotive historian John de Boer (who in 1990 published The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) and reviewer & commentator Stu Schaller who asserts he’d used it previously.  Whoever first released it into the wild (and it seems to have been in circulation as least as early as the mid-1980s) can be content because it survived in its self-defined niche and the evocative term has become part of the lexicon used by aficionados of post-war Italian sports and racing cars.  Being language (and in this English is not unique), it is of course possible two experts, working in the same field, both coined the term independently, the timing merely a coincidence.  Etceterini seems not to have been acknowledged (even as a non-standard form) by the editors of any mainstream English dictionary and surprisingly, given how long its history of use now is, even jargon-heavy publications like those from the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) haven’t yet added it to their lexicons.  It does though appear in specialist glossaries, car-model registry websites and niche discussion forums, especially those tied to classic Italian car culture (OSCA, Moretti, Stanguellini, Siata, Bandini, Ermini etc).  So, as a word it has sub-cultural & linguistic clarity but no status among the linguistic establishment.

1953 Siata 208S Barchetta.

John De Boer’s comprehensive The Italian car registry: Incorporating the registry of Italian oddities: (the etceterini register) was last updated in 1994 and remains the best-known publication on the many species of the genus etceterini and included in its 350-odd pages not only a wealth of photographs and cross-referenced details of specification but also lists chassis and engine numbers (priceless data for collectors and restoration houses in their quests for the often elusive quality of “originality”).  Nor are the personalities neglected, as well as some notable owners the designers and builders are discussed and there are sections devoted to coach-builders, a once vibrant industry driven almost extinct by regulators and the always intrusive realities of economics.  One thing which especially delights the collectors are the photographs of some of the obscure accessories of the period, some rendered obsolete by technology, some of which became essential standard-equipment and some seriously weird.  Mr De Boer’s book was from the pre-internet age when, except for a pampered handful in a few universities, “publication” meant paper and printing presses but such things are now virtualized and “weightless publication” is available instantly to all and there are small corners of the internet curated for devotees of the etceterini such as Cliff Reuter’s Etceteriniermini, a title which certainly takes some linguistic liberties.  Some trace the breed even to the late 1930s and such machines certainly existed then but as an identifiable cultural and economic phenomenon, they really were a post-war thing and although circumstances conspired to make their survival rare by the mid 1960s, a handful lingered into the next decade.

1957 Bandini 750 Sport Saponetta.

That the ecosystem of the etceterini flourished in Italy in the 1950s was because the country was then a certain place and time and while the memorable scenes depicted in La Dolce Vita (1960) might have been illusory for most, the film did capture something from their dreams.  After the war, there was a sense of renewal, the idea of the “new” Italy as a young country in which “everybody” seemed young and for those who could, sports car and racing cars were compelling.  However, while there was a skilled labor force ready to build them and plenty of places in which they could be built, economics dictated they needed to be small and light-weight because the mechanical components upon which so many relied came from the Fiat parts bin and the most significant commonality among the etceterini were the small (often, by international standards, tiny) engines used otherwise to power the diminutive micro-cars & vans with which Fiat in the post-war years “put Italy on wheels”.  It was no coincidence so many of the small-volume manufacturers established their facilities near to Fiat’s factory in Torino, the closest thing the nation had to a Detroit.  In the early years, it wasn’t unknown for a donkey and cart carrying a few engines to make the short journey from the Fiat foundry to an etceterini’s factory (which was sometime little more than a big garage).  However, just because the things were small didn’t mean they couldn’t be beautiful and, being built by Italians, over the years there were some lovely shapes, some merely elegant but some truly sensuous.  Lovely they may appear but the Italians were not reverential when making comparisons with other objects.  Of the Bandini 750 Sport, Saponetta translates as literally as "little soap", the idea being the resemblance to a bar of soap as the ends wear away with use although of the nine 750 Sports made, some had an abbreviated Kamm tail which offered aerodynamic advantage at high speed but was less soapbaresque in shape.  Despite only nine 750 Sports being made, it was something of a volume model for the marque, for in the 45 years between 1946-1992, only 75 cars emerged from Ilario Bandini's (1911–1992) tiny workshop in Forlì, a municipality in the northern Italian city of Emilia-Romagna.  Bathrooms clearly were a thing in the Italian imagination because they dubbed the OSCA S187 (750S) the tubo di dentifricio (toothpaste tube), illustrating yet again how everything sounds better in Italian.   

1960 Stanguellini Formula Junior.

Among the etceterini, there was a high churn rate but many for years flourished and developed also lucrative “sideline” businesses producing ranges of speed equipment or accessories for majors such as Fiat or Alfa Romeo and, as has happened in other industries, sometimes the success of these overtook the original concern, Nardi soon noticing their return on capital from selling their popular custom steering wheels far exceeded what was being achieved from producing a handful of little sports cars, production of which quickly was abandoned with resources re-allocated to the accessory which had become a trans-Atlantic best-seller.  Whether things would have gone on indefinitely had the laissez-faire spirit of the time been allowed to continue can’t be known but by the 1960s, traffic volumes rapidly were increasing on the growing lengths of autostrade (the trend-setting Italian motorway system begun during the administration of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) with accident rates & the death toll both climbing.  Italy, like many jurisdictions began to impose safety regulations which before long made small-scale production runs unviable but by then rising prosperity meant people were able to purchase their own Fiat or Alfa-Romeo and the etceterini faded into fond memory.  It is of course unthinkable such a thing could again happen because the EU (European Union) is now staffed by divisions of Eurocrats who spend their days in Masonic-like plotting and scheming to devise new reasons to say no, non, nein, nee, nein, não etc.  Had these bloodless bureaucrats existed in the 1940s, not one etceterini would ever have reached the street.

Dixiecrat

Dixiecrat (pronounced dik-see-krat)

(1) In US political history, a member of a faction of southern Democrats stressing states' rights and opposed to the civil rights programs of the Democratic Party, especially a southern Democrat who left the party in 1948 to support candidates of the States' Rights Democratic Party.

(2) In historic US use, a member of the US Democratic Party from the southern states (especially one of the former territories of the Confederacy), holding socially conservative views, supporting racial segregation and the continued entrenchment of a white hegemony.

1948: A portmanteau word of US origin, the construct being Dixie + (Demo)crat.  Wholly unrelated to other meanings, Dixie (also as Dixieland) in this context is a reference to the southern states of the United States, especially those formerly part of the Confederacy.  The origin is contested, the most supported theory being it’s derived from the Mason-Dixon Line, a historic (if not entirely accurate) delineation between the "free" North and "slave-owning" South.  Another idea is it was picked up from any of several songs with this name, especially the minstrel song Dixie (1859) by (northerner) Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), popular as a Confederate war song although most etymologists hold this confuses cause and effect, the word long pre-dating any of the known compositions.  There’s also a suggested link to the nineteenth-century nickname of New Orleans, from the dixie, a Confederate-era ten-dollar bill on which was printed the French dix (ten) but again, it came later.  The –crat suffix was from the Ancient Greek κράτος (krátos) (power, might), as used in words of Ancient Greek origin such as democrat and aristocrat; the ultimate root was the primitive Indo-European kret (hard).  Dixiecrat is a noun and Dixiecratic is an adjective; the noun plural is Dixiecrats.  The noun Dixiecratocracy (also as dixieocracy) was a humorous coining speculating about the nature of a Dixiecrat-run government; it was built on the model of kleptocracy, plutocracy, meritocracy, gerontocracy etc.

The night old Dixie died.

Former Dixiecrat, Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003; senator (Republican) for South Carolina 1954-2003) lies in state, Columbia, South Carolina, June 2003.

Universally called Dixiecrats, the States' Rights Democratic Party was formed in 1948 as a dissident breakaway from the Democratic Party.  Its core platform was permanently to secure the rights of states to legislate and enforce racial segregation and exclude the federal government from intervening in these matters.  Politically and culturally, it was a continuation of the disputes and compromises which emerged in the aftermath of the US Civil War almost a century earlier.  The Dixiecrats took control of the party machine in several southern states and contested the elections of 1948 with South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as their presidential nominee but enjoyed little support outside the deep South and by 1952 most had returned to the Democratic Party.  However, in the following decades, they achieved a much greater influence as a southern faction than ever was achieved as a separatist party.  The shift in the south towards support for the Republican Party dates from this time and by the 1980s, the Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South had faded and many of the Dixiecrats had joined the Republicans.

US Electoral College map, 1948.

In the 1948 presidential election, the Dixiecrats didn’t enjoy the success polls had predicted (although that was the year of the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline and the polls got much wrong), carrying only four states, all south of the Mason-Dixon line and not even the antics of one “faithless elector” (one selected as an elector for the Democratic ticket who instead cast his vote for Dixiecrats) was sufficient to add Tennessee to the four (South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana) won.  Nor did they in other states gain sufficient support to act as “spoilers” as Ross Perot (1930–2019) in 1992 & 1996 and Ralph Nadar (b 1934) in 2000 achieved, the “narrowing of margins” in specific instances being of no immediate electoral consequence in the US system.  With that, the Dixiecrats (in the sense of the structure of the States' Rights Democratic Party) in a sense vanished but as an idea they remained for decades a potent force within the Democratic Party and their history is an illustration of why the often-quoted dictum by historian Professor Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970): “The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die” needs a little nuance.  What the Dixiecrats did after 1948 was not die but instead undergo a kind of “resurrection without crucifixion”, emerging to “march through the institutions” of the Democratic Party, existing as its southern faction.

That role was for generations politically significant and example of why the “third party” experience in the US historically wasn’t directly comparable with political behaviour elsewhere in the English-speaking world where “party discipline” tended to be “tight” with votes on the floors of parliaments almost always following party lines.  Until recent years (and this is something the “Trump phenomenon” radically has at least temporarily almost institutionalized), there was often only loose party discipline applied within the duopoly, Democrats and Republicans sometimes voting together on certain issues because the politicians were practical people who wished to be re-elected and understood what Tip O'Neill (1912–1994; (Democrat) speaker of the US Representatives 1977-1987) meant when he said “All politics is local”.  Structurally, that meant “third parties” can operate in the US and achieve stuff (for good or evil) as the Dixiecrats and later the Republican’s Tea Party Movement proved; it just that they do it as factions within the duopoly and that’s not unique, the Australian National Party (a re-branding of the old Country Party) really a regional pressure group of political horse traders disguised as a political party.

US Electoral College map, 1924.

The 1924 Electoral College results were a harbinger of the later Dixiecrat movement and a graphical representation of terms such as "solid South" or "south of the Mason-Dixon Line".  At the time of the 1924 election, slavery in the South was still in living memory.  Although there was fracturing at the edges, the "solid south" did remain a Democratic Party stronghold until the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and it was was the well-tuned political antennae of Texan Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969) which picked up the implications and consequences of the reforms his skills had ushered through the Congress:  "I think I've just lost us the South" he was heard to remark when the Senate passed a landmark voting rights bill into law.

In recent years, what has changed in the US is the Republicans and Democrats have become the captive organizations of a tiny number of dedicated political operatives pursuing either their own ideological agendas or (more typically), those providing the funding.  The practical implication of that is the elections which now most matter are the primaries (where candidates for the election proper are selected) and because primary contests are voted on by a relative handful, outcomes are easier to influence and control that in general elections where there are millions to nudge.  Party discipline has thus become tighter than can often be seen on the floor of the House of Commons in the UK, not because the ideological commitments of politicians within parties have coalesced but because they’re now terrified of being “primaried” if they vote against the party line.  Re-election is a powerful inducement because the money politicians make during their careers is many, many times what might be expected given their notional earnings from their salary and entitlements.  There are few easier ways to get rich, thus the incentive to “toe the party line”.  This behavioural change, mapped onto something which structurally remains unchanged, is one of the many factors which have produced a country now apparently as polarized as ever it has been.  The nature of that polarization is sometimes misunderstood because of the proliferation of “red state, blue state” maps of the US which make the contrast between the “corrupting coastlines” and “flyover states” seem so stark but each state is of course a shade of purple (some darker, some lighter) but because of the way the two parties now operate, politics as it is practiced tends to represent the extreme, radical elements which now control the machines.  So while in the last twenty-odd years there’s been much spoken about “the 1%” in the sense of the tiny number of people who own or control so much, it’s political scientists and historians who much fret over the less conspicuous “1%” able to maintain effective control of the two parties, something of even greater significance because the state has put in place some structural impediments to challenging the two-party political duopoly.

In the US, the state does not (in a strict legal or constitutional sense of the word) “own” the Republican or Democratic Parties because they are “private” organizations protected by the constitution’s First Amendment (freedom of association).  However, over the years, something biologists would recognize as “symbiosis” has evolved as the state and the parties (willingly and sometimes enthusiastically) have become entangled to the extent a structural analysis would recognize the parties as quasi-public although not quite at the status familiar elsewhere as quangos (quasi autonomous non-government organizations).  Despite being “private concerns”, the parties routinely conduct state-regulated primaries to select candidates and in many cases these are funded by tax revenue and administered by state electoral instrumentalities.  Beyond that, it needs to be remembered that to speak of a “US national election” (as one might of a “UK general election”) is misleading because as a legal construct such events are really 50 elections run by each state with electoral laws not wholly aligned (thus the famous (or dreaded, depending on one’s position) Iowa caucuses) and in many states, it’s state law which regulates who can voted in party primaries, some permitting “open” primaries in which any lawfully enrolled voter is allowed to cast a ballot while others run “closed” events, restricting participation to registered members of the relevant party.  What that means is in some places a citizen can vote in each party’s primary.  That done, those who prevail in a primary further are advantaged because many states have laws setting parameters governing who may appear on a ballot paper and most of them provide an easier path for the Republican and Democratic Party candidates by virtue of having granted both “major party” status.  As objects, the two parties, uniquely, are embedded in the electoral apparatus and the interaction of ballot access laws, debate rules and campaign finance rules mean the two function as state-sponsored actors; while not quite structurally duopolistic, they operate in a protected environment with the electoral equivalent of “high tariff barriers”.

Elon Musk (left) and Donald Trump (right), with Tesla Cybertruck (AWD Foundation Series), the White House, March, 2025.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Given all that, Elon Musk’s (b 1971) recent announcement he was planning to launch a “third party” (actually the US has many political parties, the “third party” tag used as a synecdoche for “not one of the majors”) might seem “courageous” and surprised many who thought the experience of his recent foray into political life might have persuaded him pursuits like EVs (electric vehicles), digging tunnels (he deserves praise for naming that SpaceX spin-off: “The Boring Company”) and travelling to Mars were more fulfilling.  However, Mr Musk believes the core of the country’s problems lie in the way its public finances are now run on the basis of the “Dick Cheney (born 1941; US vice president 2001-2009) doctrine: “Deficits don’t matter” and having concluded neither of the major parties are prepared to change the paradigm which he believes is leading the US to a fiscal implosion, a third party is the only obvious vehicle.  In Western politics, ever since shades of “socialism” and “capitalism” defined the democratic narrative, the idea of a “third way” has been a lure for theorists and practitioners with many interpretations of what is meant but all have in common what Mr Musk seems to be suggesting: finding the middle ground and offering it to those currently voting for one or other of the majors only because “your extremists are worse than our extremists”.  Between extremes there’s much scope for positioning (which will be variable between “social” & “economic” issues) and, given his libertarian instincts, it seems predicable Mr Musk’s economic vision will be “centre-right” rather than “centre-left” but presumably he’ll flesh out the details as his venture evolves.

Mr Musk can’t be accused of creating a “third party” because he wants to become POTUS (president of the US).  As a naturalized US citizen, Mr Musk is ineligible because Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the constitution restricts the office to those who are a “natural born Citizen” (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5).  Because the US Supreme Court (USSC) has never handed down a definitive ruling on the matter it’s not absolutely certain what that phrase means but the consensus among legal scholars is it refers to someone who was at birth a US citizen.  That need not necessitate being born on the soil of the US or its territories because US citizens often are born in other countries (especially to those on military or diplomatic duty) and even in international waters; indeed, there would appear no constitutional impediment to someone born in outer space (or, under current constitutional interpretation, on Mars) becoming POTUS provided they were at the time of birth a US citizen.  Nor does it seem an interpretation of the word “natural” could be used to exclude a US citizen conceived through the use of some sort of “technology” such as IVF (In Vitro Fertilization).

Lindsay Lohan, potential third party POTUS.

As a naturalized US citizen, Elon Musk can’t become POTUS so his new party (tentatively called the “America” Party) will have to nominate someone else and the constitution stipulates (Article II, Section 1, Clause 5): “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States”.  The age requirement is unambiguous and in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), Justice Joseph Story (1779–1845; associate justice of the Supreme Court of the USSC 1812-1845) explained the residence requirement was “…not an absolute inhabitancy within the United States during the whole period; but such an inhabitancy as includes a permanent domicil in the United States.”  That means Mr Musk can consider nominating Lindsay Lohan for president.  She’d apparently flirted with the idea of running in 2020 but at that point would have been a few months too young; on all grounds she’ll be eligible for selection in 2028 and many would be attracted to the idea of Lindsay Lohan having her own nuclear weapons.

Whether or not it’s “courageous” (or even “heroic”), to build a new third party in the US time will tell but certainly it’s ambitious but Mr Musk is also a realist and may not be planning to have a presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states or even contest every seat both houses of Congress.  As he’ll have observed in a number of countries, “third parties” need neither parliamentary majorities nor executive office to achieve decisive influence over policy, some with comparatively little electoral support able to achieve “balance of power” status in legislatures provided those votes are clustered in the right places.  Additionally, because the polarized electorate has delivered such close results in the House & Senate, the math suggests a balance of power may be attainable with fewer seats than historically would have been demanded and under the US system of fixed terms, an administration cannot simply declare such a congress “unworkable” and all another election (a common tactic in the Westminster system); it must, for at least two years, work with what the people have elected, even if that includes an obstreperous third party. Still, the challenges will be onerous, even before the “dirty tricks” departments of the major parties start searching for skeletons in the closets of third party candidates (in a rare example of bipartisanship the Republicans and Democrats will probably do a bit of intelligence-sharing on that project) and the history is not encouraging.

It was the Republican party which in the 1850s was the last “third party” to make the transition to become a “major” and not since 1996 has such a candidate in a presidential contest secured more than 5% of the national vote.  In the Electoral College, not since 1968 has a third-party candidate carried any states and 1912 was the last time a third-party nominee finished second (and 1912 was a bit of a “special case” in which the circumstances were unusually propitious for challenges to the majors).  Still, with (1) the polls recording a general disillusionment with the major parties and institutions of state and (2) Mr Musk’s wealth able to buy much advertising and “other forms” of influence, prospects for a third party may be untypically bright in 2028 elections and 2030 mid-terms.  There are no more elections for Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) and it seems underestimated even now just what an aberration he is in the political cycle.  While his use of techniques and tactics from other fields truly has since 2016 been disruptive, what he has done is unlikely to be revolutionary because it is all so dependent on his presence and hands on the levers of power.  When he leaves office, without the “dread and awe” the implied threat of his displeasure evokes, business may return to something closer what we still imagine “normal” to be.

Lollipop

Lollipop (pronounced lol-ee-pop)

(1) A (usually spherical or disc-shaped) piece of hard candy attached to the end of a small stick, held in the hand while the candy is sucked or licked (It was essentially a toffee-apple without the apple; a stick dipped in toffee and the older spelling used in the UK was lollypop (which exists still in modern commerce)).

(2) Something in a shape resembling the candy on a stick.

(3) In the UK, Ireland and the Commonwealth, as lollipop lady (and lollipop man), a school crossing attendant (based on the shape of the "stop/go" signs traditionally used and in the slang of children they're also "lollipoppers".

(4) In computer networking, a routing protocol using sequence numbering starting at a negative value, increasing until zero, at which point it switches indefinitely to cycle through a finite set of positive numbers.

(5) In the labeling of the Android operating system, v5.0 to 5.1.1.

(6) In motorsport, a circular sign on a long stick, used by a pit crew to covey messages to drivers (system still used despite advances in radio communication because (1) it's retained as a backup in case of system failure and (2) the messages can't electronically be monitored and done, with care, can be secret.

(7) In the slang of fashion and related photography, a term for very thin models whose heads thus appear disproportionately large.

(8) Figuratively, something sweet but unsubstantial (originally of literature).

(9) In the slang of musical criticism, a short, entertaining but undemanding piece of classical music, the idea being the pieces were of limited duration, immediately gratifying but really not good for one.  They've always been popular.

1784: A creation of Modern English of uncertain origin but the construct may be the obvious lolly + pop. Lolly was from the Northern English dialect loll (dangle the tongue) and pop was an alternative name for “slap”.  The alternative theory is it was borrowed from the Angloromani (literally "English Romani" and the language combining aspects of English and Romani), which was spoken by the Romani (gypsy, traveller, Roma etc) people in England, Ireland & Wales.  It was in the twentieth century displaced by English but traces remain in the variant English used by modern Roma.  The suggestion is of links with the Angloromani loli phabai (or lollipobbul (red or candy apple)), which was a blend from the Middle Indic lohita (from Sanskrit) and loha (red), drawn from reudh which had Indo-European roots. Among etymologists, the Angloromani connection has most support.  Originally, lollipop seems to have referred just to the boiled sweet (ie "stickless) with the meaning "hard candy on a stick" not noted until the 1920s while the figurative sense (something sweet but unsubstantial) was in use by at least 1849.  Used in the slang of catwalk photographers, the verb lollipopping (a stick-thin model walking down catwalk) and adjective lollipopish (a model close to thin enough to be a true "lollipop") are both non-standard.  Among the pill-poppers, there seems to be a consensus that post-rave, the best lollipops are lemon-flavored.  In commerce, the spelling varies including lollipop, lollypop, loli-pop, lollypopp and lolly-pop.  Lollipop & lollipopper are nouns and lollipoplike is an adjective; the noun plural is lollipops.

Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) enjoying a giant lollipop.

In classical music criticism, the term “lollipop” refers to short, appealing and often melodically charming pieces which were nevertheless judged as “lightweight in musical substance”.  Deployed often as “palate-cleansers” or encores, despite the opinions of many critics, composers, conductors and musicians, the bulk of the audience tended to enjoy them because in character they were often jaunty and playful, not something which endeared them to the earnest types who decided what deserved to be the canon of the “serious” repertoire in which complexity was valued above accessibility.  A well-known exponent the genre was Johann Strauss II (1825–1899) and his An der schönen blauen Donau, Op. 314 (On the Beautiful Blue Danube (better known in English as The Blue Danube (1866)) and Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka, Op. 214 (Chit-chat (1858)) are exemplars of his technique.  The reason the lollipops were and remain popular with general audiences (typically not trained in any aspect of music) is that they paid their money to be entertained by listening to something they could enjoy, not always the experience delivered by the composers who preferred “the experimental”, valuing originality over beauty; these were the “formalists” (as comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) once labeled comrade Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) and they may be compared with the modern generation of architects churning out ugly buildings because prizes in their profession are awarded on the basis of work being “new” rather than “attractive”.  Neither art deco nor mid-century modern buildings are in any way “lollipops” but the committees which award prizes in architecture probably think of them that way.

A bronzed Britney Spears (b 1981) with lollipop, emerging from a session in a West Hollywood tanning salon, Los Angeles, October, 2002.

Many composers at least dabbled in lollipop production and some were memorable, French composer Claude Debussy’s (1862–1918) Clair de Lune (1890) hauntingly beautiful and demanding nothing more from a listener than to sit and let it wash over them; even comrade Stalin (who liked tunes he could hum) would have enjoyed it despite Debussy being French.  Others were specialists in the genre including: (1) the Austrian-American Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler (1875–1962) who published a few of his compositions under wholly fictitious “old” names to lend them some “classic” respectability, (2) the English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham (1879–1961) who had a reputation among his peers for treating his music with about the same seriousness as he handled his many relationships with women and it was his encores and brief “concert fillers” which more than anything popularized use of “lollipop” in this context; he was also a practical impresario who noted what pleased the crowd and sometime constructed entire concerts with them, (3) Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977), a British conductor of Polish extraction noted for his arrangements of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), pieces for which the appellation “lush” would have had to been coined had it not existed and (4) the Australian Percy Grainger (1882–1961) a man of not always conventional tastes & predilections who enjoyed an unusually close relationship with his mother although whether any of that in any way influenced his folk-inspired miniatures (quintessential lollipops) is a matter for debate.  What can’t be denied is that for the untrained, a hour or two of lollipop music will probably be enjoyed more than listening to the strains of stuff by Béla Bartók (1881-1945) or Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951), the composers the critics think would be good for us.

A pandemic-era Paris Hilton (b 1981) in face mask with Whirly Pop lollipop.  Always remove facemask before attempting to lick or suck lollipop.

How to make lemon lollipops

Among the pill-poppers (and there are a lot of them about), there seems, at least impressionistically, to be a consensus that post-rave, the best lollipops are lemon-flavored.  It’s thought lemon lollipops work best in this niche because the acidic content interacts with taste receptors enjoying a heightened sensitivity induced by the pills’ chemistry.  Ideally, pill-poppers should pre-purchase lemon lollipops and at all times carry a few (on the basis of the (Boy) Scout motto: “Be prepared”) but that’s not always possible because, there being so many pill-poppers, shops often are out of stock of the lemon flavor.

Lemon Lollipops.

This recipe is therefore provided as a courtesy to pill poppers and, having shelf-life of weeks, lollipops can be prepared in advance; except for those popping at a heroic level, a batch should last a week so users should add the task to their routine, scheduling it perhaps after church every Sunday.  Lollipop sticks and one or more (depending on production target) lollipop molds will be required and the volume of ingredients quoted here should yield 24 small or 10-12 large lollipops.  Sticks and molds are available at supermarkets and speciality stores as are the small cellophane bags (needed only if some or all are being stored).  The taste can be varied by (slightly) adjusting the volumes of sugar, citric acid & lemon oil and preferences will vary between pill-poppers who are encouraged to experiment.  As a footnote, the small hole in the stick is there so a little bit of the melted candy sets inside, creating a "hook" to keep lollipop attached; without a hook, the candy could slide from the stick while subject to vigorous licking or sucking.  A more recent innovation as been the hollow stick, a safety feature (a la the removable caps on many ballpoint pens) which permits air-flow to the lungs if stick is swallowed and becomes lodged in the throat.

Ingredients (lollipops)

1 cup (200 g) sugar
½ cup (120 ml) water
¼ cup (60 ml) light corn syrup
1¼ teaspoons citric acid
¾ teaspoon lemon oil
2-4 (according to preference) drops liquid yellow food coloring

Ingredients (sour powder)

½ cup (50 g) confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons citric acid

Directions (lollipops)

(1) Coat lollipop molds with non-stick cooking spray.

(2) Place lollipop sticks in the molds.

(3) Combine the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a large, heavy saucepan and then bring mix to a boil over medium-high heat.

(4) Continue cooking until mixture reaches 300°F (150°C) which is the “hard-crack” stage.  Immediately remove saucepan from the heat.  The timing is critical so watch pot during cooking.

(5) Add citric acid, lemon oil and food coloring and stir to combine.  (Because of the acidic nature of the mix, don’t allow face to come too close to pot because fumes can irritate the eyes).

(6) Pour the mixture into a heatproof measuring container with spout (or a candy funnel (which every pill-popper should own)).

(7) Divide the mixture among prepared molds and leave lollipops to cool and harden.  After about 15 minutes, they should be ready to remove from mold (may take longer if temperature or humidity are high).

Directions (sour powder)

(1) Mix confectioners’ sugar and citric acid in bowl.

(2) Holding by stick, dip lollipops in mixture, coating entire surface.

(3) Lollipops may immediately be consumed but if being stored, wrap in cellophane bags and twist-tie.  Store lollipops in cool, dark, dry place (they'll remain in a “best by” state for about a month).