Trope

Trope (pronounced trohp)

(1) In art and literature, any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense and which tends to become a motif.

(2) In rhetoric, a figure of speech in which words or phrases are used with a non-literal or figurative meaning, such as a metaphor.

(3) In geometry, a tangent space meeting a quartic surface in a conic or the reciprocal of a node on a surface (archaic).

(4) In music, a short cadence at the end of the melody in some early music; a pair of complementary hexachords in twelve-tone technique.

(5) In the rituals of Judaism, a chanting (cantillation) pattern, or one of the marks that represents it.

(6) In medieval Christianity (and preserved in the rituals of certain factions in Roman Catholicism), either a phrase or verse added to the Mass when sung by a choir or a phrase, sentence, or verse formerly interpolated in a liturgical text to amplify or embellish.

(7) In Athenian philosophy, any of the ten arguments used in scepticism to refute dogmatism.

(8) In Santayanian philosophy, the principle of organization according to which matter moves to form an object during the various stages of its existence.

(9) In metaphysics, a particular instance of a property, as contrasted with a universal.

1525–1535: From the Latin tropus (a figure of speech (in rhetoric)) from the Ancient Greek τρόπος (trópos) (a turn, direction, course, way; manner, fashion; a mode in music; a mode or mood in logic (in rhetoric, "a turn or figure of speech)) and related to τροπή (tropḗ) (solstice; trope; turn) and τρέπειν (trépein) (to turn).  Root was the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn), related also to the Sanskrit trapate (is ashamed, confused, literally "turns away in shame") which Latin picked up trepit (he turns), the Latin adoption in the figurative.  The meaning is now understood as something more diffuse but technically, in rhetoric, a trope was "a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is used in a sense other than the usual definition".  In English, the word is found often in combined form (such as heliotrope) and occurs also in concrete nouns that correspond to abstract nouns ending in -tropy or -tropism.  Trope is a noun & verb, troper, tropist, tropology & tropism are nouns and tropey is an adjective; the noun plural is tropes.

When younger, Lindsay Lohan's signature trope was playing dual roles (The Parent Trap (1998), Freaky Friday (2003) and I Know Who Killed Me (2007).  During her “troubled starlet” phase, she became emblematic of the “downward spiral” trope.  In 2022, she appeared in Falling for Christmas, Netflix's latest take on the "Christmas movie trope".  Although the scripts for tropes have long followed an algorithm, the studios are said now to be using a predictive form of artificial intelligence (AI) to hone the generation of whatever should have the most audience appeal.  The screen-writers (most of whom drive cars and use other products manufactured using processes in which machines substantially have displaced the human labor content) are are unlikely ultimately to succeed in keeping AI out of their profession and, in the medium term, their future may lie in the creation of the quirky and bizarre but in the economy, that's a niche.  For the formulaic stuff (most commercial cinema), the studios are likely to find the AI path "better, cheaper, faster" and the history of US industrial relations suggests these imperatives will prove irresistible.               

The Stage Five Clinger Trope

Most sources cite origin of the Stage 5 Clinger trope as the movie Wedding Crashers (2005) although there are claims it merely popularized the use; without earlier citations however, the trope’s origin appears to be the movie.  As a technical point, a stage one clinger isn’t initially labelled as such, the term applied retrospectively after syndrome is diagnosed.  If men are smart or lucky, they’ll recognize this by stage two but some men are so stupid they don’t realize until stage four.  While in movie there was no discussion of stages other than “5”, by implication five was most extreme and memes soon fleshed out 1-4:

Stage 1 Clinger: She seems fine

First date goes well, she’s attentive, interested, even gets the drinks sometimes and she makes breakfast.  Afterwards, text messages are fun and flirtatious.

Stage 2 Clinger: Hunter and game

The text messages become frequent, the first hint of the lure / engage / trap strategy of the lone hunter.  SMSs start out OK which lulls you into a false sense of security.  Before long, a few messages have been exchanged, most of which have required you to agree with her about innocuous stuff like the weather or today’s traffic.  Then, she’ll suggest a second date and extract a commitment to a specific time/date/place.  That will be soon.       

Stage 3 Clinger: Manoeuvres

Second date not something you’ll wish to repeat.  Bit creepy, how much she knew about you, clearly adept at mining the web.  To escape, you agree to third date while finding pretext to avoid confirming time.  Within hours, text messages become frequent to the point of nuisance.  Check Facebook and you’ll see she’s friended everyone you know.  Ignore SMS and eventually it goes quiet… for about an hour.  Then she phones.  Third date will not be possible to avoid, the illusion you’ll use it to end things still something you convince yourself to believe.  The S3C stage can frequently be the point of no return.  Acquaint yourself with the tale of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC; Roman general and dictator of Rome 49-44 BC) crossing the Rubicon and ponder.      

Stage 4 Clinger: The circling vulture

By stage four, clinging has slurred effortlessly into stalking and S4C is likely to send your mother flowers on her birthday and attempt at avoidance will prompt texting and calling from other phones.  Those who drive are even more of a threat because, where you go, she can follow so you’ll run into her in the most improbable places, and usually she’ll suggest taking advantage of the coincidence by going to lunch, dinner or whatever else might be close.  No matter how studiously you watch the rear-vision mirror, she’ll hunt you down and find you.

"I've got a stage five clinger", Wedding Crashers (2005).  

Stage 5 Clinger: Thrill of the kill

At this point, her life is scheduled around your own, even to the point where she may now work in the same building, expects to have lunch together every day and a drink after work whenever possible.  When you try to avoid these, emotional meltdowns ensue, the only way to avoid a scene being to agree.  Many of your friends start asking you out as a couple and tell you you’re lucky because she’s wonderful.  She’s been to their dinner parties where she talks about your plans together.  Stage five clinger can also be APC ("actual psycho-chick", the two not synonymous but there’s frequent overlap).  Pursuing another relationship in an attempt to dissuade her brings its own problems, the S5C-APC will spray-paint CHEATER on either their car or yours (in red; unless car is red, then she’ll use black).  At this point, faking your own death begins to look like good tactic.

Cling on and no matter what, never let go: Crooked Hillary (b 1947) and Bill Clinton (b 1946) in the rain at the formal dedication of the William J Clinton Presidential Center, Little Rock, Arkansas, November 2004.  

The significance of dividing the path of the clinger into stages is it’s vital to extricate yourself from their clutches during the earliest stage possible; it needs to be remembered progression can be rapid, some clingers so adept at the art they're able to skip one or even two stages.  The longer delayed the excision, the harder it becomes and if allowed to reach the later stages, you may be stuck with her forever and for that, you can’t blame her: you're trapped and it's all your fault; you have only yourself to blame.

Entropy

Entropy (pronounced en-truh-pee)

(1) In thermodynamics,  the capacity factor for thermal energy that is hidden with respect to temperature; an expression of the dispersal of energy; a measure of the energy is spread out in a process, or how widely spread out it becomes, at a specific temperature.

(2) In thermodynamics (on a macroscopic scale), a function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy not available for work during a thermodynamic process (a closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy).

(3) In statistical mechanics, a measure of the randomness of the microscopic constituents of a thermodynamic system (symbol=S).  Technically, a statistical measure of the disorder of a closed system expressed by S = k log P + c where P is the probability that a particular state of the system exists, k is the Boltzmann constant, and c is another constant).  Expressed as joules per kelvin, it's essentially a measure of the information and noise present in a signal.

(4) In data transmission and information theory, an expression of specific efficiency, a measure of the loss of information in a transmitted signal or message.

(5) In cosmology, a hypothetical tendency for the universe to attain a state of maximum homogeneity in which all matter is at a uniform temperature (heat death).

(6) In political science, a doctrine of inevitable social decline and degeneration; the tendency of a system that is left to itself to descend into chaos (this definition widely used literally and figuratively in many fields).

(7) In modeling theory and applied modeling, a lack of pattern or organization; a state of marked disorder; a measure of the disorder present in a system.

1867: From the German Entropie, coined in 1865 by German physicist and mathematician Rudolph Clausius (1822–1888) by analogy with Energie (energy), replacing the root of Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon) (work) by the Ancient Greek τροπή (tropḗ) (transformation).  The Ancient Greek ἐντροπία (entropía) (a turning towards) is from energie, the construct being en (in) + trope (a turning, a transformation) from the primitive Indo-European trep (to turn).  Rudolph Clausius had for years been working on his theories before he coined the word Entropie to describe what he had been calling "the transformational content of the body."  The new word encapsulated the second law of thermodynamics as "the entropy of the universe tends toward a maximum" but Clausius thought the concept better illustrated by the mysterious disgregation (an series of equations explaining dissolution at the particle level), another of his coinings which never caught on in the same way.  Entropy & entropology are nouns, entropic is an adjective and entropically is an adverb; the noun plural is entropes.  The synonym entropia is an internationalism rarely used in English.

Entropy describes uncertainty or disorder in a system and, in casual use, refers to degradation or disorder in any situation, or to chaos, disorganization, or randomness in general.  In a technical sense, it is the gradual breakdown of energy and matter in the universe and is an important part of several theories which postulate how the universe will end.  The laws of thermodynamics describe the relationships between thermal energy, or heat, and other forms of energy, and how energy affects matter.  The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is about the quality of energy.  It states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted. The second law also states there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state; at a microscopic level, if a system is isolated, any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system.  The second law also predicts the end of the universe, implying the universe will end when everything becomes the same temperature. This is the ultimate level of entropy; if everything is the same temperature, nothing can happen and energy can manifest only as the random motion of atoms and molecules.  Time would stop immediately after the point at which, for the first time since the point at which the big bang happened, everything was happening at the same time.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

The term entropology is a portmanteau word (the construct of the blend being entrop(y) +‎ (anthrop)ology) which was 1955 coined by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) whose theories and models even today continue to underpin some of the framework of structural anthropology, the debt to him acknowledged by structuralists in many fields and apart from all else, in the social sciences, words like entropology are much admired.  It first appeared in his book Tristes Tropiques (Sad Tropics (1955)) a text itself structurally interesting, being in part travelogue, research paper and memoir, interspersed with philosophical musing on music, literature, history, architecture and sociology; these days it’d be called post-modern.  The essence of entropology is that the transformative path of human cultures (the sometimes separate, sometime parallel notion of “civilization” seemed not to trouble Lévi-Strauss) is inherently corrosive & disruptive.  It seemed a grim thesis but it must be admitted that by 1955, there was plenty of evidence to support his view.

A probably inaccurate representation of nothing.

The idea of nothing, in a universal sense in which literally nothing (energy, matter, space or time) exists is difficult to imagine, imaginable presumably only as infinite blackness although even that would seem to imply the spatial.  That nothingness is perhaps impossible to imagine or visualize doesn’t however prove it’s impossible but the mere fact matter, energy and time now exist in space does imply that because, were there ever nothing, it’s a challenge to explain how anything could have, from nothing, come into existence.  Despite that, it would be interesting if cosmologists could attempt to describe the mathematics of a model which would describe what conditions would have to prevail in order for there truly to be nothing.  That may or may not be possible but might be an interesting basis from which to work for those trying to explain things like dark matter & dark energy, either or both of which also may or may not exist.  Working with the existing universe seems not to be helpful in developing theories about the nature of all this supposedly missing (or invisible) matter and energy whereas were one, instead of working backwards as it were, instead to start with nothing and then work out how to add what seems to be missing (while remaining still not visible), the result might be interesting.

Troop

Troop (pronounced troop)

(1) An assemblage of persons or things; company; band.

(2) A great number or multitude.

(3) In historic military use, (usually) an armored cavalry, cavalry or artillery battery consisting of two or more platoons and a headquarters group.

(4) As troops, a body of soldiers, police etc.

(5) A unit of Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts usually having a maximum of 32 members under the guidance of an adult leader.

(6) A herd, flock or swarm of some living creatures.

(7) A band or troupe of actors (archaic).

(8) In British military use, to carry (the flag or colours) in a ceremonial way before troops.  The correct term is "Trooping the colour", not the oft-heard "Trooping of the colours" and the ceremonial event is conducted also by military formations in countries with military traditions influenced by the British (usually dating from some association with the old British Empire).  

(9) To assemble or form into a troop or troops.

(10) An alternative spelling of troupe (archaic).

(11) In British military slang, formerly to report a soldier for a breach of discipline (archaic).

(12) An alternative word for consort (archaic).

(13) The collective noun for a group of baboons.

(14) In music, a particular roll of the drum; a quick march.

(15) In mycology, mushrooms that are in a close group but not close enough to be called a cluster.

(16) To gather in a company; flock together.

(17) To come, go, or pass in great numbers; throng; to walk, as if in a march; go; to walk, march, or pass in rank or order.

(18) To associate or consort (usually followed by with).

(19) To work as a trooper. 

(20) To work steadily without complaint; to persevere ("What a trooper!" the usual praise for such folk.

1545: From the French troupe, from the Old French trope (band of people, company, troop, crowd), of uncertain origin but perhaps from the Frankish throp (assembly, gathering of people), from the Proto-Germanic þurpą (village, land, estate), from the primitive Indo-European treb- (dwelling, settlement) or a back-formation of troupeau, diminutive of the Medieval Latin troppus (flock) and Middle French troupe, from which Modern French gained troupeau (herd)), the construct being trop- (from the Germanic form thorp) + -el, from the Latin –ellus, the diminutive suffix.  There may have been some connection with the Old English ðorp or the Old Norse thorp (village) and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) suggest the French form was from the Latin troppus (flock) of unknown origin but may also have been picked-up from the (speculative) Germanic source.  Doublet of troupe, and possibly also of thorp and dorp; it was cognate with the German Dorf (village).  Troop, trooper & trooping are nouns & verbs and trooped is a verb; the noun plural is troops (troopers the more commonly used form).

It came to be applied to groups of animals in the 1580s, the military adoption for a “subdivision of a cavalry force" dating from the same time, the general use of ‘troop” to describe any “armed forces” attested from the 1590s.  Troops were part of the structure in the Boy Scouts from the organization's beginnings in 1908, the Girl Scouts emulating this upon formation four years later.  In modern use, the spelling troupe has assumed the exclusive use of describing a company of actors, singers, acrobats or other entertainers and performers.  The noun troop is a linguistic curiosity.  It’s used as a collective noun (a troop of girl-scouts) and in the noun plural (the troops) but not as a noun singular (one doesn’t refer to individual troops as “a troop”) but there is the noun singular “trooper”.

The Dilworth Story.

In the slim volume The Dilworth Story (1954), US historian of machinery & transportation Franklin M. Reck (1896-1965) wrote of the way Richard Dilworth would illustrate the point that many “inventions” credited to a single individual often come from the labours of many by citing the quote: “My mother was a canteen lassie.  Anyone of a troop of dragoons was my father.”  That, he claimed, was “a line from Bobby Burns.”  The Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796) was known familiarly as “Rabbie Burns” and there seems no doubt about the identities of his parents who neither worked in canteens nor were member of military troops but it’s a memorable line worthy of Burns and the word “lassie” (used in Scotland and northern England to refer to girls and young ladies, usually in an affectionate sense) does appear in his works so to Mr Dilworth it must have sounded plausibly Burnsian.  Sayings sometimes are attributed to Burns on the basis of “sounding Scottish”, the same phenomenon explaining the fate of pithy phrases thought “Shakespearian” or “Churchillian”.  Richard Dilworth (1885-1968) was a self-taught engineer who made notable contributions to the development of diesel-electric locomotives in the US and it was only his modest character which seems to have relegated him to obscurity while others perhaps less worthy receive at least footnotes.  Published by the Electro-Motive Division of GM (General Motors), the foreword to The Dilworth Story was written by Charles F. Kettering (1876–1958), the US engineer responsible for many good things but also the introduction of leaded gasoline (petrol), an ecological disaster which would for half a century-odd poison the world.

Military and para-military use

Para-military use: Lindsay Lohan and attorney Mark Heller (b 1945) arrive at Los Angeles Superior Court, 18 March, 2013, a phalanx of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department troopers clearing her path.

The troop as a military sub-unit continues to exist in some armed and police forces but tends now not in general to be part of military structures.  It was originally a tactical group, a small formation of cavalry, part of a squadron deployed on a battlefield for a specific action and it’s in that sense that use persists, troop sometimes an alternative term for an infantry section or platoon.  There are historic exceptions in the US Cavalry and the British Army where a troop can be an infantry company or artillery battery.  The Australian Army uses the term, a troop a platoon sized element and the general term for army personnel (and literally the private soldier) is trooper.  Technically, it’s only the SASR (Special Air Service Regiment; special forces) of the RA Inf (Royal Australian Infantry Corps) which uses troop to refer to its platoon size formations but it seems embedded as common slang.  As a general principle, where used in the military, a troop tends to be platoon-sized except in the US Cavalry, where it’s equivalent to a company (ie three to four platoons) and, when combined, these form a regiment, the change in nomenclature dating from 1883.

Para-military use: A troop of Covid-era Girl Scouts selling Covid-era Girl Scout Cookies (Girl Guide Biscuits in some places).

In civilian use, many US police forces use troop and trooper because they modelled their command structures along military lines, the same reason the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts adopted the form although, in these less robust times, it’s become common, especially with the latter, to replace troop with company, the now less-fashionable military connection being less overt.  One exception was the Salvation Army which never used troop, either as an organizational unit or in the collective to describe its members although, it was common to refer to them as "Christian soldiers".  They did use military ranks and some of the structural terms (such as corps and division) were adopted but never troop.

One Girl Scout troop’s entrepreneurial flair in March 2026 caused a stir, Fox News reporting the bumper sales the young ladies booked after setting up for business outside a cannabis dispensary in Mount Laurel, New Jersey (one of some 200 outlets in the state).  The choice of location was of course sound, stimulation of the appetite one of the best-known side-effects of using the substance; it's one of the many reasons it came to be used for medicinal purposes.  The opportunistic pop-up cookie store proved synergistic, the dispensary's hungry stoners queueing for a sugary treat while the owner of Daylite Cannabis told Fox News the store's foot traffic had increased while the troop plied their trade.  He revealed also that many of his customers stopped at the Girl Scout's booth before entering his shop, proving at least some weed-smokers think ahead.  Whether the girls were (empirically or otherwise) familiar with the phenomenon of “the munchies” or the choice of location was made by someone else wasn’t revealed but it seems Girl Scouts head office wasn’t impressed and the venture won’t be repeated.

Microaggression

Microaggression (pronounced mahy-kroh-uh-gresh-uhn)

(1) A casual comment or action directed at a marginalized, minority or other non-dominant group that (often) unintentionally but unconsciously reinforces a stereotype and can be construed as offensive.

(2) The act of discriminating against a non-dominant group by means of such comments or actions.

1970: A construct of micro- + aggression coined by Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016), former Professor of Education and Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  Micro (small, microscopic; magnifying; one millionth) is a word-forming element from the New Latin micro- (small), from the Ancient Greek μικρός (mikrós) (small).  The origin is disputed between etymologists, the traditional view being it was derived from the primitive Indo-European (s)meyg- & (s)mēyg- (small, thin, delicate) and was cognate with the Old English smicor (beauteous, beautiful, elegant, fair, fine, tasteful), source also of the Modern English smicker and related to the German mickrig.   However, there’s a highly technical discussion within the profession, hinged around the unexplained “k” in the Greek and there’s the suggestion of a pre-Greek origin on the basis of variation between initial /m/ and /sm/, as well as the variant forms μικός (mikós) and μικκός (mikkós).  Aggression, dating from 1605–1615, is from the French aggression, from the Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio (a going to, an attack)), a noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi (to approach; attack) the construct being ad (to) + gradi (past participle gressus (to step)) from gradus (a step).  The Classical Latin aggressiōn (stem of aggressiō), was equivalent to aggress(us) + iōn derived from aggrēdi (to attack).  The psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" had its origin in early psychiatry, first noted in English in 1912 in a translation of Freud.

Chester Middlebrook Pierce (1927-2016).

Microaggression is an adaptable and possibly infinitely variable concept which probably most belongs in sociology and is typically defined as any of the small-scale verbal or physical interactions between those of different races, cultures, beliefs, or genders that are presumed to have no malicious intent but which can be interpreted as revealing and underlying (and possibly unconscious) bias.  The criteria can be both objective and subjective and it’s noted compliments or comments intended to be positive can be microaggressions.  Probably, the only "safe" identity-based categorizations are now those purely statistical: average heights by nationality and such although such is the sensitivity, the recommendation of many is now wholly to avoid anything which could be construed as a microaggression, the only exceptions being those directed at groups defined as "privileged" (white people, Christians, heterosexual males etc.  The standard psychology texts suggest the behavior manifests in three forms:

Microassault: An explicit racial derogation which can be verbal or nonverbal which can include labelling, avoidant behavior and purposeful discriminatory actions.

Microinsult: Communications that convey rudeness or insensitivity and demean a person's racial heritage or identity; subtle snubs which may be unknown to the perpetrator; hidden insulting messages to the recipient of color.

Microinvalidation: Communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person belonging to a particular group.

The concept emerged to address the underlying racism which endured even after overt, deliberate expressions of racism had become socially unacceptable.  It held that microaggressions generally happened below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture and were different from overt, deliberate acts of bigotry, such as the use of racist epithets because the people perpetrating microaggressions often intend no offense and are unaware they are causing harm.  In the abstract, this positions the dominant culture as normal and the minority one as aberrant or pathological.

Although the word’s origin is in the politics of race and ethnicity, it proved readily adaptable to other areas such as gender, sexual orientation, mental illness, disability and age.  Within the discipline, there’s a (typically) highly technical debate about the nature of microaggression and the intersectionality at the cross-cutting cleavages of non-dominant groups.  As regards the media, the discipline had a well-refined model to describe how microaggressions were either reinforced or encouraged by a news and entertainment media which reflected the hegemony of the dominant culture.  The sudden shock of the emergence of social media has changed that in both diversity of source and content and its substantially unmediated distribution.  To date, much work in exploring this area has been impressionistic and it’s not clear if the analytical metrics, where they exist, are sufficiently robust for theories in this area to be coherent.  In a sense, social media and the development of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) are synergistic.

1958 Studebaker Scotsman advertisement.

There was in 1957 nothing unusual or offensive in Studebaker naming a car “Scotsman” and it would have been well-understood as a reference to the car’s low purchase price and (alleged) TCO (total cost of ownership).  Scotsman buyers could even forgo the extravagance of chrome bumpers by choosing the delete option of painted units; Mercedes-Benz also offered that on the taxi versions of the W115s (1968-1976). Other manufacturers used the same concept as Studebaker: Citroën ID vs DS, Cadillac Calais vs de Ville etc, some including fewer features and simpler trim, some also changing the mechanical specification but the principle was always: same size, lower price.  The name was picking up on the reputation of the Scots for frugality and it would have been thought something neutral at worst and more likely positive, thriftiness then still generally thought a virtue among Americans.  Technically, such use would now fulfil the criteria of a “microaggression” even if deployed in a way which makes clear it’s being intended in a way which is complimentary.  Scots can of course use the trope of themselves and even if used by others, as race-based microaggressions go, it’s at the lower range of offences, those applied to what are considered “white people”, rarely noticed and certainly not grounds for a cancellation.  Still, by the 2020s, it’s highly unlikely a car company would now name a car a “Scotsman” and certainly not if it was a “stripper” (ie a low-cost model with minimal standard equipment.

Car Life Magazine, May 1968.

Quite when the term vanished from commercial use can’t be certain but it would have occurred late in the twentieth century and certainly after 1968 when Car Life magazine, reviewing the new Plymouth Road Runner, called the stripped-down, low-priced muscle car: “a sort of Scotsman’s supercar”.  As well as a relic of linguistic use, Car Life’s test was interesting because unlike many of its contemporaries which often ran their tests with vehicles massaged or tweaked for ultimate performance, they used the genuine, stock standard articles.  What Car Life revealed was the Road Runner (when equipped with the standard 383 cubic inch (6.3 litre) V8)) was quicker than a typical 383 powered car using the same body (as would be expected given the lower weight and modifications to the V8 used in the Road Runner) but it was unable to match the sub-15 second quarter-mile (402 m) times reported by many.  The basic Road Runner was actually representative of the performance of most of the era’s “muscle car ecosystem” while the cars which “out of the box” were consistently able run the quarter-mile in the 14 second bracket were relatively rare.  Of course, to solve any perception of inadequacy, a buyer could tick the box for the optional 426 cubic inch (7.0) Street Hemi and while that was expensive, putting it in a Road Runner was the cheapest path to Hemi ownership.

Channeling her inner Scotsperson: Lindsay Lohan in Royal Stewart tartan, Freaky Friday (2003) costume test photo (Walt Disney Pictures).

Despite the perception of many (encouraged by the depictions in popular culture), tartan in the sense of specific color & pattern combinations attached to specific clans is something of recent origin.  Tartan (breacan (pɾʲɛxkən) in Scots Gaelic) is a patterned cloth consisting of criss-crossed, horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colours.  The word plaid is now often used interchangeably with tartan (particularly in North America and when not associated with anything Scottish (especially kilts)), but technically (and always in Scotland), a plaid is a large piece of tartan cloth, worn as a type of kilt or large shawl although it’s also used to describe a blanket.  During the disputes between England and Scotland, the wearing of tartan became a political expression and the Dress Act (1746) was part of the campaign to suppress the warrior clans north of the border; it banned tartan and other aspects of Gaelic culture. The law was repealed in 1782 and tartan was soon adopted as both the symbolic national dress of Scotland and in imagery more generally.

The Royal Stewart was the personal tartan of Elizabeth II (1926-2022; Queen of the UK and other places, 1952-2022) and although historically associated with the royal house of Stewart (or Stuart), it has become one of the most widely used in commercial fashion and in that sense is used in parallel with the clan affiliation.  Commonly worn to formal events such as weddings, ceilidhs, or Burns Night, the modern trend is to pair a kilt with a Prince Charlie or Argyll jacket, traditionalists adding a Sporran (pouch), Hose (kilt socks) & flashes, Ghillie brogues (traditional shoes) and even a Sgian dubh (a small dagger tucked in the sock) although carrying the last item may be unlawful in some jurisdictions.  Lindsay Lohan in her screen test wore the dress in something of the way in the 1970s it became part of the punk sub-culture but for more conventional types there are also scarves, ties, sashes and such.  Remarkably, in the age of identity politics and sensitivity to cultural appropriation, the etiquette guides note there is no objection to non-Scots folk wearing their tartan of choice except when an event is clan-specific in which case only those in the lineage should don the fabric.  That said, even then, the consequence of a tartan faux pas will likely be less severe than wearing a Rangers shirt in a Glasgow pub filled with Celtic’s hoops.  

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), Moscow, 1930 (left) and Mexican police showing the sawn-off ice axe used by an assassin (sent by Stalin) to murder Trotsky, Mexico, 1940.

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; Viceroy of India 1899-1905 & 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".  Rarely did comrade Stalin much care 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 one’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 share the sensation.

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; clearly, there was 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.

Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) amply filling the cover of Cosmopolitan's “Love Edition”, January 2026.

In a sense, Sex and the Single Girl was a product of pharmacological determinism, published as it was some two tears after the first oral contraceptive pill (still famously known as “the pill”) was approved for prescription use in the US by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).  Without women gaining some degree of autonomous control over their fertility, the premise of the book would have been absurd because as well as arguing the importance of them being financially independent of men, she advocated pre-marital sex, if need be with multiple partners.  Women with their own money was an idea subversive enough but the notion of unrestrained promiscuity upset the priests and politicians even more and although in the era a number of books (including Rachel Carson’s (1907–1964) Silent Spring (1962), Anthony Burgess’s (1917–1993) A Clockwork Orange (1962), William S. Burroughs’ (1914-1997) Naked Lunch (1962), Edward Albee’s (1928–2016) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962), Betty Friedan’s (1921–2006) The Feminine Mystique (1963) and James Baldwin’s (1924–1987) Another Country (1963)) appeared which appalled many in the conservative establishment, there was something about S&theSG which seemed especially threatening.  The protests of course made it a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) which is the literary or artistic term encapsulating the dictum Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) followed when dealing with the press: “Let them abuse us and let them damn us but let them say something about us”, a variant of Oscar Wilde’s (1854–1900): “It doesn’t matter what people are saying about you as long as they’re saying something”.  Goebbels truly was evil but his point was well made because S&theSG sold by the million and spent more than a year on the New York Times best seller list.

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 (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 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, H&Bs (husbands & boyfriends) might have struggled to see much thematic variation although it’s likely many 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”.  In a charming coincidence, Helen Gurley Brown's mother was Cleo Fred (née Sisco; 1893–1980). 

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 Cars

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.

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 triple rotor 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.

Cosmopolitan Writing

In literary theory “cosmopolitan writing” is that concerned with universal themes and issues (political, social and such) as well (in a kind of parallel stream of study) as the attitudes and language involved in any discourse on these themes and issues.  In the post-war period, there were forces that popularized or even created some categories of cosmopolitan writing (migrants, refugees, indigenous peoples etc) and the process of decolonization saw the creation (or, in a sense, re-creation) of independent states that collectively came variously to be known (even if sometimes misleadingly) as the “Third World”, “Global South” or “Developing Economies”), a phenomenon which proved a fertile source of writers, especially novelists.  Amusingly, a sub-set of this new breed migrated to the erstwhile imperial centres, apparently content to live among their former colonial oppressors while extolling the superiority of the cultures they’d chosen to abandon; critiques apparently easier to write when one can drink water from the tap and the electricity supply is reliable, both deficiencies in their native lands at least partially attributable to the former imperial rulers.

The Welsh radical historian of the Caribbean, Gordon Lewis (1919-1991), described these diasporae (the big influx of non-white peoples from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, the Far East & Latin America to the UK and North America) as “colonialism in reverse” although given the extent to which their novels became fashionable among critics and readers of the “book club” type, others preferred to suggest it was something like the “neo-colonizing” of London and New York publishing houses.  In different places these multi-ethnic microcosms have produced distinctive forms of literature including the two-inch thick “block-busting epic” narratives documenting the African American experience and the particular (sometimes verging on the semi-affectionate) take on the legacy of the British Raj by those who emarginated from India or the Pakistans (East & West).

Also produced was a wealth of what sometimes were classed as “novels of Empire”, works of fiction set in a the colonial world (not only the Raj).  For various reasons, not all remain canonical but examples include Rudyard Kipling’s (1865–1936) Kim (1901), Joseph Conrad’s (Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) Heart of Darkness (1902), E. M. Forster’s (1879–1970) A Passage to India (1924), Graham Greene’s (1904-1991) The Heart of the Matter (1948), Anthony Burgess’s (1917–1993) The Malayan Trilogy (1972) and Paul Scott’s (1920–1978) Raj tetralogy (The Jewel in the Crown (1966); The Day of the Scorpion (1968); The Towers of Silence (1971); A Division of the Spoils (1975)).  Writers like Burgess and Greene were wordsmiths of rare skill and their works, even if dated, still effortlessly seduce but only partially represented the attitudes and way of life of the indigenous peoples whereas in his novels about his native Trinidad or A Bend in the River (1979 and set in a French-speaking Central African state) V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) provided the sort of insight the English or Europeans authors never could.  Both approaches were however genuinely within the rubric of cosmopolitan writing in that the term described literature which was an attempt to cross (or at least document) the boundaries and frontiers of nations and nationalism, the stress on the global nature of everyday life with depictions of individuals and societies used as devices to depict themes and concepts as globally representative.

Because the elements of fable, myth & parable tend to be cross-cultural, universal parallels & analogies are an identifiable feature of the school of cosmopolitan writing and those devices proved adaptable when the genre was adapted to the task of discussing the state and position of the immigrant in post-war and post-imperial Britain; despite having become a highly cosmopolitan place, this was for decades a neglected field despite the obvious attraction for novelists of the tales of immigrants and their difficulties in adjusting to an alien culture’; There were exceptions such as the works of Colin Maclnnes (1914-1976) of which City of Spades (1957) was the most notable.  More celebrated (for reasons political as well as literary) was Sir Salman Rushdie’s (b 1947) The Satanic Verses (1988) which was a particular take on British (more specifically “English”) cosmopolitanism with a particular emphasis on the South Asian Muslim community.  Because the text was deemed to have been a blasphemy (based on opprobrious remarks about the prophet Muhammad (circa 570-632)), a fatwa was issued by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900-1989; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran, 1979-1989), requiring that any Muslim so able should carry out a death sentence on the author.  After the death of the Imam, the fatwa was said to have “expired” but that was historically and theologically dubious and the threat remained, Sir Salman seriously was injured in an attempted murder in 2022.  That attack was of course a particular example of modern cosmopolitan life and that milieu may be compared with the world view(s) discussed in his earlier novels Midnight's Children (1981) and Shame (1983), the linking thread being the “in-between” state of the cosmopolitan, an individual endlessly in a state of “translation”, being of one culture yet existing in another and the rather clumsy term “transculturation” has been applied.  For some time, Indian-born Sir Salman has divided his time between London and New York so readers and critics should make of that what they will.

Cosmopolitan writing certainly was not a thing just of the old British Empire and one upsurge in literary output in the vein came in the 1960s to be dubbed the Boom latinoamericano (Latin American Boom); that described the works of a cluster of young Latin American novelists whose books came to be published (in a variety of translations in Europe and the English-speaking world.  The boom was most associated with Argentine Julio Cortázar (1914–1984), Mexican Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), Peruvian Mario Vargas (1936–2025), Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) and Chilean-American Isabel Allende (b 1942); while clearly influenced by European and North American Modernism, they were also part of the Latin American Vanguardia movement and challenged the established conventions of the region’s literary traditions, the most significant contribution probably (and sometimes controversially) “magic realism”.  Vargas was perhaps the exemplar of applying the various techniques to create social and political simulacra which have cosmopolitan significance.  This was evident in La casa verde (The Green House, 1966) where the casa verde was a brothel (a motif about as global as things get) and Conversación en La Catedral (Conversation in The Cathedral, 1969), the symbolic location a sleazy bar called La Catedral; the irony may seem heavy-handed but the internal logic within the text was perfect.  His Márquez's Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967) was a little more subtle, the mythical town of Macando being a global and cosmopolitan urban image of decay, corruption, poverty and isolation, the various misfortunes which befall it and its inhabitants represented by biblical analogies.  

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 old prelate’s soul but quickly he let the 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 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!”