A Rose By Any Other Name

I woke up in the middle of the night, turned on my iTouch to read The New York Times and was confronted with a conundrum—just how do you spell the name of the hated Libyan dictator we are so desperate to depose?

In my last blog, I spelled his name Muammar Gaddafi. But that wasn’t the way I saw it through bleary eyes in The Times. Our most trusted newspaper spelled it Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Since I’d taken my computer downstairs to do our taxes, it wasn’t closely available to immediately revise my blog. But as I sat at the keyboard Wednesday afternoon ready to conform to The Times, I thought it might be interesting to see how other journalists publish his name:

Moammar Gadhafi is preferred by The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, the web site for NPR and the German publication Der Spiegel;
Muammar Gaddafi is the choice of Newsweek, The Jerusalem Post, Time, The Financial Times, the British newspaper The Guardian, The BBC and, perhaps most critically, Al Jazeera English;
Moammar Gaddafi says The Washington Post;
Muammar al-Qaddafi is the spelling favored by the Council on Foreign Relations;
Mouammar Kadhafi, according to the French paper Le Monde.

If I thought I could get through to him I’d ask you-know-who for the correct spelling of his name. I’m sure I’d have other questions, as well. Perhaps he’d respond with a quote attributed to P.T. Barnum: “I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.”


It’s Transparently Obvious: Listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on NPR as I was driving around today delivering Meals on Wheels, I realized the most overused word in government today is “transparency”

Rima Cohen, counselor to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, must have used the word half a dozen times, at least, in one answer to describe the guidelines behind the health care law celebrating its first anniversary today. If they were so transparent, why are so many people confused?

Even for those who favor universal health care coverage, it’s transparently obvious the plan must be simplified. Make it more like Medicare, but instead of being just for seniors, make it for everyone.


After the Fall: Tom Stoppard was a guest of Leonard Lopate of NPR shortly thereafter, as his play Arcadia is currently in revival on Broadway. I haven’t seen it, but I did score a front row center seat back in the summer of 1968 to his first smash hit, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Rosencrantz, or was it Guildenstern?, fell into my lap during the performance. They were standing near the edge of the stage apron bantering their Stoppard lines when all of a sudden Rosencrantz, or was it Guildenstern?, lost his footing and tumbled towards me. My reflexes were only 19-years-old at the time so I managed to thrust out my arms to cushion his fall, and save myself from agony. I quickly pushed him back on stage, without so much as a thank you from Rosencrantz, or was it Guildenstern?


Writer’s Block: As you might have figured out by now, I like writing. I’ll let you be the judge of my talent. Doesn’t matter what your verdict is, I’m going to continue.

Of course, I don’t get paid for this exercise, so recently I thought I might try my hand at freelancing for some local newspapers, maybe do a business article or two. One of the editors I queried said she might have some work, some short 300-word profiles of local businesses. Would I be interested, and oh, by the way, the fee is $60 per article, no mileage, non-negotiable.

$60!!! I used to pay freelancers $300 for a one-page article of about 400 words. And I thought my payouts were meager! Yikes, no wonder the average freelance writer says they make less than they did as a full-time employee. It’s a good thing I don’t need the money, otherwise I’d be really depressed.