Subject: Submission: Chinese Newspaper Terminology of the Late '60s
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 9/2/09, 19:38
To: readings@harpers.org

Sirs-

I'd like to submit the following list for your consideration. It's a series of terms I've pulled out of a 1971 booklet entitled Current Chinese Communist Newspaper Terms and Sayings, produced by Berkley's Center for Chinese Studies and apparently intended for the U.S. foreign policy community; my copy is stamped US GOVT PROP. The terms were all in regular use in Chinese publications and government documents, and all of them were either newly in use or new, revolutionary versions of established sayings.

I'm a regular contributor to Vanity Fair, Skeptic, The Huffington Post, and The Onion, and serve as director of communications Enlighten the Vote, a secular-oriented PAC. My first book, Flock of Dodos, was released in 2007.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

well-fed and loafing around all day long

so nervous as to take every bush and tree as a soldier

people's communes are fine

goody-goody old men

behaving like thieves and prostitutes

rats scurrying across the street with everyone yelling: kill them! kill them!

scholars and beauties

the ministry of scholars and beauties

ants on the locust tree assume a great nation swagger

to rig up an anti-China ring

renegade clique

look upon agriculture as glory and joy

half-delirious music

to boast something in extravagant terms

like pathetic creatures weeping in a corner

thunderous applause resounded

high current water-cooled silicon-controlled rectifiers

with their faces suntanned, red hearts and a firm class stand

to criticize profoundly and thoroughly, and to criticize until our enemies collapse and stink

everyone knows about it and is overjoyed

like two clay idols crossing the river, both are in a precarious situation.

to conduct an ardent flirtation with; flirting more and more ardently

to create counter-revolutionary public opinion in a big way

to talk a great deal of nonsense

to exceed the proper limits in righting a wrong