Friday, September 02, 2005

Lovely daughter

Meanings change. Fathers have “lovely daughters”. They didn’t always. They used to have just daughters. Then one or two alpha males, celebs, business-men, started having lovely daughters, especially when they were talking to the media. It was about the time recovered memory syndrome was rampant. “My lovely daughter” sounded a bit creepy. But the fraudulence of recovered memory syndrome was exposed, and lovely daughters survived and flourished. Now they are standard. In fact it’s a bit churlish to refer to just “my daughter”. What’s wrong with her? If you talk about “my daughter” you are damning her with faint praise, even condemning her to unconditional unloveliness. So it becomes a cliché, a pseudo-tautology. And this is mylullydaughter. M’l’l’ydorer.
It’ll be like President George W Bush’s “Freem Moxy” [which apparently means spectacular Yankee-style corruption, slaughter in the streets, and the destruction of public services]; a construction whose origins are lost. Lovely daughter. L’l’ydorer. Ludora. Ludra. Meet my ludra. He has three ludras.
I suppose there’s nothing wrong with ludras. They’re better than Freem Moxy.

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