Vivid Cameos

Nina,

As a former midwest farm boy, I experienced something akin to a shocking "gestalt" moment when my eyes zeroed in on the title of your article. In particular, I am wondering if you are aware of the  unavoidable colloquial connotations and images that immediately come to mind for millions of midwest Americans like me upon their seeing  any three-word sequence beginning with "the baby_________." 

If you were to do a word association test with this sequence for such Americans, you would discover that the most frequent response for completing  it would be the name of an animal species, often ones that are either  family pets or farm animals, as in the expanded linguistic sample of a neighbor phoning our home and saying, "Come over this evening and we'll show you the new baby pigs."  Conversely,  in our culture, one would never say, unless utterly "tone-deaf" to connotative/colloquial meanings or aiming to diminish  the worth of or outright insult someone's  essential humanity, "Could we come over  this evening and see the new baby Goldbergs?" The Goldberg's response might justifiably be, "Are you suggesting we had a litter or what?"

Given these linguistic realities, I am curious what your responses would be for these three questions:

1.  Was your use of "the baby Palins" a case of  naive insensitivity to the phrase's connotative, colloquial meaning and associated demeaning images or did you really intend to denote these new "Palins" as merely an animal species rather than actual human beings?

2.  Secondly, I'm wondering how "comfortable" you would be reading  several  unflattering cameo portraits of zealous leftists (perhaps black as well to add a finishing touch) in an article titled, "Meet the New Baby Obamas?"  (If you're interested,  my farm relatives and I would find it shocking and offensive "beyond the pale," to use a good  ole' American cliche.)  For some reason, I have an irrepressible feeling that the mainstream media would go, shall we say, bonkers or berzerk in its coverage of this incident.

3.  Your journalistic credentials and Bio seem impressive, but I'm wondering about the extent (breath and depth) of your "first-hand" experience with midwestern culture or, as is the case with so many eastern elites, are you heavily drawing upon filtered second-hand reports of "fly-0ver" country? Of course, you could very well have your own personalized frames of reference filtering all reality, especially when the real truth strikes a dissonant chord of alarm. For an elementary introduction, our mothers give birth to  precious children with immortal souls (typically just one at a time) rather than "popping out" litters, as your title suggests. Perhaps, it might be helpful to your enlightenment, also, if you "got out" a bit more among us unwashed masses, let's say for starters, at least 50 miles west of the NPR studios in Washington D.C. and New York City.  To complete this new picture of reality, try substituting "boy wonders on the left" for "right-wing girl Millennials" in the opening sentence of your next  article, and see if that phrase flows as mellifluously off your tongue.

Permit me to conclude with a bit of friendly counsel (in which I promise to reciprocate by following it myself): If  and when you write your next article about a "foreign" culture if not sub-culture (as you apparently see the "baby Palins" living in), please be sufficiently conversant in its colloquialisms  so you do not make a complete fool of yourself by either naively or offensively using phrases like the "the baby Palins."  In return, I'll promise not to write equally ignorant and offensive cameo portraits of Columbia-trained journalists.  Deal? (as we quaintly say in the midwest). 

P.S.:  So you'll know I'm not some upstart midwest "country bumpkin," I studied linguistics on the graduate level under the distinguished midwestern linguistics scholar, Harold B. Allen, who among other credentials, is known for having written a definitive linguistic atlas of the midwest, perhaps available now only in university archives but to which you might have access through your "connections" at Columbia University. 

 In closing, "Be well, do good works, and keep in touch," to quote a famous contemporary midwesterner turned cosmopolitan  bon vivant in recent decades. Above all, always remember that those who underestimate  midwesterners do so at their own peril because, for the most part, we come from villages and farms where all children are above average.[By the way, say "Hi" from me to Nina Totenberg at NPR if you get a chance; she and I go "way back" (as we describe such things in the midwest) to the 1960's when she did a hatchet job on J.Edgar Hoover that almost equalled the "quality" of  yours posted here.]