Lagniappe
"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived. But, if faced with courage, it need not be lived again."—Maya Angelou
My father once wrote an entire column about the word lagniappe.
It’s an interesting word literally meaning a little something extra. Like when a shopkeeper throws in a tchotchke appropriate for when you buy the priciest bottle of perfume, or when a maître d' adds a dollop of foie gras or a glass of port to your meal at no extra cost.
Supposedly it was coined in New Orleans in the mid 1800s and street vendors are still known to add a little lagniappe to your purchase. Mark Twain remarked it was worth traveling downriver to New Orleans for this word alone. It’s a ‘bastard child’ word that seems to be French but is actually derived from the Spanish, la ñapa (a free extra item), which is derived from the Quechua word, la yapa (something added).
Wikipedia puts it this way: The word entered English from the Louisiana French adapting a Quechua word brought in to New Orleans by the Spanish Creoles.
Lagniappe bobbed up into my consciousness out of nowhere. I hadn’t thought of it in years and I am confident I haven’t heard anyone use it since my father penned that column—which I think he wrote in the 90s—merely because he was a lover of odd words.
Somehow while listening to Politics Girl cogently explain—in a video that lasts hardly 90 seconds—why we should seek more understanding, not less, about all of the major issues of the day, lagniappe crossed my mind.
Americans are killing themselves in an ongoing effort to not understand the world around them. See anti-vaxxers.
They are wantonly subscribing to the kookiest ideas shysters can concoct as if we have no more understanding of the world than our ancestors, who looked out into the dark night from the mouth of a cave, did. See MAGA, Q-Anon, people going apeshit over every little perceived slight amplified by right-wing media hosts whose sole reason for being is to justify their mega million salaries by alarming the multitude of empty-headed vessels roaming our streets.
For that, see January 6th.
Unreasonable is the new norm. People wear unreasonable like its a badge of honor. Reason has a hard time vying against the theatrics of deluded fiction. Reason has a hard time piercing the consciousness of those who prefer histrionics from wine-addled talking heads over the who, what, where, whens of the Walter Cronkites and Edmund Murrows of the world.
If Black Lives Matters folks and antifa and grungy bearded leftists were the ones who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, why doesn’t the party led by a orange-haired buffoon want to investigate it?
If government programs suck, why are all those conservative, white voters defending social security, medicare and medicaid as vociferously as they do their gun rights?
If red states are so convinced they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, why do they accept kajillions of blue state federal dollars?
If the “twice-impeached Florida retiree” (See Nancy Pelosi) lost the election due to fraudulent voting, why has no one produced any damning evidence, or evidence at all?
If racism is not systemic, why does the party, whose titular head is an unindicted co-conspirator in a raft of lawsuits, rely on race-baiting to win elections? See Willie Horton. See John McCain’s “black child” controversy/non-controversy. See the latest pearl-clutching over an academic theory about systemic racism. Watch this wannabe senator scarily intone the phrase, “Kamala’s America” (mangling Ms. Harris’ name as she does so), in the hopes of spooking the white folks who will be deciding the election—most likely, this being Georgia—in her favor.
You would not know from listening to certain conservative-leaning broadcast studios that public teachers and public schools throughout our land have not been mandated to teach Critical Race Theory. Just as you would not know that Christmas is not under imminent threat to be canceled. Just as you would not know that reasonable Republicans—most of whom are not in office—think the former president is muy loco. Just as you would not know voter suppression is a far bigger issue than voter fraud, or voter fraud is more often associated with the ones yapping about it so much.
The pretty blonde running for the U.S. Senate sums up what appeals to white voters in a bunch of single syllable alliterative words—God, grace, grit (or was it grits?) and guns—and, though she doesn’t say it out loud and it’s not alliterative, the “boogeyman” of American history from To Kill A Mockingbird to every black person from George Floyd to Ahmaud Arbery who was tried, convicted and executed without a jury of their peers. Those white voters are not looking for more understanding. If anything, they are looking for less. They want their explanations boiled down to as few syllables as possible.
That’s what the Party of No gives them. . . this is what they’ll take, this is what you’ll lose, this is how they’ll make your life miserable. They appeal to fear. Meanwhile they cash the checks and join another country club far from the madding crowds of Real America.
This may be my favorite LBJ quote:
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
As a writer I need to tie this into a bow and I’ll be honest I had no idea when I started how lagniappe would dovetail with what was truly on my mind. But I think it’s this—I could have just thrown the word out there, said nothing at all, and allowed most of you to just skim past it as if it didn’t exist because it probably wouldn’t have altered an iota of your reading comprehension of my scholastically light scribbling.
I could have given you a cursory definition—“free stuff for all”!
I could have made something up.
I could have made some kind of connection with socialism.
I could have described it ad nauseam and from a thousand different angles. (This is also known as ‘beating a dead horse’ and the right wing media is particularly adept at this tactic.)
Tripping through Twitter I stopped for a bemused moment to read VoteVets.org latest tweet:
No one is gonna take your Bible. No one is gonna take your gun. But it’s clear someone has taken your ability to think rationally.
As Politics Girl states in yesterday’s observation of the political world at large—we need more understanding, not less. It’s the 21st century. All of us have the libraries of the world at our fingertips. There is a lot of bullshit to be cut through but we have to take the time to scythe our way to what’s closer to the truth.
Rather than settle for the monosyllabic explanation.
Clear, incisive commentary only about 90 seconds long. Enjoy!
Also, silly little Monty Python ‘skit’ called Nudge Nudge that most of you have probably seen but since I am a “late-bloomer” Monty Python fan (up until recently I only appreciated Time Bandits!?!). Enjoy it as well! Nudge nudge, wink wink!