The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time Read Free Page A

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    In political usage, to get to the point, the street began in 1831 as “the man in the street,” or average person. In the 20th century, that meaning changed to “those demonstrating in the street.” That sense spread to a more general “popular opinion” but often still carries a connotation of “the incendiary emotions of the mob.”
    The first use of the Arab street I can find is in a December 1977 issue of American Political Science Review . “The existence of nuclear weapons in the region,” wrote Steven J. Rosen, “will induce moderation and a revolution of declining expectations in the Arab ‘street.’ ” Though it does not seem to be working out as Rosen hoped, the phrase he spotted caught on. A decade later, G. H. Jansen in the Los Angeles Times recalled that during the Suez crisis of 1956, “ ‘the Arab street’ in every Arab capital pulsated with popular demonstrations.” The quotation marks then disappeared as the phrase took hold in the language and gained complexity:
    “There was not one but many different Arab streets, “ wrote David Pollock in 1992. Professor Samer Shehata of Georgetown agrees: “The term Arab street, which is not used in the Arab world, divides countries into just two factions, but it’s much more complicated than the Arab street versus the authoritarian regime.”
    “The phrase used to be ‘the Arab masses,’ ” recalls a Middle East expert who prefers to remain anonymous because he is passing along only an impression. “With the eclipse of the Soviet Union, that phrase disappeared because Arab masses has too much of a Marxist-Soviet-Communist tilt to it, and it was replaced by the Arab street .”
    Does the Arab street reflect popular opinion in the Arab world or just the opinion of extremists carrying banners and burning flags? Is there a silent majority that is not in agreement with demonstrators, as there often is in the West? Nobody can say for sure, but the phrase, as used by Secretary Powell, means “the opinions of people governed by an autocratic regime and unable to express their views through elected representatives.”
    It should not be confused with street Arab, a derogatory term for “urban vagabond, homeless urchin,” as used in 1887 in Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes tale: “I therefore organized my street Arab detective corps,” which later evolved into fans styling themselves “the Baker Street Irregulars.”

    Asymmetry. “ Asymmetric warfare, “ said Maj. Gen. Perry Smith, retired, “is the term of the day.” President Bush evidently agrees: “We need to rethink how we configure our military,” he told his first primetime news conference, “… so that we more effectively respond to asymmetrical responses from terrorist organizations.”
    The prime user is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. After noting recently, “We really are going to have to fashion a new vocabulary” to describe the new kind of warfare, he told reporters that he had long been talking of “ asymmetrical threats” like “terrorism and ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, cyberattacks.” When Tim Russert of Meet the Press tried to pin him down further with “What are asymmetrical methods?” Rumsfeld came up with the same examples but not a definition.
    Let’s begin with symmetry, meaning “in balance; in proportionate arrangement,” often implying a beauty that flows from such regularity. The middle syllable is met, its root in the Greek metron, “measure,” which acts as a fulcrum in a nicely balanced word. William Blake used it most memorably in his 1794 poem “The Tyger,” concluding, “What immortal hand or eye / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry ?” (Making the last syllable, which sounds like ee, rhyme with eye was poetic license.)
    Asymmetric (or asymmetrical, equally correct, so I use the shorter one) has the obvious dictionary definition of “not symmetric” and the slang meaning of “out of whack,” but a