Via Pablo, Gleen defends his interpretation of Noonan’s use of the verb “to poof” as a reference to “poofter”:
mredge
My mother used that term 30 years ago to describe lifting an area of hair to give it a look of more body. I’ve heard the word from hairdressers many times since then.
You are the immature person for jumping to the conclusion that the term is somehow used to describe Edwards as a homosexual.
The meaning of words is generally defined by dictionaries, not by how you claim you mom used them.
From Dictionary.com:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/poof
poof2 /puf, pÊŠf/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[poof, poof] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun British. Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.
1. a male homosexual.
2. an effeminate male.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/poof
Thesaurus Legend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Noun 1. poofpoof – offensive term for an openly homosexual man, fag, faggot, fagot, nance, poove, pouf, queer, fairy, pansy, queen
derogation, disparagement, depreciation – a communication that belittles somebody or something
gay man, shirtlifter – a homosexual man
Most dictionaries also cite the use of the word by magicians when making something disappear, which obviously is not what Noonan meant. None, at least that I found, mention the definition you claim your mom intended.
— GlennGreenwald
[Read GlennGreenwald’s other letters]
Permalink Friday, December 28, 2007 05:39 AMÂÂ
Pooftard.
Poor, poor Gleens.
You’re making a really good point here. The use by the Right of the Edwards hair video has nothing at all to do with impugning his masculinity. It’s all just my imagination.
Sorry, Gleens, but you’ve finally come to the crux of the matter. Masculinity is not sexuality. There are plenty of hetero sissy bitches, just as there are plenty of tough guy ass bandits like this guy. No one, including Noonan, seriously thinks that Silky is a pole smoker. He’s got 4 kids and maybe a 5th on the way for God’s sake. A taste for the vajayjay does not preclude one being a vain, narcissistic prissy little bitch, which Edwards is.
Poof!
Pooftooter.
I’ve gotta go with “mredge” on this one.
In my entire 35 years I’ve always only heard the words “poof” and “poofy” describing the process of teasing out a woman’s hair (or in Flock of Seagulls era, some guys), or in the magical, to disappear meaning. I’ve never in my life heard the term as a gay slur.
If dictionaries were always correct, we wouldn’t need urban dictionaries, and I think all of us use slang or regional terms not founds to be valid by Mr. Webster.
Gleen, as usual, is an idiot.
I think that Gleen’s saying that Noonan regards Edwards as a sort of . . . volumizeter, Bob.
Peggy Noonan is English?
Who knew?
Gleen, ya bawbag.
So I guess we can’t poof hair anymore. Just like we can’t go out and have a gay old time. *sigh*
Gleen is a shirtlifter.
Shirtlifter-fobes
Look on the bright side, Kevin. If you’ve got a buddy who’s feeling down, it’s OK to blow him now.
It is amazing to me that a gay man has never heard of poofy hair.
Things like this are wonderful in that they expose the gleens and their ilk for being the dishonest poofters that they are. It shows how fundamentally un-serious they are. And, it shows how deep they will search in order to find a word that they can take offense to.
lying crapweasels.
Yet more commentary on poof-gate:
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/12/the_poof_is_in.html
“the poof is in the putting ”
[via Hot Air]
Sorry, missed the earlier linky.
He’s right in one sense, online dictionaries do give “faggot” as the definition of poof. He’s wrong in the larger sense, hairdressers and many women do use this term to refer to messing with their hair and making it … well, poofy. In any case, it doesn’t matter what the dictionary says, it matters what the writer meant, and you can’t insist someone meant what they did not, or when you don’t know. That’s weak internet sophistry, using someone’s words to mean what you want them to be.
I guess Gleens believes all these references too, are veiled homophobic statements. Cuz, like, ya know, if it ain’t in the dictionary then it doesn’t exist.
One wonders whether Mr. Greenwald would be offended by the British use of the word “fag,” meaning “cigarette,” a definition generally not know among speakers of American English.
You lie, you lying liar. If this other definition ever existed, it would be in the online dictionaries because EVERYTHING gets online eventually because EVERYBODY contributes to online resources because GiGi says so. And he’s been quoted on the floor of the Senate by some poofter or another.
GOOD DAY, SIR!
I think Edwards really sort of demasculinates himself a lot cause he’s always contrasting his self-evident poofiness with his mill-worker daddy. It always reads to me that he’s more proud of transcending that than he’s proud of his actual roots I think cause you know his daddy never in his life obsessed on his hair like that. I mean roots like in family roots.
My mom was of Noonan’s age and class. She strictly used poof in referring to hair. I’ve heard poofer and poofter used as slang for homosexual, but my mom didn’t run with my crowd. Neither, I suspect, does Noonan.
I say “poof” about my hair all the time. Which, incidentally, is why I can’t get it to look like Reese Witherspoon’s.
He’s right in one sense, online dictionaries do give “faggot†as the definition of poof.
And isn’t that weird? Because “poof” is British slang for gay, but “faggot” in the British language isn’t.
The meanings Gleen refers to are British slang terms. In American slang, ‘poof’ means ‘to puff up.’ This is a fact.
I suggest we comb Gleen’s writings for American usages with offensive British meanings. We should illustrate absurdity by being absurd.
Of course, as Dan noted in his original piece, and as eastriver notes in another letter at Salon, Noonan used the word as a verb, not as a noun. Anyone who has waded through McEllerson’s attempts at prose might be forgiven for suspecting that grammar is not his strong suit. But that would be his problem, not Noonan’s or Dan’s problem.
That’s a great idea, Jeff, except that it would require reading lots of Gleenwaldian prose. Call me a chickenophobe (or is it a Homohawk?), but I just can’t risk that much gray matter. Or time.
Dan…check your email!!
I have days when my hair is poofy. I don’t care for poofy dresses or poofy sleeves, but I will poof up my down cushions and pillows and I only wish my former barn cats had poofy tails and I wish I had a poofy Pomeranian.
– Aside from the perpetual wounded petulance and overwrought prinking narcissism that annoys. Glellerson fails for being a sideways arguer. He cannot stamp the peas of reason with man boots, but skitters around hysterically with flailing arms sliding into the bureau and grabbing onto the bedposts.
So, I cut to the conclusion. You are right. She was saying Edwards is a vain prissy pants who is overly invested in his beauty and image. And that an effeminate man, Gay or Ungay, is not suited for serious leadership. The end.
English is so your bitch.
I suggest we comb Gleen’s writings for American usages with offensive British meanings. We should illustrate absurdity by being absurd
I’m with Pablo on this one. It’s one of those cases where the remedy would be worse than the disease. I’d rather give him “poof” than read large amounts of his work.
Of course, my blind partisanness and unwillingness to challenge my world-view also prohibits me from reading Gleen.
I tried to figure out which one of these was funnier: Pablo’s quotes from his myspace page.
OR
The great Confederate Yankee (does that mean racist Yankee or traitorous Yankee, Bob) alleging that Peggy Noonan, grand damme of Washington’s political right epitomizes and uses the urban dictionary!
In the end, Pablo makes a fool of himself every time he writes, so Bob is funnier as he imagines Peggy Noonan as a hip hop warrior who hates West Coast rap.
I don’t think this adds to the conversation very much.
I didn’t look it up, but is Confederate a synonym for racist or traitor? Are there dictionaries that come in editions just for lefties?
me
I think Gigi’s desperate clinging in believing the word “poof” is Noonan’s double secret nudge nudge wink wink homophobic slur rather than the easily demonstrated American colloquialism for “puff up” is much more hilarious … especially since he is counting on people like you to make fools of yourself in his defense.
Carry on…this is entertaining.
me is the first Gluppet on the thread if I am not mistaken.
One who has no clue to the meaning of a simple word like confederate presumes to lecture on definitions.
I have never heard the word “poof” used to denote a homosexual. I looked up the word at webster.com, the Merriam-Webster dictionary on the web, and they do not mention homosexuality with regard to poof. Webster defines it as follows, copied and pasted from their site:
poof
2 entries found.
poof[1,interjection]poof[2,noun]
Main Entry: 1poof
Pronunciation: ˈpüf, ˈpu̇f
Function: interjection
Date: 1824
â€â€used to express disdain or dismissal or to suggest instantaneous occurrence
Stogie again. I also ran the word through the Webster Thesaurus and found no reference to homosexuality. One of the words the Thesaurus gave was “buoyed up,” which would seem to support the puffed hair definition.
Greenwald is such a liar as we all know.
Was there a point to be had there, me, or are you just here to fling poo?
Lil’ sissy bitch.
I have heard British slang after working with people from the UK and Ireland over the course of six summers. Poof as slang for homosexual is British, not American. Gleen agian proves his donhonesty as he pursues this point of argument.
He may be a lawyer, but this isn’t legal writing, and he’s stretching badly, pursuing a weak argument as far as he can. If it were legal writing it would be dismissed quickly. He really isn’t that good at the lawyer-thing, is he? Must be why he took up political punditry – he can’t really be called out for that.
Which is not to say that me is a cocksucker. NTTAWWT.
You could check with Matt Hale about that, mikey. I believe you can write him c/o ADMAX Florence.
One cannot simply allude to any old dictionary in an argument of this type. For one thing, there are two types of dictionary: descriptive, and prescriptive. The first attempts to document how language is used: decade to decade, century to century, and continent to continent. The second attempts to tell one what is correct (also subject to change as time progresses, and from region to region, nation to nation, and according to whether one is in the U.S. or a Commonwealth country).
Like most copyeditors, I use Merriam-Webster (online or the 10th edition) for most applications, and supplement that with a “fat” dictionary (I used Randon House) when necessary. American Heritage is also pretty good. One cannot simply pluck meanings from any old website and grant it the authority one would give Merriam-Webster or (in Britain) the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
The online Merriam-Webster gives NO definition for poof as a verb. It does allude to the noun poof as British slang for homosexual, but also describes the word as related to puff (which makes sense–some would correlate it directly to the term “powder puff”).
Puff as a verb is defined thus:
Which is, of course, why we refer to journalists who write “puff pieces.” I suspect that the pivotal idea here is to incorporate air, and that both poof and puff are in term related to fluff. That, of course, is the word I would have used: Poof as a verb is, I imagine, akin to the word snuck for sneaked—a very popular yet not-quite-standard variant.
Fluff, from Merriam-Webster online:
Those who are familiar with the porn industry will probably know other slang uses for this verb as well. The main idea with all three verbs is to increase volume—either through incorporating air, or using hairspray or mousse. Or, in some cases, increasing the blood flow through various vessels.
None of which has a lot to do with homosexuality (depending, I guess, on who is doing the fluffing/poofing).
For the record, I think Edwards is bringing up some interesting points in his campaign, at the same time I wouldn’t vote for him. And I don’t pick my Presidents based on how extensive their grooming routines are (unless I honestly think they’d stop to mess with their hair during a nuclear crisis; I certainly don’t see Edwards that way).
What none of you poofters (or Gigi) thought of, evidently, is the possibility of a spelling error in Ms Noonan’s piece. A few pages later in my American Heritage Dictionary we find:
pouf: (n) 1. A woman’s hairstyle popular in the 19th century, characterized by high rolled puffs. 2. A part of a dress or other garment gathered into a puff. (Fr)
So, Ms Noonan’s piece should have said he was poufing his hair, not poofing it. This does not in anyway make Gleen correct.
I dunno. Pouf just seems gayer.
Let’s face it: Edwards sets off gaydars everywhere. Ellers ought to be coaxing John-John down to Copacabana for a little troca-troca, as the locals call it.
Strangely and eerily, the word “glen” is defined as a small, secluded valley. If we consult our Thesaurus, we find that “gorge” is a synonym for “glen”. The definition #11 for “gorge” is “to swallow greedily”.
This Greenwald guy’s parents are goddamned soothsayers!
I do believe that in the short history of the blogosphere, this thread has to be among the funniest ever written. Someone should poof, I mean post, a note to Gleen thanking him for the inspiration. God, if there were just a few more of his kind around, the Hollywood writers strike could go on forever with no one missing the “professional” writers.
My curiosity got the best of me, and following Gleen’s link to Ms Noonan’s piece, I discovered the sentence he replaced with ellipses, which of course refutes his contention that her only objection to Edwards is his perceived (or not) gayness:
John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards’s populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere. Also we can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.
What a complete fraud that poofter is!
On another note, am I the only one who heard Hillary this morning telling George Snuffaluphagus (sp) that she was provided with classified material as First Lady? This was right after George reminded her as part of the question that she didn’t have a security clearance. Isn’t that, like, a crime or something??
Someone with a more powerful computer than me needs to find that video before it gets edited out. The look on George’s face after she said it outloud was priceless.
GIS for “poofy hair”
GIS for “poofing hair”
Google search for key phrase poof my hair”
GIS for same phrase, “poof my hair”.
And the poof remark would not have offended the delicate sensibilities of Gleen-highs if Edwards were not a preening, primping, prinking, air-filled hairdo of a man.
Glenn is obviously a faggot – which in this context clearly means a bundle of sticks. Additionally, he is a total fag, which, of course means a cigarette. I think he is definitly gay, and, of course, by this I mean happy. I also like his poofy hair – and by that it is clear I think he is a homo.
this blog I found through your GIS thingies is too fun
Gleen goes POOFT! (or, POOFgate, but that’s…
Dan Collins over at Protein Wisdom’s been grilling Glen Greenwald over his latest nonsensical tripe-attack of Peggy Noonan’s column whereby she laughed much at John Edward’s hairalogue performances…
Jeez, with one wave of his, um, hand, Gleen(s) causes intentionalism to go poof!
Denotation.
Connotation.
Learn it, live it, fuck it.
Born in England, raised in – among other places – England and Ireland, I will say that in those countries, “poof” and “poofter” are both words that are used to describe really effeminate male homosexuals.
I’ve been living in the South (Atlanta, GA) lo these many years, and have become familiar with the term “bouffy”, from the word “bouffant” used to describe a really p(o)uffed up hairstyle. So, this really does have the feel of a made-up controversy.
Though, let’s face it, can you see Edwards going head-to-head with, say, Putin? Or a really tight jar lid? Or a breezy day?
Remember this? http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=politicalhumor&cdn=entertainment&tm=7&f=10&su=p284.9.336.ip_&tt=9&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.noedesign.com/dev/kerryedwards/
Jeez, the more I think about it, the more I think his Presidency would be Jimmy Carter II.
Let’s get back to some original source material. No matter how you take Peggy Noonan, she’s probably right.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AE847UXu3Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWVTD56EmyM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zncj-sjw2MQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE-8csu7-bk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYmm1hzQs48&feature=related
“He really isn’t that good at the lawyer-thing, is he?
“You could check with Matt Hale about that, mikey. I believe you can write him c/o ADMAX Florence”
Pablo, I realy don’t know what that is, but it seems to me that if he was that good at the lawyer-thing (not that I am, by the way) he wouldn’t have thrown it all over for something decidely non-law related. He throws a lot of words around, but doesn’t really say anything, and in that profession that earns you the ire of the law clerks (who have to read all of that piffle) and the judges (who have to read the summary of the piffle, and then the piffle). An appeals court panel would rip his ‘poof’ argument to shreds and tell him to move on. Only, he doesn’t have another argument to move on to.
The law is a profession built entirely on words, so it isn’t unusual when lawyers show little favor to such a strained argument as many have seen (and tried) the same before.
Mikey, here’s what it is. It’s not a good thing if you’re there. You could be stuck between The Blind Sheik and Ted Kaczynski.
The whole thing reminds me of that Monty Python sketch about Biggles. the clueless RAF ace, (You find it on Youtube)who is talking around the fact that his friend ‘Alfie’ a
flaming cage au faux performance by Terry Gilliam is a poof. Edwards isn’t gay, but he’s
as self absorbed as a ’50 matinee idol and as consequential as the leaf that opens the
Forrest Gump film. He’s also a tendentious hypocrite
So what does Gleen(s) think of the Seinfeld’s “The Pouffy Shirt” episode?
Here, happyfeet:
http://home.pacbell.net/bettychu/verissa.jpg
A poofy bunny.
Wow. I would like to have a farm-but-not-really where big bunnies gambol about but I think the poofy ones are a lot of work cause that takes product I bet. And also I’ve always wanted to have peacocks even though sometimes they get stuck in the trees and you have to help them.
Ah, thank you Pablo.
Watched “The Incredibles” last night with the kids. Time to start the conspiracy wheels going…designer Edna refers to supermodels with “poofy lips”… yeah, we all know what Disney and Pixar really meant…
So what Noonan really meant, is if you comb your hair, you’re gaying it up? Mmmmkay…
#63
Hah. Just if you spend more than a minute combing it. Real guys. Guys with serious stuff to do, don’t spend a lot of time on their hair. Unless it’s a comb over.
Hmm… perhaps Gleen would care to check out the OED. Under “pouf” we see (note that the spelling varies, “poof” and “pouff” are also used). Emphasis mine.
pouf, v.
trans. With up or out. To plump up or fluff; to cause to increase in size or volume. Also intr.: to balloon; (of a garment) to stand away from the body.
1947 N.Y. Times 14 Jan. 31/7 Longer suit jackets will be pouffed out below the waistline. 1953 Holland (Mich.) Evening Sentinel 16 May 3/2 The fitted bodice is fashioned with a wide neckline with drop shoulders and full circle sleeves, gathered and ‘poofed’ up. 1978 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Jrnl. 5 June 11/2 He used a hot-air blower to sort of poof it out from his scalp… When he had the hair poofed out to his satisfaction, he began..raking it into its proper place. 2001 J. WOLCOTT Catsitters iv. 28, I had to wear an ascot that poofed up when I sat down.
pouf, n.
1. (a) A kind of elaborate female headdress fashionable in the late 18th cent. (now hist.) (b) A high roll or pad of hair worn by women.
1788 Times 29 Nov. 4/1 The Head Dress is a pouf of blue crape, with long lappets. 1817 M. EDGEWORTH Harrington xiii. 316 [Describing the mode of hair-dressing c 1780] At the top of the mount of hair and horsehair..there was sometimes a fly-cap, or a wing cap, or a pouf. 1893 G. HILL Hist. Eng. Dress II. 231 In 1825 the hair was arranged in high poufs drawn to the left side. 1905 Westm. Gaz. 9 Mar. 8/2 It must mean the elevation by pouf and curl and twist and twirl of the coiffure. 1987 Hairdo Ideas 12 July, This look combines a sleek, tight french twist in back with a pouff of curl moving from the crown right down past the eyes. 1998 S. E. ROESSLER Out of Shadows ii. 57 It was decided that the headgear would be a pouf of white net.
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