August 6, 2006
Freedom Fries III Posted by John Steele Gordon at 11:45 AM EST “To french” (properly uncapitalized, in my view, but often capitalized anyway) means to cut into long thin strips before cooking. So the term “french fries” merely refers to the shape of the potato pieces, not the country of origin. This, of course, makes changing the name to “freedom fries,” even sillier. But if it were against the law for Congressmen to be silly, we would still be waiting for enough of them to get out of jail to constitute a quorum? One inexplicably named food item is the English muffin, which is neither English nor a muffin. It is instead wholly American and a griddle cake. As for “Japping” someone, I have never heard that term, but in school in the late fifties and early sixties, an unannounced test was always, by masters and students alike, called a “Jap quiz,” an academic sneak attack. Whether that had any currency beyond the hallowed halls of Millbrook School, I know not. Speaking of the silly hysteria that led to such things as sauerkraut being rebranded “liberty cabbage,” I once saw a page from an encyclopedia of World War I vintage that had thumbnail illustrations of what it termed “The Great Composers.” There were maybe 50 pictures on the page and not a single one of those depicted was German. No Bach, no Mozart, no Beethoven, no Schubert, no Brahms, etc., etc. Of course, if you exclude Germans from the pantheon of great composers you are forced to elevate some very obscure Italians to it. I had never heard of at least half of the “great composers.”
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