Meditation on Baloney

My Grand-daddy was a gentleman of true Southern tradition and he was not given to profanity but when he was confronted by unsolicited exaggeration or mendacity he would freely employ some fine-tuned and well-aimed exclamation, the meaning and import of which everyone at that time well appreciated. The words he used were common parlance and could be employed at the stable, the barbershop or the living room. There was no need to cover the children’s ears. If ladies were present it was not considered a social disaster or even as bad manners.  If someone expressed a “howler”, he would quickly repudiate it with one of the expressions in his arsenal.

These quaint characterizations are still in parlance though not so common: eyewash, horsefeathers, tommyrot, twaddle, bilgewater, hogwash, poppycock, balderdash and applesauce were all his favorites. The fact that he had so many at the ready perhaps indicates his intrinsic cynicism or it may be a commentary on the general level of discourse. Reading the newspaper today is a classic occasion for these singular outbursts which do nothing to answer the calculus of a well-crafted argument but which offer their user a satisfaction in their explosive discharge. It goes without saying that television reports also offer ample outlet for such steam pressure release.

One can easily look up the derivations of these words and find some exact and some fanciful opinions as to their origins. As for “applesauce” its effect probably stems from its mere ordinariness since it is really a well-loved and universal condiment. On the other hand, “baloney” which was also one of the preferred words in his repertory is a little harder to understand as a pejorative. Is this an anti-immigrant ultra-nationalist word of dismissive power? Is there a hidden message in the use of “baloney”? We know that the meat preparation comes from Bologna in Italy. Was the crushing tide of Italian immigration responsible for the fear and loathing of the people who brought with them this most estimable and portable foodstuff? Was being Italian equated with eating baloney as it was with the Irish eating potatoes, the Scots eating porridge, the Germans eating schnitzel or the French eating frog’s legs? There are worse sins for a people than having a preferred food, like genocide for instance.

Anyhoo, back to baloney. Maybe we can better understand its use from an examination of its ingredients. In Bologna the town there is a traditional sausage called mortadella from which baloney is descended in a transoceanic way. Many of the ingredients are the same (beef or pork) as are some of the spices (black pepper, nutmeg) but the appearance of mortadella has obvious evidence of chunks of pork fat. Here the American government, as a part of its proprietary interest to keep its people safe and healthy, has mandated that the ingredients be ground so fine that nothing discernibly different is recognizable. In this homogenized amalgam of meat, fat and spices there is no way to tell exactly what or where the ingredients come from (what part of the animal that is). The pedigree of the American expression of disapproval “baloney” is thus a pure metaphor for something so apparently free from nutritional value, so common in appearance and so devoid of substance that it must describe the vacuous nature of an observation made by someone who has nothing of consequence to say. And that’s no hooey.

With hugs,     Celeste