{"id":1213,"date":"2009-03-08T07:21:48","date_gmt":"2009-03-08T12:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2009-03-08T10:50:40","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T15:50:40","slug":"a-nation-of-limbaugh-enablers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=1213","title":{"rendered":"A nation of Limbaugh enablers?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago, Gail Collins asked (\"Just Steele Yourselves<\/a>\", NYT 3\/6\/2009):<\/p>\n

So is Steele the de facto leader of the Republican Party? Anybody who announces \u201cI\u2019m the de facto leader\u201d probably isn\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then who is? Rush Limbaugh? He sure is enjoying the attention. \u201cThe administration is enabling me,\u201d he told Politico. Honestly, \u201cenabling\u201d is not the perfect choice of words for a guy with Rush\u2019s background. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Collins' source for the Rush Limbaugh quote is Jonathan Martin, \"Rush Job: Inside Dems' Limbaugh Plan<\/a>\", 3\/4\/2009:<\/p>\n

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The administration is enabling me,\u201d he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. \u201cThey are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence.<\/span><\/p>\n

I agree that enabling<\/em><\/strong> is an odd word for El Rushbo to choose, given his well-publicized struggles with drug addiction. The new negative sense of enable<\/strong><\/em> and its derivatives has so nearly overwhelmed the older positive or neutral meanings, at least in the construction he used,\u00a0 that Ms. Collins doesn't even need to remind her readers about it.
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\nWilliam Safire wrote about this development last year (\"Empowering Out, Enabling In<\/a>\", 6\/21\/2008):<\/p>\n

Especially in its noun form, enabler, this word has made a quantum jump from hero to villain. […]<\/span><\/p>\n

Some people still use the word in its positive sense […] But many are substituting facilitator for that positive sense of \"helper\" and are using enabler to mean \"one who by ignoring, appeasing or condoning makes possible the continuance of wrongdoing.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This sense has its origin in the group therapy that is now called the recovery movement. Bill Pittman of Alcoholics Anonymous, co-author of the 1989 \"AA, The Way It Began,\" says that its use of \"the word enabling first appeared in Al-Anon literature in the early 60's.\" […] A 1965 book reads: \"There are many occasions when we all engage in enabling destructive or inappropriate behavior in other people.. . .Most instances are not so obvious or dramatic as the enabling that may have gone on with the alcoholic.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Wendy Kaminer, author of \"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional,\" defines enabler as \"someone who makes it easier for another to pursue an addiction, one complicit in bad behavior — like the wife of an alcoholic helping him hide the bottles from the kids.\" She says: \"The word enable can be contrasted with the word empower. You empower a person to do something good, and you enable someone to do something bad.\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Though a lexicographer would disagree (a dictator can be empowered to invade a neighbor and a surgeon enabled to save a life), usagists understand that latest connotation.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Usagists\"?<\/p>\n

William Safire sometimes makes it hard on those of us who defend him<\/a>. \u00a0His idea here seems to be that lexicographers are not allowed to document the development of connotational meanings, either directly or (as is probably appropriate in this case) by defining new senses. And since lexicographers are insensitive to the facts of usage, there's a different job category, called \"usagists\", for the people like him who look after this aspect of things.<\/p>\n

Not for the first time, I'm wondering whether Mr. Safire might have been swapped with his counterpart from an alternative possible world. But there's more plausible (though not simpler) explanation for his periodic displays of deadpan twilight-zone discourse. When this sort of weirdness strikes, it's usually because he's trying to step diplomatically around a somewhat embarrassing point.<\/p>\n

In the case under discussion, he's reached a place in his column where the logical thing for him to do would be to tell us what the dictionaries say. But, I conjecture, he looked, and found that they don't get it. Neither the OED, nor the American Heritage Dictionary, nor Encarta, gives us the meaning for enable<\/strong><\/em> (and enabler<\/strong><\/em>) that he's talking about. Here's the AHD's entry for enable and enabler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: en\u00b7a\u00b7bled<\/strong>, en\u00b7a\u00b7bling<\/strong>, en\u00b7a\u00b7bles<\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1a.<\/strong> To supply with the means, knowledge, or opportunity; make able: a hole in the fence that enabled us to watch; techniques that enable surgeons to open and repair the heart.<\/em> b.<\/strong> To make feasible or possible: funds that will enable construction of new schools.<\/em> 2.<\/strong> To give legal power, capacity, or sanction to: a law enabling the new federal agency.<\/em>3.<\/strong> To make operational; activate: enabled the computer's modem; enable a nuclear warhead.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

OTHER FORMS: en\u00b7a'bler<\/strong> \u2014NOUN<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here's Encarta<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. provide somebody with means: to provide somebody with the resources, authority, or opportunity to do something<\/span><\/p>\n

2. make something possible: to make something possible or feasible<\/span><\/p>\n

enabling legislation<\/span><\/p>\n

3. give somebody or something legal authority: to confer legal power or authority on somebody or something<\/span><\/p>\n

4. cause something to start to operate: to make a piece of equipment or computer system functional<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n