The Mueller Report - Words and Attitudes

One reason I seldom venture into straight up politics is that there seems little point to doing so.  Most people have pre-conceived notions and simply jam the new information into their established framework.  Has anyone ever really, in the history of the Internet, read something and said "By George I shall now change my entire world view based on this"?

One way we shoehorn new information into our non objective brains is by the words that we use.  The recently released Mueller Report is a fine example.  It has not changed anyone's mind.  My more Progressive friends point out that it showed Donald Trump to be a petty vulgar man who is in many ways a poor choice for Leader of the Free World.  My Conservative friends point out that it says he had nothing to do with Russian Electoral Shenanigans, and that even his less brilliant moments sound like the kinds of things that a petty vulgar man would say when he is in High Dudgeon over what he thinks to be an unfair Inquisition.

Perhaps the Mueller Report in the end is less about Pronouncements than about Pronunciation!  Allow me to explain.

When I see the name Mueller, I pronounce it in the German fashion.  "MULE-er".  It fits his photo from one thing, I mean look at him....don't you see stubborn and hard working?  Mueller is the German word for miller, somebody who grinds stuff for a living.  The saying "The Wheels of Justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine" would seem a fitting description of two years of sleuthing and issuance of subpoena.

But recently I have heard the name of the Special Counsel generally pronounced as MULL-er.  Hey, it is his name and if that is how he wants it said, fine.  It is in its primary meaning just another variant anyway.  To mull something is to grind it finely.  This use survives to us mainly in "mulled wine", a villainous concoction of spices crushed up and used to ruin red vino for festive purposes.  Mill and mull both come from the Latin molere which means "to grind".

But the secondary meanings of mull are the interesting ones.  It means to ponder, or to turn over in one's mind.  It has some interesting 19th century connotations as well, in the 1860's and 70's it meant "to work steadily without accomplishing much", or to "botch or muff".  While pondering is of course a good thing some of the undertones of ineffectual and/or inaction have persisted.

But we shan't give the man a "mulligan".  This term means to cut somebody a bit of slack whether they deserve it or not.  Supposedly this originates from the 1940's when a man of that surname was routinely given an "extra shot after a poor stroke" on the St. Lambert Country Club course.  It seems he earned it by being the foursome's regular driver over the rough roads leading to the course.

Doubtless Robert Mueller has been driving a very rough road but nobody on either side of the partisan aisles seems to be giving him any such leeway.