*** Supreme Courtship, Christopher Buckely, 2008
Still on the Buckley kick. This was a quick read, very enjoyable. Buckley is very literate and articulate. He has an extensive vocabulary and can spout Latin and French and whatnot with the best of them. But occasionally he steps outside his depth. In this book it was cattywampus that got him. Evidently he missed the notation in the dictionary indicating it is an adjective. He used it as a noun 3 or 4 times, saying, "I'm a cattywampus" instead of "I'm cattywampus." Amusing.
In Thank You For Smoking, his gaffe was having a right-wing, conservative evangelical describe something as a mortal sin. Unlike the Catholic and Orthodox churches, evangelicals don't have an official heirarchical taxonomy for sin. Officially, all sins are equal. Unofficially, some (abortion, homosexuality) are much worse than others (lying, gluttony, greed).
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