CNN reporter Jack Cafferty has a crush on Michelle Obama.
Me too.
Not an art crush (where I wish passionately to work with some amazing actor or musician or artist or writer, or to witness their process up close). Not a mad-sex crush (I’m sure I don’t have to explain that kind to you). It’s a friend-crush — I think Michelle Obama would be totally cool to hang out with. And definitely a First Lady-crush. I have never had a FL that I could look up to in this way. Not even Hillary, although I admire her extremely, did such a fantastic job of carving out her own distinctive space so quickly. Maybe it’s because I have always seen the Clintons as a political team, and I see the Obamas as a married couple both in highly influential political roles.
I do know that Michelle Obama is as much of a role model as her husband, and that she’s going to influence a lot of young (and not-so-young) lives by being smart, savvy, energetic, empathetic, engaged with people around her. By being a strong woman whose First Lady leadership puts a human face on her husband’s presidency.
And she has great biceps. Maybe I have a gym-crush…
Whatever it is, I think she’s fantastic, and she’s on my party list for sure. The President can come too (grin).
I saw that article too, and laughed and laughed. She is admirable. Imagine Nicola coming home and sayin, “I was thinking of running for president of….”
I too admire Michelle. It’s the first time anyone in the public eye ever said, “I’m a mom first,” and I believed her.
Can’t disagree about “our” First Lady.
However, I simply hate the word “empathetic”. It’s a needless and useless form of “empathic”. Empathic fits in every usage necessary. Somehow ithe beautiful word got confused and then fused with “pathetic”. It’s only come into use in the last 15 years or so – not sure why. Lazy, I guess.
*writer hangs head in shame, swears never to use evil word again*
🙂
Well, we all have our linguistic bugbears. But “empathetic”, according to Webster’s, goes back to 1932, which is a bit more than “the last 15 years or so.” For me (a fairly well-read 58-year-old), “empathetic” feels primary and “empathic” feels secondary, like a word Andre Norton would have used as a relative of “telepathic.” I don’t feel “pathetic” in “empathetic” either. But that’s subjective; what is not subjective is that the word has been around awhile. Go ahead and use it, Kelley (he said empathetically).
P.S. Also according to Webster, “empathic” goes back to 1909. So it’s a centenarian! But not a whole lot older than “empathetic.”
Well, “pathos” is the root of both the first syllable of “pathetic” and the second syllable of “empathetic”/”empathic,” and the grammatical functions of the words are similar, so it might be more logical to go with “-etic” for both, if a purely logical language were the goal.
But “empathic” *is* much, much prettier.
“Pathic,” though, most commonly means “catamite.” Language… *rolls eyes*
Oh, and Duncan, the blog entry you linked to reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HcbOMqvK2M
I looked this up the first time Robin mentioned it just out of curiousity. The words have different origins
From the OAD:
empathy |ˈempəθē|
noun
the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
DERIVATIVES
empathetic |ˌempəˈθetik| adjective
empathetically |ˌempəˈθetik(ə)lē| adverb
empathic |emˈpaθik| adjective
empathically |emˈpaθik(ə)lē| adverb
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from Greek empatheia (from em- ‘in’ + pathos ‘feeling’ ) translating German Einfühlung.
pathetic |pəˈθetik|
adjective
1 arousing pity, esp. through vulnerability or sadness : she looked so pathetic that I bent down to comfort her. See note at moving .
• informal miserably inadequate : his test scores in Chemistry were pathetic.
2 archaic relating to the emotions.
DERIVATIVES
pathetically |-(ə)lē| adverb
ORIGIN late 16th cent.(in the sense [affecting the emotions] ): via late Latin from Greek pathētikos ‘sensitive,’ based on pathos ‘suffering.’
And I think Michelle Obama is great too.
Different histories, but your citations also indicate they have common Greek origins in pathos. History is inherently messy, so my argument was based on the not entirely sane assumption that the most logical and intuitive language would bypass as much history as possible. Of course, the concept of a “logical language” is a silly notion, so I’d like “empathic” to win out simply because it sounds cooler.
(My first sentence there assumes that the difference between “feeling” and “suffering” in your quotes is contextual, an assumption that dictionary.com seems to back up.)
@ Adrian: I’m with you, “empathic” sounds cooler to me too. But “empathetic” is what I grew up with in the South, and so it feels better to say — the extra syllable and the difference in stress literally makes it feel better coming out of my mouth.
What will doubtless happen now is that I’ll begin using both until I figure out where I want to land. We’ll see….
I appreciate the empathy you’ve all shown toward my silliy idiosyncracy!! I never heard the word “empathetic” until I was living in Minnesota, well out of graduate school. I looked it up in virtually every dictionary aside form the OED and could not (at the time) find it!! To my ear (and mouth) empathic feels so much more comforting . . . Empathy is one of my favorite concepts to dwell on . . . like love, there can never be enough, nor can it ever run out. It is a word I use and talk about with all of the children I know. t