Sanna Marin and the rise of fake controversy
With an honourable exception for the Beastie Boys, I can’t stand the use of ‘party’ as a verb. It immediately reminds me of ‘Party, party, party, oikies!’ – the war cry of the drunken potbellied Afrikaaners who once roared in their bakkiesonto our Namibian campsite at about 2 a.m. and proceeded to be, well, Boerish. It’s a usage that smacks of creepy men in movies inviting young women into their cars, or footballers in search of questionably consensual sex. It has passed from a frat-boy Americanism into a tabloid euphemism for illegal drug use and sexual sleaze without ever quite passing through a phase of meaning, actually, having a party.
