As a practicing wordsmith, I’ve been a subscriber and a fan of Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day (AWAD) for quite a few years; I greet each day’s e-mail eager for an opportunity to enrich my vocabulary and gain etymological insights.

But I’m not nearly as big a fan as I was before Anu Garg started injecting his own politics into the service’s content.  I first noticed that, and wrote about it, back in 2012.  When I wrote that piece, Garg’s political slant was often subtle.  But now, like most of the press working overtime and going full Alinsky for Hillary, subtlety is out the window.

Here’s the first part of the AWAD e-mail that arrived in my inbox on Monday:

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

I usually look for usage examples for words in A.Word.A.Day in newspaper articles. Nowadays, things are a little different -- you open any newspaper and top news stories are about a narcissistic con man running for the president of the United States. It’s impossible to avoid them.

So this week we’ll feature all our usage examples from newspaper stories about him. We’ll include links to the stories -- do read them. Also, we’ll include quotations from the man himself.

[snip]

Here’s a review of a new biography of Hitler. Try this experiment: Replace the word Hitler with Trump and Germany with the US in it and see if you can tell the difference.

Hmmm…it seems to me that when Anu Garg says “top news stories are about a narcissistic con man running for president of the United States,” that same statement could have been made in 2008, or in 2012.

The AWAD e-mail also included this:

USAGE:

“George Simon, a clinical psychologist who conducts seminars on manipulative behavior, says Trump is ‘so classic that I’m archiving video clips of him to use in workshops because there’s no better example’ of narcissism. ...

“When, in the summer of 1999, he stood up to offer remarks at his father’s funeral, Trump spoke mainly about himself. It was the toughest day of his own life, Trump began. He went on to talk about Fred Trump’s greatest achievement: raising a brilliant and renowned son.”

Dan P. McAdams; The Mind of Donald Trump; The Atlantic (Washington, DC); Jun 2016.

In His Own Words:

“I feel like a supermodel. Except like times 10. It’s true. I’m a supermodel. I’m on the cover of these magazines -- I’m on the cover of the biggest magazines.”

-Donald Trump (reference)

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”

-Donald Trump (reference)

So, there’s “no better example” of narcissism than Donald Trump?  By no means am I suggesting that Trump is not narcissistic, but just how does one manage to focus on Trump’s smiling, garden-variety narcissism while ignoring the pathological malignant narcissism (a clinical term, aka “narcissistic sociopathy”) of the current occupant of the White House?  And how can one glibly suggest comparing Trump to Hitler when the mere suggestion of a comparison between Obama and Hitler is so politically incorrect and therefore strictly verboten?

Garg has to go back to 1999 to cite an example of Trump speaking “mainly about himself” at his father's funeral, when just the other day we saw and heard Obama speaking at a memorial for Shimon Peres and making it more about himself.  Obama does this habitually, as I’ve also pointed out before.

A good case can be made for Hillary Clinton’s narcissism as well, but I’m sure that, along with her myriad other failings, will also be ignored in favor of focusing on Trump's foibles.

It’ll be, er, interesting to see how AWAD’s anti-Trump theme carries on through the week.  By the time the piece you’re reading has been published, Tuesday’s edition of AWAD will be in subscribers’ inboxes and available for viewing.  I won’t be a bit surprised to see the smug, too clever by half tone continue; once Lib/Prog/Commie propagandists like Garg show their true colors, they become nothing if not predictable.

I realize that by calling attention to this, I’m actually helping to drive readership to AWAD; I’ll have to take that chance.  And while far be it from me to put words in anyone else’s mouth, perhaps it’s not too much to hope for that some readers will express some backlash at Mr. Garg’s efforts to insinuate his snarky partisanship where it really has no rightful place.

American Thinker has published over 100 pieces by Stu Tarlowe, who started writing for AT at the suggestion of Jack Cashill. A native of NYC who credits his education to his parents and to the NYC Public Schools circa 1954-1966, he now resides where the Kaw meets the Mighty Mo.  His pantheon of heroes and role models includes Barry Farber, Jean Shepherd, Long John Nebel, Aristide Bruant, Cizia Zykë, Col. Jeff Cooper, Rabbi Meir Kahane, and G. Gordon Liddy.