Is the singular “troop” depersonalizing?

Dan Kennedy, my favorite media critic, posted this observation about President Bush using “troop” as a singular form of “troops” on his blog.

Linguist John McWhorter, in a commentary for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” March 27:

One cannot refer to a single soldier as a troop. This means that calling 20,000 soldiers “20,000 troops” depersonalizes the soldiers as individuals, and makes a massive number of living, breathing individuals sound like some kind of mass or substance, like water or Jell-O, or some kind of freight.

President Bush, March 29:

We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we’ve got a troop in harm’s way, we expect that troop to be fully funded.

I disagree with McWhorter’s assertion that the singular troop “depersonalizes” soldiers. If it does, doesn’t using “soldier” or “trooper” or referring to any person by a job title depersonalize him or her as well?

Furthermore, with all of President Bush’s misspeaks, I’m not sure this one is all that significant.

Speaking the English

This afternoon I went to the post office to mail The Columbia Poetry Review, a Moleskine notebook (I love mine), and a book about selling poems to my friend in Iraq. I’d packaged them in an Amazon.com box I had lying around my apartment. I’d crossed off the company’s name on the sides of the box, but by the time I got to the post office the ink had dried and Amazon.com was visible.

When the woman behind the counter saw it, she told me that I needed to be more thorough next time. The words on the package could confuse a foreigner working in the Army mail room because “they don’t speak the English that good.”

An editor-cum-soldier in a hospital basement in Baghdad

SPC Sean Blue went to college with me at Wake Forest University—we worked together at the school paper, the Old Gold & Black (he was the sports editor). Unfortunately when Sean graduated (three years after I did), the job market wasn’t good and he enlisted in the Army.

A few weeks ago he was in Kuwait on his way back to the United States after spending 50 weeks in Iraq when President George W. Bush signed an executive order indefinitely extending his deployment. Now he is in Baghdad, living in the basement of a hospital, and the mess hall is running low on food.

His blog has some interesting insight on the situation in Iraq.

The new Backstreets, with my article in it, is out now

The spring/summer 2006 issue of Backstreets, with my aforementioned article on military themes in Bruce Springsteen’s show on Veterans Day in Norfolk, VA, was released this week. Titled “A long, long way from home: Trust, faith, and fear on Veterans Day in Norfolk,” the article is on page 78.

It’s interesting being on the writing side of a publication—as of late I’ve mostly been editing. If the editors made any changes to my article, I didn’t notice them. And I’m happy with the title (magazine editors, not the writer, pick the title).

My only concern with the layout is that the colored background, which looks great, might make photocopied versions hard to read. And I’ll need copies to send as clips with future queries to magazines.

If you’re interested in picking up the issue, your best bet is ordering it from Backstreets’ website. Some Tower Records, Borders, and Barnes & Nobles carry it as well.

Backstreets to publish an article I wrote

I’ll have an article in the upcoming edition of Backstreets, a magazine “that focuses on Bruce Springsteen and related Jersey Shore artists.” MTV has called the magazine “the standard to which all others are compared.”

The article won’t appear online (so you’ll have to buy a copy if you want to read it), but here’s a tease:

I’ve often driven from my home in Washington, DC, to my younger brother’s place in Virginia Beach. This time I stopped 10 miles short. It was Veterans Day and, whether by design or not, Bruce Springsteen was playing in Norfolk, VA, home of the world’s largest naval station. Normally my brother, the first person in my house growing up to own a Springsteen recording, would have sat next to me at the concert. Only he’s an F-14 pilot deployed in the Persian Gulf.

For me and the many other members of Navy families in the Constant Convocation Center, Springsteen’s setlist meant a lot of the show was spent thinking about the person who should have been there with us.

And yeah, I feel pretentious quoting myself.