Media Watchdog Group Protests Use of "Kerfuffle"

Wall Street Journal Says Word Chosen with Great Care

A media watchdog group mounted roving picket lines across midtown Manhattan during morning rush hour Friday to protest the use of the word "kerfuffle" in a headline in The Wall Street Journal.

Members of the Society to Curb Repugnant and Unctuous Erudition (SCRUE) briefly blocked traffic outside Grand Central Station before police arrived, marched on the sidewalk in front of the Port Authority bus terminal on 8th Avenue and paraded through Penn Station.

The protesters, dressed in bulky Webster's Dictionary costumes, chanted "Ker-fuffle, ker-fuffle, ker-fuffle" in a rhythmic and percussive manner suggesting the sound a steam locomotive might make leaving a train station. At several points they interrupted their chant to sing a few lines from the 1940s pop song "Chattanooga Cho-Cho."

"What can I say? This is another sad and unfortunate example of how Big Media continue to abuse the English language," said Marty Neederhosen, who had to shout from inside his dictionary costume to be heard over the noise of traffic along Eighth Avenue.

"We didn't have an action planned for today, but then I saw the Journal," Neederhosen said. "I couldn't believe my eyes, that they would use such a word. Kerfuffle? The Times, maybe. But Dow Jones? We immediately activated our emergency response team."

Yesterday's editions of The Wall Street Journal used "kerfuffle" in a headline on an editorial page article about the controversy in Washington over someone in the Bush Administration leaking the name of a CIA agent to a newspaper columnist.

"I've just looked up the words "repugnant" and "unctuous" to see what they mean and I don't think "kerfuffle" qualifies," said Verlean Ernst, a Dow Jones Company spokeswoman. "The Wall Street Journal publishes something like one million words each day and I can assure you that we choose each one very carefully. Kerfuffle was chosen with the same care."

While to a New Yorker's ears "kerfuffle" might have a Yiddish ring to it, Michael Quinion, a British lexicographer, said the word probably is of Scottish origin. Quinion said that until the 1960s the word was spelled several ways, including "curfuffle", "carfuffle" and even "gefuffle." The word became more popular, particularly among journalists, in the 1960s and the current spelling emerged.

Mr. Neederhosen said his group wants the Dow Jones Company to program its computers so they will reject "kerfuffle" whenever an editor or reporter uses it.

"It's a cheap device used by headline writers who want to sound erudite but don't have the intelligence to pull it off," he said.

In earlier demonstrations, SCRUE picketed in front of The New York Times offices to protest excessive use of "obdurate", "untoward" and "solipsistic".

Outside Grand Central Station, a group of German tourists waiting to board a bus for Kennedy International Airport appeared baffled as they watched SCRUE's demonstration. "Is this part of an election?" one asked. Attempts to explain the antics of the singing dictionaries were unavailing.

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