Underly couth

Asinine.

You don't see that word in the Plain Dealer a whole lot. I had to look it up to see if they left out an 's', but the paper got it right. Stupid, obstinate; relating to or resembling an ass.

Asinine.

A federal judge used it to describe Mark Fleisher's research that finds rape and sexual assault in prisons to be rare. Judge Walton says his 30 years in the criminal justice system tell him the anthropologist's position is...

Asinine.

Refreshing, in a way, the blunt talk. Reminds me of Paul Hackett, seeking nomination for the US Senate:

The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics (who) aren't that different than Osama bin Ladin.

Oops -- Bob Bennett, speaking for the GOP, demands Hackett's apology. Nope, says Hackett, pointing at Pat Robertson to illustrate his point.

Asinine.

I remind me of some boys who used to eat macaroni at my kitchen table. Once they got hold of a wormy word, they squeezed it like a wet noodle in a small fist, just to see what it would do. The outcome was always the same: it was fun, but the noodle lost its integrity in about a millisecond.

That's the downside of the hyperbolic jab. It grabs your attention but lowers your expectation of reasonable discourse. Guess who said this:

This is asinine! A Cesar Chavez Day in California? Wasn't he convicted of a crime?

If you guessed Rush Limbaugh (er, before the drug bust), the quintessential noodle squisher, you'd be right. Oddly enough, a number of bloggers also use the word to describe their favorite conservative pundit.

Asinine.

The poets take a different tack, distilling a universe into few words. Words with a taste for eloquence. Words that consider the consequences of their utterance. Words that sense a listener's wariness of generality. Words that savour truth more than victory. Words that populate the dictionary, and the world, with meaning.