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Wankers and the Wall Street Journal

Jack Shafer
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2000, at 5:59 PM ET

On the op-ed page of today's Wall Street Journal, "Business World" columnist Holman W. Jenkins Jr. explains the biggest challenge facing DaimlerChrysler CEO Jurgen Schrempp:

[Schrempp will] have to convince himself that his teutonic wankers [emphasis added] can match the former Chrysler team for guessing where American consumer tastes were headed and risking the capital to design cars the public didn't yet know it wanted.



Teutonic wankers? As in German masturbators? Or did Jenkins commit an unfortunate typo of the word "Wankel," as in the ill-fated rotary engine of German design?

Via e-mail, Jenkins confides that the sort of wanker he was referring is:

A person who engages in unproductive and ineffectual activity--see any Chrysler person's complaint about the Germans and their long indecisive meetings, followed by long indecisive meals, followed by long indecisive memos. ... It comes to my attention that this definition was derived from a prior meaning, i.e. "one who masturbates." Normally we at the Journal don't use that word or any of its synonyms. All I can say is the derivation simply escaped my mind until I was reminded (repeatedly) today.



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Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.
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Reader Comments from The Fray:


When I read the passage, I thought it must have been a typo on "wonkers," signifying deep-think types with a lack of street smarts.

--Van Wallach

(To reply, click here.)


Sex and the single wonker? Perhaps a great deal of the abstract schematizing that goes on in public policy journals really is nothing but a form of masturbation. It is of course most closely associated with Al Gore.

--Oliver O. Ololiuqui

(To reply click here.)


I have to confess that I too stopped at Holman Jenkins' colorful phrase. But Jenkins isn't exactly known for pulling his punches and the remark is in line with his sharp-tongued commentary. That he did it by accident shouldn't be held against him.

--GI Barto

(To reply, click here.)

(12/6)

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