By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
I am not in any real mood to defend Ted Cruz, who has
disgraced himself recently, and whose reasons for opposing the conviction of
former President Trump are perhaps the most transparently malleable of anyone
serving in the Senate, but facts are facts, irrespective of to whom they
attach, and I am therefore obliged to point out that the journalists are at it
again:
Only in the mainstream press does one encounter this
particular combination of condescension and ignorance. Cruz is right. The
phrase “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” comes from Act 5 of
Macbeth, in the famous “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow” soliloquy:
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for
such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and
to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day
to day,
To the last syllable of recorded
time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life is but a walking shadow, a
poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon
the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a
tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury
Signifying nothing.
Faulkner did indeed use the term. But he took it from
Shakespeare — as, for that matter, did the punk band Youth Brigade. If one is
going to dunk, one needs at least to know where the hoop is.
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