So-and-so just shut down someone about such and such

shutdown Image by vlastas

Published April 7, 2016

Someone somewhere is shutting down someone about something. You can be sure of that. Another thing you can be sure of is that it will be worthy of a headline, and sharing on social media. Someone will soon have a full report. Or, more likely, an attention-grabbing headline atop five pithy paragraphs atop a link leading to the something that someone said — in response to something someone else said — shutting down that person, or that person’s argument, probably for life.

Or, until tomorrow, which holds the promise of new down-shuttings that will probably be so completely shutting, so totally downward shutting, that we’ll be so down with them, we might not remember who got shut down the day before. So you need to pay attention. You don’t want to fall behind on who’s being shut down, and by whom.

As a student of words and how we use them, I’m fascinated by phrasings that fall into heavy rotation in everyday language, especially those that become irresistible to headline writers. One such construction inspired the headline of this very blog post. As I understand it, the dynamic often goes something like this:

  1. Someone says something, typically in an interview, that someone finds offensive, insensitive, tone deaf, in poor taste, or all of the above. Or just plain wrong.
  2. The comment, perhaps 30 seconds from a 60-minute interview, gets picked up and reported — maybe in context, maybe not — and takes on a life of its own, becoming the only thing anyone will ever remember from the interview.
  3. Someone who reads or hears the comment responds with a scathing rebuke, a sharp rebuttal, a heartfelt counterpoint informed by life experience, a retort that is shared on Twitter or Facebook or any of a number of social media outlets.
  4. A blogger with a keen eye for the latest social-media smack-down will report said retort, announcing it to the world with a headline that makes it clear that the response just “shut down” the person who made the original statement.

This doesn’t always start with an interview. Sometimes it starts with a piece of writing. Even given the chance to edit one’s words before sending them out into the world, we say things that cause a stir. But it does seem that interviews are fertile ground for these things, as they often catch the subject off guard, leading to off-the-cuff remarks that can range from merely cringe-worthy to downright toxic.

My intention here is not to invalidate anyone’s responses. As someone whose professional life has required daily attention to word choice in headlines, stories and comments, I’m more curious about the proliferation of headlines alluding to one person shutting down another — or, at least, the argument or position of another. They’re everywhere, and they cover a wide swath of subject matter and sources, as a quick search of the past few weeks shows:

Obama Just Shut Down Ted Cruz’s Terrible Ideas To Combat ISIS | ThinkProgress

An Iowa Teenager Just Shut Down Chuck Grassley’s Supreme Court Argument

Justice Ginsburg Just Shut Down One Of America’s Most Notorious White Rights Activists | ThinkProgress

The Supreme Court just shut down the demographic equivalent of gerrymandering – Vox

Britney Spears Just Shut Down Her Critics With One Jaw-Dropping Photo | The Daily Caller

You get the idea. People and ideas are getting shut down in a variety of ways and, by golly, quite often.

But is there a defining characteristic of a shutdown? Does a response simply need someone to pick it up and become its champion, reporting it to the world as an act of shutting someone down, for it to be an act of shutting someone down? Is it a bit like the Dozens, in that we know it’s over because the other person offered no response to the rebuttal? Is crowd response a factor? Does the collective audience weigh in, akin to voting on “American Idol”? Is there a ruling, not necessarily by the Supreme Court, but in the court of public opinion?

What are the qualities of a statement that shuts down someone else that give it a status beyond that of a blistering rebuttal, a disarming response, a deflating comeback? For me, it’s a head-scratcher. Does the other person have to shut up to have been shut down? And when can a shut-down person boot back up, if ever?

Increasingly, when I see a headline that tells me so-and-so just shut down somebody about something, it strikes me as click-bait-y, and increasingly, I don’t take the bait. To be honest, it has less to do with the choice of the term “shut down” than it does with fatigue about the news cycle being overrun with the back and forth of he said, she said, they said, we said, they replied, and so on. Except, you know, when it goes well with popcorn.

It’s probably wrong to expect an objective standard to be set for a bona fide, indisputable act of shutting down someone else. You probably know it when you see it. Still, it’s become used so often as to have become overused, and it’s made its way onto the list of headline devices I’d love to shut down.