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To: Poet who wrote (3329)	11/1/2001 1:58:48 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 51698

Catching up on the Sunday paper, I got to point out William Safire on the "women of cover" thing. Within a week of the terrorist attack, George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington and said, ''Women who cover their heads in this country must feel comfortable going outside their homes.'' In remarks to State Department employees on Oct. 4, President Bush spoke warmly of ''stories of Christian and Jewish women alike helping women of cover, Arab-American women, go shop because they're afraid to leave their home.'' At a televised news conference a week later, he reprised this ecumenical theme: ''In many cities when Christian and Jewish women learned that Muslim women, women of cover, were afraid of going out of their homes alone . . . they went shopping with them . . . an act that shows the world the true nature of America.'' He repeated that phrase, women of cover, calling ''such an outpouring of compassion . . . such a wonderful example.'' The cover is a veil that expresses Muslim piety. The hijab, meaning ''cover, curtain,'' can range from a floral kerchief that leaves the face exposed, to the niqab, abbaya or in Persian, chador, which covers the whole body except the face, to the burka, as worn in Afghanistan, which covers everything. ''To have good hijab'' is a general term meaning ''to be properly covered.'' Some Muslim women believe that the cover need not be worn outside the mosque. The linguistic question: in describing the wearers of the veil, is it women who cover, as the president first used it, or women of cover? Sue Obeidi, at the Muslim Public Affairs Council, uses women who cover, women who wear the scarf and women who wear hijab. She is unfamiliar with women of cover, and I cannot find it on databases. It's possible that the president coined the phrase; if so, it was on the analogy of women of color, a description adopted by many nonwhites. (Though colored people is dated and almost a slur, people of color is not in the least offensive.) The substitution of who with of in the cover category introduces a nice parallel to the woman of color phrase; we'll see if it takes. nytimes.com Seems to be much more of a conscious effort tnan the normal Bushism. Elsewhere in that issue on the wordsmith front, I was moderately amused by this bit: While Sorkin seems to derive a very similar kind of relief from writing hyperarticulate dialogue and from inhaling crack, he keeps his two worlds separate. That is not to say that he never writes about drugs. His teleplays are sprinkled with roach clips and bong pipes, and all the references are slyly appreciative. Five minutes into the ''West Wing'' pilot, a high-priced call girl, whom we will soon come to appreciate for her intelligence and strength of character, greets the day by lighting up a joint and saying: ''It's not like I'm a drug person. I just love pot.'' And in one of the best bits in two years, Bartlet, after accidentally treating his bad back with a Percodan and a Vicodin, meanders back into the Oval Office and informs his assembled staff, ''I've been seriously thinking of getting a dog.'' nytimes.com Although if that was actually one of the best bits in two years, it doesn't entirely inspire me to start watching regular TV again.