There seems to be a global special on Naked Emperors right now. They are everywhere, like a New Year Clearance Sale.
Get your Naked Emperors now… by the brace, by the pound, by the dozen.
Personally, I blame Advertising. Why not? It is ubiquitous and rots the mind.
The plethora of positive messages about product has corrupted the normal channels of curmudgeonly defenestration.
Truth Talking is Trash Talking in a Sound-Bite World of Blinding Gloss.
No longer can we just throw our Naked Emperors out the window and wait for the satisfying splat as they hit the dung heap.
This leads me to ponder an obvious deficiency of language.
Where is the Collective Noun for Naked Emperors?
We have a skein of geese, a coffle of asses, a parliament of baboons and a bellowing of bullfinches. With this many Naked Emperors one must have the proper word…
Enter an obvious Thought Experiment.
Suppose we were to place a number of Naked Emperors in a darkened room behind one-way glass. What would happen?
A whole bunch of Naked Cavorting in the Dark, I would guess.
That whole pirouetting Naked Emperor thing!
There is an old Danish proverb which speaks to this situation:
Necessity teaches the naked woman to spin.
Naked Emperors are no different, only the rate of spin is much higher. Indeed, in a sufficiently dense medium – such as Physical Review Letters – we can often witness Naked Emperors spinning much faster than the phase velocity of light in such a medium. The result is the brilliant blue light known as Eminence Radiation.
This is positively blinding to the General Public. Hence our collective noun:
A Blinding of Naked Emperors.
Your most Scintillating Spinning Eminence… I am Blind before your Nakedness.
A most inspired enhancement to the English language. My first thought was to lend a word from the animal kingdom as in “pride of lions”. After all “pride” seemed quite befitting, but I have to agree that “blinding” is much better. Really captures the essence.
At the risk of reviving deservedly dead 1980’s music, I recall the charting single from Timbuk 3:
“The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”.