The Bully Pulpit:

前最高法院法官、《五位首席大法官：最高法院回憶錄》(Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir)以及最新的《六個修正案：我們如何以及為何必須修改憲法》(Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution)的作者對在芝加哥大學教他詩歌的諾曼·麥克萊恩(Norman Maclean)有感恩之情。

你的床頭柜上現在放着哪些書？

多麗絲·卡恩斯·古德溫(Doris Kearns Goodwin)的《最佳講壇：西奧多·羅斯福，威廉·霍華德·塔夫脫和新聞業的黃金時代》(The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)。

重看「最新通俗美語詞典」

莊信正 　(20080806)


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.....有好多年我總以為「bully pulpit（大好講壇）」 中“bully” 指「唬人」，「仗勢欺人」，經他提醒才發現是望文生義；「詞典」有翔實生動的解說，引了粗豪的美國總統老羅斯福當年學年輕人大叫「Bully！（好極了！ 太棒了！）」。新版增引了2001年9月「紐約時報」專欄作家陶德（Maureen Dowd）的一句話「The problem with the Bush administration is that its bully pulpit is all bully and no pulpit（布希政府的毛病是百分之百強橫，百分之零講道理）。『並指出』此語妙在bully一詞也有『強橫』和『惡霸』之義。」

A bully pulpit is a position sufficiently conspicuous to provide an opportunity to speak out and be listened to.

This term was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to the White House as a "bully pulpit", by which he meant a terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda. Roosevelt famously used the word bully as an adjective meaning "superb" or "wonderful", a more common usage in his time than it is today. (Another expression which survives from this era is "bully for you", synonymous with "good for you".)

Its meaning in this sense is only distantly related to the modern form of "bully", which means "harasser of the weak". The word is related to the Dutch boel, meaning lover, and buhler, meaning a rival for a lady's affection. In English usage around 1700, "bully" came to be similar to "pimp", which gives us the connotation of a ruffian or harasser.^[1]

Doris Kearns Goodwin used the phrase in the title of her 2013 book The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism.