Word for the day: Flack

[SEE UPDATE BELOW. SYKES STILL DOESN'T GET IT.]

Dear Dr. Xoff:

I've noticed that some radio talk show types have trouble when they have to write down the words they say on the air. For example, there's this guy on WTMJ who likes to call people "flacks" when he disagrees with them.

A flack, as I understand it, is like a press agent for someone, like when Charlie Sykes was a flack for Milwaukee County Executive Dave Schulz. He was a paid flack then. Now he flacks for County Executive Scott Walker and other Republicans, but that's either volunteer or in-kind, I think.

But when he writes about you on his blog, he says you are a "flak" for Doyle and Norquist.

What is that about? Isn't flak anti-aircraft fire? Have you been trying to shoot those guys down or something?

Please help. I am

Confused in Cudahy

---

Dear Confused:

That makes two of us.

Dr. X

---

UPDATE: Sykes still gets it wrong. He writes:

SOMEBODY OUGHT TO LOOK AT THAT THIN SKIN, DR. XOFF

How bad is it? Xoff has started talking to himself. Worse, he's answering back.

Dr. Xoff wonders about my use of the word "flak" to describe him. He is apparently confusing the word "hack," (an understandable mistake in this context), in thinking that I mean to call Xoff a "flack."

Dr. Xoff has apparently never heard of Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe. Xoff should be flattered, since he's one of the top flak-catchers around (you do remember your stint with John Norquist circa 2000, surely?)

Thus the term "flak." Glad to be able to clear that up

---

So a Sykes' Google search turned up Tom Wolfe. A flak-catcher is someone who catches flak. Flak -- the incoming fire -- is what the person catches. And a flak jacket is what you wear to protect yourself from shrapnel.

So call me a flak catcher, call me a flak jacket, call me a flapjack, call me a flack.

But don't call me an anti-aircraft gun or shell. That's a flak.

(I'm sure Sykes will find a source that says you can use flack and flak interchangeably. But there is a difference. Someone who relies on language for a living ought to know it.)

Maybe we should ask Bill Safire to referee. When he retired from the New York Times, he said:
... "I was looked at [by some Times staffers] as a Nixon flack when I came to the paper..."