This entire spectacle was the most bathetic thing I’ve ever seen in his tenure and that’s say something!
March 6, 2026 at 11:21 PM
This entire spectacle was the most bathetic thing I’ve ever seen in his tenure and that’s say something!
this is like if bathetic took a bath in purple prose
June 18, 2025 at 12:44 PM
this is like if bathetic took a bath in purple prose
being a nesting concept it should also be somewhat hard to use, like the word “bathetic”
November 30, 2025 at 5:21 PM
being a nesting concept it should also be somewhat hard to use, like the word “bathetic”
BTW let's appreciate the sheer bathetic comedy of Trump's threats sliding from WE'RE GOING TO BAN ALL CRITICAL SOFTWARE WE WILL BRING YOUR ECONOMY TO A HALT down to WE'LL MAKE OUR OWN COOKING OIL SEE IF WE DON'T.
Don't look now but Trump just freaked out the market again by continuing to escalate the trade war.
October 14, 2025 at 9:11 PM
BTW let's appreciate the sheer bathetic comedy of Trump's threats sliding from WE'RE GOING TO BAN ALL CRITICAL SOFTWARE WE WILL BRING YOUR ECONOMY TO A HALT down to WE'LL MAKE OUR OWN COOKING OIL SEE IF WE DON'T.
"monitoring the developing situation"?
PATHETIC.
Worse,
BATHETIC.
PATHETIC.
Worse,
BATHETIC.
March 11, 2025 at 2:06 AM
"monitoring the developing situation"?
PATHETIC.
Worse,
BATHETIC.
PATHETIC.
Worse,
BATHETIC.
Absolutely - it’s a bathetic collapse predicated on authority, the default Python move
January 10, 2025 at 11:47 AM
Absolutely - it’s a bathetic collapse predicated on authority, the default Python move
it reads like a deliberately bathetic word choice made because a more targeted adjective would probably sideline the tactical debate and invite a pointless definitions argument and look what happened anyway
February 3, 2026 at 2:36 PM
it reads like a deliberately bathetic word choice made because a more targeted adjective would probably sideline the tactical debate and invite a pointless definitions argument and look what happened anyway
Thinking about two of my favourite Wipe-isms. Penny Mordaunt as “Catherine Deneuve if she worked in a big M&S” and Matt Hancock as “your sister’s first boyfriend with a car” and noticing that they both use a sort of “bathetic bounce” to achieve the effect. It’s clever.
January 24, 2026 at 1:20 PM
Thinking about two of my favourite Wipe-isms. Penny Mordaunt as “Catherine Deneuve if she worked in a big M&S” and Matt Hancock as “your sister’s first boyfriend with a car” and noticing that they both use a sort of “bathetic bounce” to achieve the effect. It’s clever.
Not particularly one to defend Netanyahu but am struck by the astoundingly bathetic nature of the fact that no, no, it’s not about him, it’s actually about impressing CatTurd2 and Ian Miles Cheong.
January 11, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Not particularly one to defend Netanyahu but am struck by the astoundingly bathetic nature of the fact that no, no, it’s not about him, it’s actually about impressing CatTurd2 and Ian Miles Cheong.
New-to-me words this year, so far: perspicuity, sensorium, proprioception, bathetic and acheiropoieta.
March 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
New-to-me words this year, so far: perspicuity, sensorium, proprioception, bathetic and acheiropoieta.
Still one of my favourite bits - Britain's bathetic 'Independence Day', 31 January 2020 (after the failure of the campaign to get Big Ben chiming in celebration):
April 12, 2025 at 7:21 AM
Still one of my favourite bits - Britain's bathetic 'Independence Day', 31 January 2020 (after the failure of the campaign to get Big Ben chiming in celebration):
I love the bathetic specificity of the line "eating Spam" in Baby Huey's Hard Times.
January 14, 2025 at 12:44 PM
I love the bathetic specificity of the line "eating Spam" in Baby Huey's Hard Times.
"Hey Ukrainians, why don't you blow up our precious Soyuz clean-room assembly plant with some cruise missiles that you built in your garage" #bathetic #cognitivedissonance #moraledebasement #RussoUkrainianWar
August 18, 2026 at 5:59 AM
"Hey Ukrainians, why don't you blow up our precious Soyuz clean-room assembly plant with some cruise missiles that you built in your garage" #bathetic #cognitivedissonance #moraledebasement #RussoUkrainianWar
Sports team owners are GOP megadonors, so ideologically this should not be surprising, but it sure as hell is disorienting from how bathetic it is.
September 11, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Sports team owners are GOP megadonors, so ideologically this should not be surprising, but it sure as hell is disorienting from how bathetic it is.
Inscribed 2nd hand books are often a source of mystery. This copy of a book full of photos of only bike lanes markings. Has the most potentially loaded/bathetic/poignant inscription
October 2, 2026 at 9:46 AM
Inscribed 2nd hand books are often a source of mystery. This copy of a book full of photos of only bike lanes markings. Has the most potentially loaded/bathetic/poignant inscription
Genuinely find it hard to respond stably to the Epstein stuff. All the little details are so stupid, bathetic, absurd, and even silly that it's difficult to simultaneously hold in mind the dull, obscene enormity of the evil undergirding it all.
November 13, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Genuinely find it hard to respond stably to the Epstein stuff. All the little details are so stupid, bathetic, absurd, and even silly that it's difficult to simultaneously hold in mind the dull, obscene enormity of the evil undergirding it all.
The watermark on the image is the bathetic touch
January 23, 2025 at 5:12 PM
The watermark on the image is the bathetic touch
Got Wordle in one today. Unsatisfying and faintly bathetic.
March 10, 2025 at 7:54 AM
Got Wordle in one today. Unsatisfying and faintly bathetic.
For me, it's the bathetic "God help us" that makes it. God, up in heaven, listening to the billions of desperate prayers of a burning war-torn world, hears "The National Trust has put vegan tampons in the men's toilets" and thinks "Now THIS is a crisis that demands divine intervention"
October 11, 2025 at 10:38 AM
For me, it's the bathetic "God help us" that makes it. God, up in heaven, listening to the billions of desperate prayers of a burning war-torn world, hears "The National Trust has put vegan tampons in the men's toilets" and thinks "Now THIS is a crisis that demands divine intervention"
The sheer, bathetic ignominy of being seen on national television scurrying after Andy Burnham shouting "are you running away already?"
June 19, 2026 at 5:15 PM
The sheer, bathetic ignominy of being seen on national television scurrying after Andy Burnham shouting "are you running away already?"
Bathetic as in the Ba’ath party?
March 6, 2026 at 11:27 PM
Bathetic as in the Ba’ath party?
☑ Disagreeing with other letter-writers
☑ ‘Well actually’-ing on a tangential point
❌ Celebrity namedropping yes – but not from personal acquaintance
☑ Bathetic ending to puncture the self-seriousness
So competent, certainly, but not flawless adherence to the form.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
☑ ‘Well actually’-ing on a tangential point
❌ Celebrity namedropping yes – but not from personal acquaintance
☑ Bathetic ending to puncture the self-seriousness
So competent, certainly, but not flawless adherence to the form.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I've only just come across this terrific LRB letter from a little while back - the platonic ideal of a letter to the London Review of Books, imo.
March 20, 2025 at 11:30 AM
☑ Disagreeing with other letter-writers
☑ ‘Well actually’-ing on a tangential point
❌ Celebrity namedropping yes – but not from personal acquaintance
☑ Bathetic ending to puncture the self-seriousness
So competent, certainly, but not flawless adherence to the form.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
☑ ‘Well actually’-ing on a tangential point
❌ Celebrity namedropping yes – but not from personal acquaintance
☑ Bathetic ending to puncture the self-seriousness
So competent, certainly, but not flawless adherence to the form.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
I know bathetic is a word but my brain read bathetic as meaning both pathetic and bat guano crazy and I think that’s an appropriate read of the situation.
March 6, 2026 at 11:27 PM
I know bathetic is a word but my brain read bathetic as meaning both pathetic and bat guano crazy and I think that’s an appropriate read of the situation.
don't get to use this word enough: bathetic
December 23, 2025 at 6:03 PM
don't get to use this word enough: bathetic