美国国家公共电台 NPR White House Adviser Peter Navarro Calls Fictional Alter Ego An 'Inside Joke'

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

A publisher plans to add an advisory¹ to future copies of a book on China after one of the people quoted in the book was revealed to have been made up. The book is not supposed to be fiction. Rather, it's a work about China's rising economic clout². News that some quotes in it are fake is drawing extra scrutiny³ because the author is a top adviser⁴ in the Trump⁵ White House. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE⁶: The book is called "Death By China," and it's co-authored by Peter Navarro, who directs the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. The book came out in 2011 and was turned into a political documentary the following year. The trailer shows a Chinese-made knife plunging⁸ into a red, white and blue outline of the United States, which proceeds to ooze⁹ blood. Navarro's dire⁷ warnings about China echo President Trump's own. Navarro appears regularly on NPR and elsewhere to defend Trump's trade policies. Here he is on Morning Edition just last week.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

PETER NAVARRO: It's intellectual property theft, the killing¹⁰ of Americans with made-in-China fentanyl - I mean, the sins literally¹¹ go on and on.

HORSLEY: In his book, Navarro quotes a man named Ron Vara, saying only the Chinese can turn a leather sofa into an acid bath, a baby crib into a lethal¹² weapon. That and other provocative¹³ quotes caught the attention of a professor in Australia named Tessa Morris-Suzuki, who eventually brought her concerns to Tom Bartlett, a senior writer with The Chronicle of Higher Education.

TOM BARTLETT: She's an Asia scholar and was working on an essay about the rather heated rhetoric¹⁴ of Peter Navarro toward China.

HORSLEY: The professor asked Bartlett to help her figure out, who is Ron Vara? After some digging, they determined¹⁵ there is no such person. Peter Navarro just made him up.

BARTLETT: Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro.

HORSLEY: In an email, Navarro acknowledges that Ron Vara is a whimsical device he adopted for purely¹⁶ entertainment value. The character appears in half a dozen of Navarro's books dating back to 2001. Navarro defends the ruse¹⁷, saying Vara was never used improperly¹⁸ as a source of facts, and he calls it refreshing¹⁹ that somebody finally figured out an inside joke that's been hiding in plain sight for years. But one of Navarro's co-authors, former White House economist²⁰ Glenn Hubbard, says he wasn't in on the joke, and he told Bartlett he was not amused. Bartlett says neither was Professor Morris-Suzuki.

GLENN HUBBARD: As she put it, the joke wears very thin when you get to certain statements about China and the Chinese people that are quite negative. Ron Vara says things that are pretty over-the-top, and it's hard to construe²¹ them necessarily as whimsical in the way we normally use that word.

HORSLEY: Navarro's publisher was also in the dark. A spokesman says the publisher will add a note to future editions alerting readers that Ron Vara is not an actual person. But the episode's not likely to cause Navarro any trouble with his boss, though. Trump famously invented his own fictional²² spokesman, John Barron, in the 1980s. Internet wags have been joking this week perhaps Barron could offer some PR advice to the newly unmasked Ron Vara.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.

1 advisory   

adj.劝告的，忠告的，顾问的，提供咨询

参考例句：

• I have worked in an advisory capacity with many hospitals.我曾在多家医院做过顾问工作。
• He was appointed to the advisory committee last month.他上个月获任命为顾问委员会委员。

2 clout   

n.用手猛击；权力，影响力

参考例句：

• The queen may have privilege but she has no real political clout.女王有特权，但无真正的政治影响力。
• He gave the little boy a clout on the head.他在那小男孩的头部打了一下。

3 scrutiny   

n.详细检查，仔细观察

参考例句：

• His work looks all right,but it will not bear scrutiny.他的工作似乎很好，但是经不起仔细检查。
• Few wives in their forties can weather such a scrutiny.很少年过四十的妻子经得起这么仔细的观察。

4 adviser   

n.劝告者，顾问

参考例句：

• They employed me as an adviser.他们聘请我当顾问。
• Our department has engaged a foreign teacher as phonetic adviser.我们系已经聘请了一位外籍老师作为语音顾问。

5 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

6 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

7 dire   

adj.可怕的，悲惨的，阴惨的，极端的

参考例句：

• There were dire warnings about the dangers of watching too much TV.曾经有人就看电视太多的危害性提出严重警告。
• We were indeed in dire straits.But we pulled through.那时我们的困难真是大极了，但是我们渡过了困难。

8 plunging   

adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• War broke out again, plunging the people into misery and suffering. 战祸复发，生灵涂炭。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• He is plunging into an abyss of despair. 他陷入了绝望的深渊。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 ooze   

n.软泥，渗出物；vi.渗出，泄漏；vt.慢慢渗出，流露

参考例句：

• Soon layer of oceanic ooze began to accumulate above the old hard layer.不久后海洋软泥层开始在老的硬地层上堆积。
• Drip or ooze systems are common for pot watering.滴灌和渗灌系统一般也用于盆栽灌水。

10 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

11 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

12 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

13 provocative   

adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的

参考例句：

• She wore a very provocative dress.她穿了一件非常性感的裙子。
• His provocative words only fueled the argument further.他的挑衅性讲话只能使争论进一步激化。

14 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

15 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

16 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

17 ruse   

n.诡计，计策；诡计

参考例句：

• The children thought of a clever ruse to get their mother to leave the house so they could get ready for her surprise.孩子们想出一个聪明的办法使妈妈离家，以便他们能准备给她一个惊喜。It is now clear that this was a ruse to divide them.现在已清楚这是一个离间他们的诡计。

18 improperly   

不正确地，不适当地

参考例句：

• Of course it was acting improperly. 这样做就是不对嘛！
• He is trying to improperly influence a witness. 他在试图误导证人。

19 refreshing   

adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的

参考例句：

• I find it'so refreshing to work with young people in this department.我发现和这一部门的青年一起工作令人精神振奋。
• The water was cold and wonderfully refreshing.水很涼，特别解乏提神。

20 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

21 construe   

v.翻译，解释

参考例句：

• He had tried to construe a passage from Homer.他曾尝试注释荷马著作的一段文字。
• You can construe what he said in a number of different ways.他的话可以有好几种解释。

22 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。