Skutnik

English Lenny +s Etymology The name is thought to derive from en ro scuti to absolve; compare ro Scutelnici. The common noun comes from Lenny Skutnik Martin Leonard Skutnik III, a guest at the 1982 State of the Union address; see quotations below. Proper noun en. Noun en US jargon politics media A guest at the State of the Union address or a similar political event. en Lenny Skutnik en 2001 William Safire On Language New York Times Magazine 15 When CNN’s Jeff Greenfield assured the crowd, “I haven't planted a skutnik here,” I stopped him: I had heard of a sputnik, the Russian word for the first Soviet satellite, but what was a skutnik? In 1995, the columnist William F. Buckley was one of the first to use the name as an eponym: “President Clinton was awash with Skutniks.” July 8 The Way We Live Now en 2003 Susan Campbell The Real State of the Union Hartford Courant D2 The likes of Shea got added by the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, who started what came to be called the Lenny Skutnik Moment, where an everyday person is plucked from the populace and placed in the first lady’s gallery. Martin L. Skutnik earned a seat in the gallery on Jan. 13, 1982, when, on the way home from work at the Congressional Budget Office, he jumped into the freezing Potomac River to save Priscilla Tirado, a passenger on an Air Florida plane that had crashed just after take-off. January 28 on en 2006 Richard Halicks STATE OF THE UNION: In the gallery tonight... The Atlanta Journal-Constitution A1 Since that time, people recognized by the president during the State of the Union address have been known by insiders as “Lenny Skutniks.” As in: “Who are the Lenny Skutniks tonight?” There's even an online quiz that invites you to guess who will be tonight's Lenny Skutniks (the list had not yet been revealed Monday). Skutnik, it seems, is a brand name. January 31 en 2011 Stephen Frantzich Honored Guests: Citizen Heroes and the State of the Union 22 Lenny Skutnik moments have been called “human props”, “gimmicks”, “practiced stagecraft”, but the virulence of the criticism from a president’s political opponents only serves to prove the effectiveness of the strategy. 9781442205604 en January 29, 2018 Nick Gillespie All the President’s Human Props Reason.com https://reason.com/2018/01/29/all-the-presidents-human-props-welders-c/ Ever since then, almost every State of the Union address has featured one or more “Skutniks,” or Americans who somehow embody everyday heroism, stoicism, victimhood, or identity politics. https://web.archive.org/web/20260311014326/https://reason.com/2018/01/29/all-the-presidents-human-props-welders-c/ 11 March 2026 en 2020 Tony Messenger Missouri has a Medicaid crisis involving 100,000 children, and Parson ignores it St. Louis Post-Dispatch A2 Among Parson’s Skutniks this week were Mayor Lyda Krewson and the other mayors of Missouri’s four largest cities. They sat in the audience while the Republican governor talked about doing something about inner-city violence, but refused to outline any specific gun proposals. January 17 en eponyms