Skutnik

English

Etymology

The name is thought to derive from Romanian scuti (“to absolve”); compare Romanian Scutelnici. The common noun comes from Martin Leonard Skutnik III, a guest at the 1982 State of the Union address; see quotations below.

Proper noun

Skutnik

1. A surname.

Noun

Skutnik (plural Skutniks)

1. (US, jargon, politics, media) A guest at the State of the Union address or a similar political event.

   Synonym: Lenny Skutnik

   • 2001 July 8, William Safire, “On Language”, in New York Times Magazine, The Way We Live Now, page 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.”

   • [2003 January 28, Susan Campbell, “The Real State of the Union”, in Hartford Courant, page 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.]

   • 2006 January 31, Richard Halicks, “STATE OF THE UNION: In the gallery tonight...”, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, page 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.

   • 2011, Stephen Frantzich, Honored Guests: Citizen Heroes and the State of the Union, →ISBN, page 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.

   • 2018 January 29, Nick Gillespie, “All the President’s Human Props”, in Reason.com‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 2020 January 17, Tony Messenger, “Missouri has a Medicaid crisis involving 100,000 children, and Parson ignores it”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, page 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.