inapt

This renders Mr. Bacon’s subtitle inapt: “The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has been told and retold by authors and bards.

After all, it’s a movie for which too much cleanup may be inapt.

It is also why Republicans continue to mock what they call the inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 on strictly Democratic votes.

That was just one example in recent days of the Republicans’ clown car backfiring in the party’s bumbling drive to weaponize the government against political foes — the very crime it inaptly projects onto Democrats.

However inapt as drama, and however much real estate they steal from the development of a richer plot, such songs serve an important function, like the witty prose of the novel.