That is one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

"Dim" Americans have never fucking heard of the Pelagian heresy (though it might be my favorite: see what Randall Jarrell had to say about WC Williams and Pelagianism in the intro to WCW's Selected Poems--that's me, too). What absolute crap, and a lousy way to try making a point: good idea to have gone to bed.

For "dim" Americans, plagiarism is piddly, the kind of thing that gets you a do-over from grade-inflating COMP 101 teachers and a death penalty from the NCAA when your entire team turns in papers copied off Wikipedia (which also makes anxiety about plagiarism seem pretty silly to "dim" Americans).

I've been busting kids for plagiarism for twenty-five years, so I am sensitive to this mess. It's ridiculous--trolly, in fact--to say that Biden is doomed.

Can you give us a citation on that?

I just can't understand Bolt's exhibition or your defense of it because I am not an elite by-God athlete.

(Why, by the way, do you say that we turn on superior athletes when they turn out to be dicks? You certainly aren't claiming to be one of US, the ignorant masses, are you?)

I thought Bob "Who's My Hood Ornament?" Novak was already in hell.

I am about to teach a gaggle of brighteyed freshmen that Greek columns are one fairly subtle way that out culture alludes to the democratic values of the Athenians--historical continuity.

I suppose Young Alex has the "red, white, and blue" as "salmon, eggshell, and teal" fuckup of whatever convention in mind. But it's not the same thing, and he should be ashamed of taking money for issuing opinions when what he seems actually to be doing is generating word count.

Greek columns "look like the 'Stonehenge' pillars in 'This is Spinal Tap'" ??!!!

I'm not going to try to think of anything clever to say. Stupid gets to stand alone while everyone appreciates it.

Sorry to have responded, Alex. You are, of course, The Man: a scholar of Greek architecture, a semiotician, and a fucking persuasive writer.

The girl-chubby for Sarah Who is embarrassing.

French pique-nique (1694 in repas à piquenique; 1718 denoting a meal at which each person pays for his share or at which each person contributes a share of the food; subsequently also denoting a meal eaten out of doors, perhaps after English), probably < piquer (see PICK v.1) + nique (14th or 15th cent. in Middle French in sense ‘nothing whatever’, second half of the 15th cent. in sense ‘small copper coin’; probably ult. of imitative origin), although the latter word is app. rare after the end of the 16th cent. In early use perhaps partly via German Picknick (first half of the 18th cent.; 2nd half of the 19th cent. denoting a meal eaten out of doors, probably after English); compare quot. 1748 at sense A. 1a. Compare Swedish picknick (first half of the 18th cent.). Compare KNICK-KNACK n. 2b.

Anti-intellectualism is indeed pernicious, as is the all-too-frequent "You're reading too much into that, Poindexter."

But argument-from-urban-legend, like argument-from-folk-etymology, does its own kind of damage to truthseeking.

In the antebellum South, yellow corn was reserved for slaves and animals. White corn was for people. Thus, yellow corn and its derivatives--cornbread, grits--denote class differences for some people.

Others don't get their knickers in a bunch.

The History of English and other languages is, of coursed, vexed by any number of ethnocentricities. However, the current OED--that is, that of contemporary linguistics, not Murray et al--is hardly the product of unenlightenment. That is, philology has come a long way.

I would, by the way, not assert that a guessed-at etymology is a "folk" etymology if the person doing the guessing wears a mortarboard and sits in a Scriptorium.

Do not argue with anyone who (a) invites you to argue and then (b) says that you're not really arguing when you argue while (c) using words like loon and loopy and democrat-as-adjective (which even the Republican establishment is avoiding this year) in his own "argument."

The "screw-this" moment: "putting this word all up in our grills. Barbecue grills, that is."

Trying too hard by that point.

And anyone who would go canuck-bashing, especially with a sidelong swipe at the sweet and brilliant and hit Corner Gas, is a total dick, unable to recognize the comedy that "Barbecue grills, that is" attempts to be.

Change "a growing plurality of Americans--one survey says 42 percent--have tried marijuana at least once"

to

"a whole bunch of Americans--one survey says 42 percent--have tried marijuana at least once"

Glad to help.

It is an ethnic slur and really ought to be avoided. (This is not to say that the term carries the weight of the N-word and others: there has never been a White Trash Holocaust that I can think of.)

Oddly, however, my man rupert uses an equally nasty slur in a letter posted at 11:51 a.m in the Abstinence Educators: "hillbillies."

Interesting.

Please don't use the word hillbillies. It is a slur, much like "white trash" which a very wise and experienced letter writer warns careful people to avoid in a letter posted at 10:51 in the "Thought for the Opening Day" letters.

Now she'll have to drop out of high school and get a job at Burger King while her soon-to-be husband takes a job on the pipeline and watches his dreams go up in smoke.

I am sitting at home in Knox County, Kentucky at this very moment.

We "hillbillies" would genuinely prefer that outsiders, even those with the broadranging ethnographic understanding they have acquired from watching a television sitcom and attending folk concerts on the National Mall, respect our culture and not use what we insist is a slur, especially those who have shown some sensitivity to loaded language in a letter roughly simultaneous with the one I respond to here.

Unless, of course, you just want to be a self-consuming anger junkie with no intention of respecting the wishes of others. In that case go batzoid.