Letters to the Editor
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Language Is What Language Does
[Note: My dad was a English professor. I'm an official language brat.]
Nouns become verbs all the time. It's what language does.
It's only natural that:
(A) people will continually remake language to be more efficient--express their ideas with less effort;
(B) people who have learned to use language more elegantly will be horrified, annoyed or appalled as a result.
Thus
"The notion that Americans would backlash against Pelosi
(8 words) is bound to be used in preference to
"The notion that there would be a backlash from the American people toward Pelosi..."
(14) words, and equally bound to annoy.
If you think this is bad, wait till texting parlance has totally saturated the entire culture.
You ain't seen nothing yet.
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"Meet the Press," "Hardball," and Media Bias
Two Sundays ago, "Meet the Press" had a long roundtable discussion on a variety of topics, with three journalists and one neocon apologist. They were Chuck Todd, Judy Woodruff, David Gregory, and Kate O'Beirne. Chuck Todd and Judy Woodruff are insightful and unbiased, as far as I can tell. While David Gregory has made headlines for challenging White House press secretaries a handful of times over the past few years, he is pretty much down the middle in his presentations when I see him. Kate O'Beirne, on the other hand, is as neocon as they come. She even supports an immediate pardon for Scooter Libby. Putting her on a panel without someone to balance her extreme views is unfair and unbalanced, the sort of thing we might expect to see on Fox.
I think this is pretty standard in the mainstream media. I saw a segment on "Hardball" about a week ago where Mike Barnicle was matched against Ron Christie. Christie is very quick and an excellent argumentarian; so even though he is backing Bush's policies, he doesn't have the facts to work with like Mike Barnicle does. But, in my opinion, Christie made Bush look good (like lipstick on a pig) even without having the best material to work with.
The mainstream media needs to realize that it is not fooling as many people as it thinks it is and that their insidiousness may be a big reason why television news is not only losing viewers but alienating viewers.
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Verbing weirds language
In modern English, virtually any noun can be used as a verb. This is especially true of forms that look like past participles ('I went to the washing-machine convention and I'm all washing-machined out'). Using a noun directly as a verb is the productive method of creating denominative verbs. That means that what is meant will be understood when it is done. Still, as Calvin says, verbing weirds language.
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Occasionally, I backlash
...against nouns becoming verbs, e.g. impact, task, among others.
However, in this case, since backlash is also listed as a verb (which I also did not know), and, even more importantly, because the sentence is then in the active voice, rather than passive... I must yield. ;~)
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Mike Barnicle
Ever since he was fired from the Boston Globe for stealing jokes from George Carlin without attribution (aka., plagiarism) I basically don't listen to a word he says. The fact that he now writes for the Boston Herald solidifies my contempt for him.
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A different tactic
For those of us not as savvy/motivated as Glenn (in terms of picking apart the MSM), we should take a different tack in terms of bringing the neocon/MSM complex down.
Instead of using familiar cliches like "if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you" how about changing it up?
Some suggestions:
If you believe that, I have some WMD's in Iraq to show you.
... oil in Iraq to sell you.
You lie like a Bush.
...Cheney.
...neocon.
...pundit.
About as useful as a Bush appointee in a hurricane.
...(insert pundit here) editorial in the newspaper
...Bush speech.
...Cheney speech.
...neocon speech.
I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw Bush.
...Cheney.
...neocon.
...pundit.
He's as mad as a neocon.
This (plumbing/hydraulics) leaks like the White House.
Now that's the neocon calling the pundit delusional.
If that is true, then I'm a pundit's uncle.
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Ok, some are better than others, but feel free to add to them.
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"the Democratic Party has had this reputation, going back decades..."
Brit Hume was once a reporter. Now he's a pusher, pushing his party line.
What really happened to the Democratic Party after they stopped supporting the Vietnam War? Here's what a pro-war hawk (now semi-reformed) wrote last month.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601827,00.html
TIME magazine
Why the Dems Should Go for It
Thursday, Mar. 22, 2007
By PETER BEINART. . . Despite today's conventional wisdom, Democrats didn't suffer in the 1970s for opposing Vietnam . . .
In 1973 the Senate voted to suspend funding for American military operations in Vietnam; the next year, Congress voted to cut off aid to the embattled government in Saigon. Some of today's commentators argue that those votes devastated the Democratic Party in the mid-1970s. But if so, the Democrats had a strange way of showing it. They won the 1974 midterm elections in a landslide. Two years later, Jimmy Carter grabbed the White House. To be sure, Watergate played a major role in those victories. But if the party's efforts to end the war weren't the primary reason for its success, they certainly didn't hurt.
It's true that in 1972, antiwar crusader George McGovern suffered one of the biggest political wallopings in American history, losing 49 states to Richard Nixon. Surely then, Democrats suffered for opposing Vietnam? Actually, no. People forget that in 1972 Nixon ran on a peace platform too. In his convention speech, he boasted that he had ended the draft, withdrawn American troops from ground combat, pursued a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam and reduced U.S. casualties 98%. The fall was marked by feverish diplomacy between Washington and Hanoi, culminating in Henry Kissinger's declaration, less than two weeks before the election, that "peace is at hand." . . .
- - Peter Beinart
Nixon, for all his faults, was far more reality-based than Bush is, and Nixon knew that he had to be (or had to pretend to be) a peace candidate, not a "war president".
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Verbs and nouns
I had another English prof who was on a personal crusade against "enthused." He argued one can be "filled with enthusiasm," but "enthused" is not a word. I lost count of the times I heard his rant on this subject in one semester alone.
I try to be open-minded about these things, but the day "irregardless" becomes a real word, I'm gonna lose it.