Friday 11 January 2008

Candidates shifting focus to shifting focus

With all the talk about how they can make change better than their opponents, I can’t help wondering whether Hillary, Rudy and their other podium pals are running for president of the United States or for night clerk at a 7-Eleven.
Maybe George W. Bush has made a few missteps in the last seven years, but whose fault is that? After all, almost half of us voted for him.
Now the Bush Era is winding down and the president has gone to seek his legacy by bringing the full force of his diplomatic skills to a feud dating back to David and Goliath which none of his predecessors could fix. You go, boy!
No doubt, in the spring of aught-nine, while we all enjoy our wine and cheese while discussing the latest selection from Vice President Winfrey’s book club, we can look back on the days of the “Carl, Dick & George Show” and laugh.
But first, Americans have to get through an election, and decide whether it’s about the economy, the war, the economy, climate change, the economy, immigration, or the economy.
At times like this, it is a huge comfort to be an Alaskan, with our steady, laser-like concentration on the one question that matters: “When do I get my share of ANWR oil profits?”
Meanwhile, as a loyal American, it just gets my goat that the candidates and voters harp on change, obsessing on the way the president’s first response to the terrorist attacks was to tell us to go to Disneyland, or on a few minor hiccups like wiretapping Americans without warrants, invading a country based on false intelligence, firing prosecutors, denying climate change, and mispronouncing “nuclear.”
They seem to have forgotten all the solid accomplishments of the current administration. So here’s an exhaustive list of things the next president should keep the same:
• The stunning china pattern Laura chose for state dinners.
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for Conundrum of the Week, another brain-teaser drawn from the headlines of real life.
On Thursday, the only officer to receive any punishment in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal had his wrist publicly unslapped by the Army. Kudos to Lt. Col. Steven Jordan for admitting the investigation had some flaws.
But the original question remains: Why didn’t every officer in the chain of command from second louie to three stars resign of their own accord as soon as the pictures came out?
In the country with a tradition of military heroes from John Paul Jones to Audie Murphy who embody courage and honor, it’s interesting to see that the buck now stops with a lance-corporal.
Copy editor Drew Herman takes full responsibility for the Mirror’s former policy of reporter abuse.

Saturday 5 January 2008

A look back from this point in time

So you survived 2007 — if you are extremely old, somewhat infirm, or even slightly Iraqi, congratulations.

A lot of world-shaking events happened last year in politics, economics and science, but as a mere copy editor, I am no more competent to make pronouncements about how to deal with that stuff than, say, a baseball team owner would be.

However, I am perfectly placed to observe the prosaic perfidy perpetrated by the language-using public, and then foist my opinions on readers of this column.

Competition for worst written or verbal sin of the year came down to a tight race between two grotesque locutions that give us self-appointed grammar police an abiding sense of being needed. But before I name the winner, let’s look back at some previous champions.

The top dishonor for 2006 went to “wellness,” which finally replaced all uses of the perfectly serviceable word “health.” May it rest in peace.

Before that we had a run of wins by time-related phrases, starting with “basis,” as in, “The proposed jail location changes on a monthly basis.” The brain-ray that stopped people from saying simply “monthly” is still at large. Then came “this point in time,” chosen for its oniony layers of redundancy.

In 2003 the pure pointlessness of “located” got the judges’ attention, since any jail “located on Near Island” would also be “on Near Island.” This came from the same faction that thinks prepostions can’t take the load alone, so they invented “in conjunction with.”

But nothing matches the classic that started it all. “Utilize” remains king for having absolutely no context where it could mean anything different from “use,” yet continuing its pompous, ubiquitous career unabated.

The runner-up this time is “adversely affected,” another pompous infection from the officialese lexicon. We pray for a cure to the pandemic that has as its main symptom an inability to use the word “harm.” It probably comes from a virus that spreads because of our feeble wellness practices.

But the surprise top place citation for 2007 goes to the confusion of “ground zero” and “square one.” The first time someone said “This setback takes us back to ground zero,” it got little notice. But then it happened again and again, prompting the grammar panel to issue its directive: Stop saying it unless whatever happened really included a ticket to Hiroshima or the World Trade Center.

Mirror writer Drew Herman still refuses to use “impact” as a verb.