He Couldn't Get Any Lower

Or could he? I had to read the article to be sure.

Because what ESPN.com said happened to Lawrence Taylor could be taken in more than one way.

That's low, man.

Uninterested? Only If You're Disinterested

I'm a bit of a language geek. Which is not to say that I always write or speak in perfect English. If I did, that last sentence would have been part of the first sentence.

But I have my bugaboos. So does Ben Yagoda over at Slate.

Yes, I know that language changes over time and some things that we consider perfectly acceptable would have left folks in prior centuries aghast. My main concern is the same as Yagoda's, the few words for which we have no proper substitute.

"Literally", of course, is the granddaddy of them. To me, anyway. Yagoda avoids its discussion. Maybe it's too obvious. Or too painful.

As Yagoda points out when discussing "disinterested", there is no exact synonym for that word. (Oddly enough, in a prior paragraph, he points out that "impartial" means roughly the same thing.) But this is even more true for "literally". Please try to name a synonym for it. Once it loses its meaning, we have no single word left to express this concept. This is where language's evolution becomes devolution.

Overrated

I'm not a big fan of taunting. I'm talking specifically about sports fans taunting opposing players, coaches and, worst of all, fans. Although I do tend to frown upon taunting in regular life too. ("You call yourself a cabby? Any idiot knows you take 10th Avenue. STUCK in TRAFF-ic!" [Clap. Clap. Clapclapclap.] "STUCK in TRAFF-ic!" [Clap. Clap. Clapclapclap.])

I think it shows an ugly side of human nature that people would take more pleasure in the downfall of another than they would take pleasure in the achievement of their own team. As a born-and-bred New Englander and longstanding member of Red Sox Nation, I hate the Yankees as much as the next guy. But when the Sox beat the Yanks, I'm happy that the Sox beat the Yanks. I'm happy for the Sox. I'm not as concerned that the guy wearing pinstripes feels personal shame and humiliation.

So, I'm not really into the chants of "Yankees suck". Partly because it's so patently untrue that the whole enterprise smacks of wishful thinking and is therefore more than a little bit pathetic. The Yankees are, historically and currently, the least sucky team in the history of professional sports. Why else would we bother hating them? And "Jeter swallows" is downright offensive. I will say no more on it, lest it be dignified. (As if such a thing is possible.) I'd rather cheer my team on than attempt to degrade another, no matter how much I don't care for them.

Which brings me to today's real point of contention, chanting "o-ver-rat-ed" at a team that is being vanquished by another, presumably underrated, team. This is taunting, of course. But, even more than chanting "[the other team] sucks", it paints the chanter as a bit ignorant and as someone who is actually dissing his/her own team.

Listen. If the other team is overrated, that means that they're not really as good as the conventional wisdom holds. Which means that when you're chanting that the other team is overrated, you're really demeaning your own team. "Hey, those guys really aren't all that good!" So, now you're crowing that your team just survived a squeaker with a team that isn't very good? What does that say about your guys?

Wouldn't it be more uplifting to say, "You guys are a very talented assemblage of physical prowess and game management. And the team for whom we cheer has defeated you, making them even more awesome and reflecting their glory on us who wear the same colors as we cheer!"

I reckon that doesn't make much of a chant.

The Taxation of My Patience

Remember this quote from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"?

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

It was about a newspaper man refusing to print the truth because...oh, what the hell, let's mix our aphorisms, "A lie gets half way around the world before the truth gets its boots on." In this case, the lie was all the way around the world and it just wasn't worth chasing.

Words matter. Spin works. And the Republicans have been calling the estate tax "the death tax" for so long that even mainstream media outlets have no problem calling it that. It looks like the LA Times has flat-out given up. Check out the title of this editorial.

You read that right. Just in case you didn't, here it is again.

The Taxation of Death

We can argue until we're blue in the face about whether the estate tax is a nice thing or the end of civilization as we know it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But they aren't entitled to their own facts. In this case, death is not taxed. Death never has been taxed. What is being taxed is inheritance. And, more importantly, the estate tax is not actually called "the death tax". Never has been, never will be.

The fact that the word "estate" implies a lot of money is one of the reasons it's never used by its opponents. Taxing estates? What could be wrong with that? But taxing death? Unfair! 98% of beneficiaries or heirs (more words they don't use) will never be subject to it. And the ones who are subject to it should consider themselves fortunate. Even after Uncle Sam takes his bite, they're still inheriting at least a million bucks. Oh no! Poor them!

This is not a tax on death, it's a tax on income. Income which was not earned by the person receiving it. Unless the tax goes up to 100%, then the argument that people want to leave something to their children and can't just doesn't fly.

But, as I mentioned, the real issue I have here is not the merits of the tax but the use of language. The LA Times has succumbed to the right-wing spin machine by adopting their terminology, which is entirely unofficial and entirely inaccurate.

Here's the opening line:

The old saw about the only certainties in life being death and taxes isn't quite right: We'll also always be arguing about the taxation of death.

Now, the editorial actually raises some valid points about some upper-middle-class folks getting socked with a wee bit of pain. And they do use the word "heirs", to their credit. This is all good. But to promote the canard that the thing being taxed here is death and not non-earned income is inexcusable.

Please, LA Times editors. Stop.

Where Did You Hide the Drugs, Honey? Never Mind

Well, it's nice to know that the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't think it's appropriate to strip search 13-year-old girls based on hearsay. Hooray for us.

But, wait. The decision was 8-1, which means somebody thought it was okay. Guess who? Yep. Long Dong Silver himself.

Get a load of this sound legal reasoning.

"Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," [Thomas] wrote, "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announced the safest places to secrete contraband in school."

Oy.

Okay, first off, this is not a legal argument. It's a practical one. And Mr. Strict Constructionist is not supposed to concern himself with such things. You can be a criminal and still have your rights violated. And telling people their rights is not the same thing as inviting them to break the law.

Second, does he really think that the vast majority of miscreants has never thought of hiding things in their underwear before? Or that everything's going in there now that everybody knows no one's going to look? Is every guarantee of privacy to be considered just an opportunity for abuse? If so, we have a lot of work to do, because once everyone realizes that no one is going to look in their freezer without probable cause, they're going to be hiding lots of decapitated human heads in there. And the kids will all be walking funny because their inviolable underpants are going to be so weighed down with drugs, weapons and illegal immigrants.

This is an utterly fascistic statement on Thomas's part. I hope he comes to realize that some day.

Lastly, he actually accuses her of being guilty in his choice of words. He doesn't say "nor would she be the last". He says "nor will she be the last", implying that she actually did hide the (non-existent) pills in there. They just didn't look hard enough, apparently. It took me a few reads to even notice it, which makes me think that using the correct word in the first part was meant to deflect people from noticing the second part. I wouldn't put it past him.

"That's the Way I Was Raised"

Could we please retire this phrase? And it's variant "that's the way I was brought up"?

All this really means is "I don't have to take responsibility for my opinions or actions. It's all my parents' doing. Therefore, you cannot challenge me on it. I couldn't be bothered to examine whether this opinion/action/personal hygiene method was proper, ethical or legal on my own."

Some of us were "raised" by good people. Some of us were raised by assholes. Some of us were raised by good people who just weren't all that smart. Or maybe were a bit behind the times.

Please feel free to give your parents whatever credit they have coming. But no matter who you were raised by or how, please take responsibility for your own views and modus vivendi. If you can't do that, you shouldn't be taken seriously.

Thank you.

Sounds Familiar...

I'm a person that values consistency. Not routine, but consistency. That is, if you spell it "theater" you can't then decide it's "theatre" later on in your piece. If you use an honorific for Mr. Spanky McSchmanky, you can't decide it's optional for Joe Schmo. (That's Mr. Schmo to you.) I probably should have been a copy editor.

Nevertheless, I find the Prez's (I mean, Mr. Obama's) op-ed piece in the WaPo rather amusing. Not for its content though.

In the spot at the end of the column, wherein one usually reads something on the lines of "Dan Shaughnessy is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe sports section" or "Suzanne Vega is a singer-songwriter based in New York City", we read the following.

The writer is president of the United States.

In case ya didn't know. Love it.