Even the haunting confusion over the missing Malaysian aircraft, for which no rational person could hold our president responsible, is surely contributing to a general sense that the world is coming unglued — and that the president is hunting around under his desk for a glue stick he hopes one of his predecessors might have left there for him.You know what else is hurting the President?* The Associated Press allowing "over" to replace "more than" in descriptions of numerable items. The resulting malaise has wafted from copy-editors' desks to the nation at large, and Americans from all walks of life, even those who wouldn't know a gerund from an infinitive, are now asking themselves: If Obama cannot enforce the old certainties, whither the Republic? I can just feel it.
* Besides the usual bullshit thumbsuckers, I mean.
Shorter Podhoretz: "Thanks, Obama!"
ReplyDelete"...for which no rational person could hold our president responsible.."
ReplyDeleteYes, but what do Republicans think?
"and that the president is hunting around under his desk for a glue stick
ReplyDeletehe hopes one of his predecessors might have left there for him."
He actually said "hunting around under the desk"? He doesn't thinK another phrase would have done better?
Poddy, somebody is going to say "Gosh, he better be careful, Saddam's WMD is supposed to be there."
The world is becoming chaotic and unglued and even the president isn't immune. So let's a) rally behind him and work together to get things back to where they should be, or b) exploit said chaos to further our own agenda, blame it on people who didn't cause it, and use it to scare people into falling behind our plans.
ReplyDeleteHmm...I wonder which one J-Pod, so concerned as he is for the state of society, will chose?
I think that could be a shorter for about half of the conservative opinion columns out there (the rest, of course, being a mix of "Thanks, Hollywood!" and "Thanks, 60's-era liberal stereotypes!").
ReplyDeleteThe world is coming unglued, so hurry up and huff what you've already got.
ReplyDeleteSomeone, somewhere reads JPod's latest, and nods their head, sagely. Then as the rain starts to fall, their caretaker rushes out with an umbrella, to prevent this someone of drowning.
ReplyDeleteNew theory: the flight attendants, inspired by American labor protests, seized control of the plane and rerouted it to Benghazi, where they delivered a secret national gun registry list to Eric Holder (who was hiding out there having gay sex with Edward Snowden), who will send ACORN out to steal the guns of every registered Republican and use them to murder health care industry executives which will give them cover for instituting a nationalized single-payer system that only black people with Obamaphones will have access to. PS I am not a crank.
ReplyDelete... allowing "over" to replace "more than" in descriptions of numerable items.
ReplyDeleteEh. When they start allowing "amount" (as in amount of people) instead of "number," you'll really know the world has gone to shit.
On a related note, who was the asshole who decided "pleaded" was better than "pled?" I'd like to break his nose.
Don't stop! I'm just one short of Bingo!
ReplyDeletethe president is hunting around under his desk for a glue stick he hopes one of his predecessors might have left there for him.
ReplyDeleteIf by "glue stick" he means "rolled up handkerchief filled with airplane glue," because the previous occupant was sure as hell huffing something.
This is the best column, because it gives me a chance to imagine what William Howard Taft's glue stick might look like.
ReplyDeleteClinton?
ReplyDelete...or wait, was there some other guy?
They'll do it fast, and furiously.
ReplyDeleteI think he originally penned with the ending "P.S. I am not a crank." but his editor cut that line.
ReplyDeleteI swear I did not read this before I typed my response above.
ReplyDeleteI think it was somebody with pleated pants. Excuse me, plet pants.
ReplyDelete"Over" versus "more than": Count me firmly in the "more than" camp. An old editor of mine smacked me around but good on that distinction, and it sticks with me to this day. It's a fine one, and well worth keeping.
ReplyDeleteAlso, too: Fuck AP.
You'd be surprised and saddened at the number of doctoral dissertations I get that try to use "amount" in place of "number." And that don't have a clue what the distinction between "that" and "which" is.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get me started on the ones that are sprinkled with misspellings--especially when the dissertation in question is from someone working on their Ed.D.
Feh!
I banged my knee on the coffee table the other day, while the apparently crashed airliner remained unfound. Because I come from a long line of certified intellectuals, I took this as proof that Obama's fecklessness led to Putin's Crimea takeover.
ReplyDeleteI will die on that hill, at least it feels like dying a little inside.
ReplyDelete...right, CNN?
ReplyDeleteYears ago, a writer friend of mine said wistfully, "The battle for 'hopefully' has been lost."
ReplyDeleteStick? Glue stick? JPod must have had an underprivileged boyhood if that's the best presidential dissing he can manage with "glue." He's even typed the word AIRCRAFT and still can't get his insult off the ground. If this guy imagines Obama finding some Zigzag papers, the insult will end with the risk of smoking unfiltered cigarettes. I DEMAND BETTER CHARACTER ASSASSINATIONS FROM THESE PEOPLE. NOW.
ReplyDeleteShe passed them the secret of FLOTUS water in her first 24 hours there. And we thought Snowden was the evil one!
ReplyDeleteIf we hadn't been so louche with "comprise," Putin would never have dared to presume that Crimea is comprised of Russian territory.
ReplyDeleteThere's an interview with David Foster Wallace in which he talks about sentence adverbs and how, hopefully, people will relax and accept their use.
ReplyDeleteTwo Turduckens
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure George W. Bush ate it all.
ReplyDeleteIrregardless, the world spins out of control on its access.
ReplyDeleteBTW: the fucking spell check didn't even point out the first word in this post. We are doomed.
The battle for "pled" was lost at Culloden. The British and their "pleaders" triumphed on that rainy moor and the Scots limped away, dragging their tattered, tartan "pleds" with them to America, only to have it scorned by the Anglophilic lawyer class.
ReplyDeleteSince we're doing grammar in this post, I'd like to point out that this entire paragraph sucks: Even the haunting confusion over the missing Malaysian aircraft, for which no rational person could hold our president responsible, is surely contributing to a general sense that the world is coming unglued — and that the president is hunting around under his desk for a glue stick he hopes one of his predecessors might have left there for him.
ReplyDeleteHaunting confusion? The missing aircraft = unglued world? Obama needs to glue the world back together because the Republicans are haunted by confusion? BUSH kept things together with his glue stick? What the fuck does any of this mean?
I am well hanged.
ReplyDeleteIt's also unclear whether no rational person is holding the president responsible for the missing plane, or the haunting confusion over it.
ReplyDeleteThis "there is a general sense that something I'm making up is true" is pure Peggy Noonan. Pegsters better watch her back.
Even the haunting confusion over the missing Malaysian aircraft ... is surely
ReplyDeletecontributing to a general sense that the world is coming unglued
Media punditator takes it for granted that a news story is instantly part of the Zeitgeist because journamalists are fluffing it. Again.