0532 - GoodTaste

In any large and active Staff there is competition and some get their feelings hurt. Our Senior Counsel, a magisterial presence, demands space for vital legal issues. The first is the number of TV ads that contain absolutely unreadable small print “legal” disclaimers filling the screen for a tenth of a second after the pitch for cheap loans or such. Counsel points out that anything unreadable has absolutely no legal force in any decent court, and that lawyers who put such illegible boilerplate into an ad are incompetent or worse. [Our office keeps getting e-mails offering all sorts of degrees from “prestigious unaccredited universities”. Maybe they also give law degrees.]

Then, Counsel says every experienced cross-examiner knows that when a witness answers a question by saying “That’s a good question”, it shows either stalling for time or the concoction of an evasive answer. So, why do so many of today’s innumerable interviewees, particularly the political candidates, say “That’s a very good question.” Are we fools?

And, we have the issue of “Downers”. These, we learned recently due to the Mad Cow scare, are cows that fall over sick and up to now have been shipped off to U.S. slaughterhouses to be made into our hamburger or such. We are told this will be forbidden from now on. But, we ask you, who knew we were eating the equivalent of road kill for decades uncounted? Can we sue?

On a more serious note, several cases are going to the U.S. Supreme Court, involving people, even a U.S. citizen, held indefinitely without a charge or a lawyer, including the hopeless and faceless hundreds held at Guantanamo Bay. Counsel finds these actions violently un-American and destructive of the principles we hope America stands for. Isn’t that sort of Secret Police behavior what we are fighting against, not for? We beg the Supreme Court to do right.

Moving on rapidly to the question of Good Taste, and since we mentioned TV, the situation there is getting worse in many ways. We hear talk of an uncensored music channel (“1 A.M.” may be the name) where anything goes. We are broad-minded here and not prudes, but how much more of Britney do you need to see? We’ve got the entire equipment on view now, don’t we? Should there be a program called “Sluts and Butts”? [If this weren’t a family column, we’d mention another similar title we have in mind – change the vowels a bit.]

And further dealing with TV, there is much talk of 500 channels, either on cable or by satellite. Without in the least putting down the sport of Curling, one has to recognize that as a spectator sport it consists of large round stones moving slowly over ice with team members violently brooming the path. Curling is frequently seen for several hours on Cable Channel 54 here. We stand for personal freedom, and if you want to watch a stone on ice, go right ahead, but ... do we need 500 channels? Nude Curling, maybe?

Space is running out, but our Chief Proofreader demands to be heard on the pronunciation one hears of Brett Favre, the fine pro quarterback. They call him “Farve”. So what’s the French seaport – “Le Harve”? Similarly, the usual Army briefing from Iraq mentions hiding places called “kah-shays”. That’s how “cachet” is pronounced, and that means “A mark or quality, as of distinction.” A hiding place is a cache, properly pronounced “cash”. All of this may be an U.S. administration attack on the French, who won’t play nice with us. We’ll discuss Iraq next week.

Next time: NothingThere [OO #533]

| Printer-friendly page | Send this article to a friend |

Home