Language clean-out?
IS THIS the start of a big clean-out? Lake Superior State University at Kansas City, Missouri, has published a list of words and phrases that deserved to be expunged from the language. Does this mean a start at last with the removal of "prestigious" (used in the sense of prestige), which in fact means "dishonest"; the ombudspeople, spokespersons and waitrons which have taken root; phrases like "at this moment in time"?
Er … not necessarily, it seems. Lake Superior State University have come down on things like "shovel-ready" – that is, a project that is ready to go ahead; to "unfriend" a person; "sexting" – sending sexy SMS messages; "Obamacare"; and "Obamanomics".
Has anyone ever heard such words or expressions?
Either the language purists of Missouri are fighting on an entirely different terrain, or matters there have already deteriorated beyond recovery.
Gadgetry
AN INTRIGUING news snippet tells us the shower radio has been voted in Britain to be the most useless household gadget ever. Respondents to a survey said it was not as waterproof as the manufacturers claimed, reception was tinny and it kept wandering off the station.
I don't believe many South Africans have actually experienced a shower radio – clearly this was not an item that made it big as an export – but one can appreciate its drawbacks.
Who, singing lustily under the shower though blinded by soapsuds, would not forget which hand holds the radio and which the sponge? Consequently, rubbing with the wrong item, shifting the control dial and losing the station – moving from singalong music to the stock exchange prices. With soap in your eyes, that's no fun.
Necessity is the mother of invention. There was no need for a shower radio. But a cigar you can smoke under the shower? Now there's a worthwhile project.
Tiger hunt
WHO ELSE feels a little uneasy about the Tiger hunt? I suppose there's nothing we can do about the burrowings of American gutter rags; nor about tarts who kiss and tell. The gags whizzing about on Tiger Woods and his woes – some of them undeniably funny - were inevitable once the news broke.
But a little disturbing is the outraged morality. Tiger Woods is being excoriated as if he had personally let down the agony aunts of the mainstream media (and their male counterparts) in the US and Britain. How dare he carry on in this way when he projected an image of "squeaky-clean"?
There's an assumption that because he's a brilliant golfer, his private personal life is somehow public property. There have even been demands that he should abase himself with a public confession on the Oprah Winfrey show – the ultimate in soap opera.
The uneasiness I'm sure so many of us feel is brilliantly captured by Brendan O'Neill, writing in The Spectator.
"The Tiger story is more than a typical tabloid feeding frenzy – it represents an important intellectual shift, where the idea of privacy, already battered and bruised, is being finally buried. We should all be concerned about this Tiger hunt because we throw away privacy at our peril. The private space, in which we develop intense relationships, reveal our weaker or darker traits to loved ones, work out how we feel and who we are, is essential to a civilised society.
"We seem to have confused Tiger with one of those media whores who people Celebrityland these days. Our sense of ownership of famous people also springs from the fact that there are celebs – some of whom we even created, Frankinstein-like, through celebrity TV phone-ins – who have a tacit contract with the public in which they provide us with at least one titillating story a month and we get excited/morally outraged by it ….
"Yet there is a vast difference between these slebs and talent, someone like Tiger who happens to be famous because he is a brilliant sportsman. And if we are serious about nurturing talent, and about being treated with respect ourselves, then we have got to learn to back off. Tiger owes us nothing but good golf."
Hear, hear!
Tailpiece
A GOLFER is pulled over by the police, on his way home after a long session at the 19th hole.
"You're too drunk to drive!" declares the sergeant.
"Too drunk to drive? I can barely putt!"
Last word
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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