Particular Gripes

USE THE LANGUAGE CORRECTLY                            LET'S BAN THE USE OF

#25: IRAN HUMILIATES THE ROYAL NAVY:  Lord, how embarrassing.  Whatever happened to "Name, rank and service number"?  Why was anyone other than the senior officer saying anything at all?  It's bad enough that the Royal Navy has been reduced to the size and capability of a third-world coast guard, but do its personnel have to be so dispiritingly wet?  Instead of being welcomed home with such enthusiasm - even from the First Sea Lord, for goodness' sake - they should be court-martialled.  And now the MoD has allowed them to sell their stories to the press, an exception to standard policy usually reserved for VC-winners: disgraceful.  And the net result?  The Iranians are triumphant, having been given the clear signal that they can do what they please in the Gulf.  Instead of rolling over in this craven fashion, why doesn't the Navy send an SBS team to blow up one of Iran's crude oil loading terminals? Or has the SBS been disbanded?  April 6/8, 2007.

#24: ANOTHER AL QAEDA #2 BITES THE DUST:  Let's face it, Al Qaeda has an unlimited number of #2s and the fact that one gets shot or captured about every three months is inevitable, if boring.  After all, it's in the nature of a hierarchy that, if someone gets shot or captured, someone else moves up.  But why don't we ever shoot or capture the #3 man, or even the #17 man?  Why is it always the #2 man?  Or does the Pentagon think that we don't care about the lesser lights?  Well they might be right at that: it's certain that we do care about #1.  When are we going to shoot or capture him?  September 3, 2006.

#23: BALDIES:  This isn't a gripe, it's a question.  What is it with admirals and generals that they all seem to be bald? Look at our new chief spook, General Hayden: bald as the proverbial coot.  At least he's older than most of them.  Look at all the photographs in the back of the Naval Review issue of the USNI Proceedings: most of them are in their late 40s or early 50s and they are almost all follicularly challenged.  Is it a lifetime of short haircuts that does it?  Or is it the hat?  I think we should be told.  May 12, 2006.

#22: PENNIES AND DOLLAR BILLS:  I've had it with pennies.  Who needs them?  What is the matter with retail establishments that can't work out how to round up or down to the nearest nickel?  Apparently it now costs the U.S. Mint 1.4 cents to make each penny.  Is this ridiculous or what?  I suppose it's the copper lobby that keeps them in circulation, but doesn't all our copper come from overseas?  Let's set a date for the total elimination of the penny: how dire could the consequences possibly be?

While on the subject of currency, let's eliminate the dollar bill as well.  90% of the dollar bills that come my way are dirty, wrinkled and generally unpleasant (like some people I know).  We now have a perfectly good dollar coin, but it seems to be in general use only as fodder for casino slot machines and most Americans have never seen one.  Let's face it, the dollar coin won't be widely used until the dollar bill is withdrawn.  In this case, I suppose it's the paper lobby that's to blame.  No other developed nation has paper money of such little value.  So let's set a date for eliminating the dollar bill as well.  March 26, 2006.

#21: THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER: What is this nonsense about the day after the summer solstice being the "first day of summer"?  If the summer solstice is midsummer, as it obviously is and as it has been called for thousands of years, how could the following day be the first day of summer?  Worse, it's usually described as the "official" first day of summer.  Says who?  Which official made this determination?  I see nothing on any U.S. Government web site that makes any such determination.  Logically, summer starts about mid-way between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice, that is, in the first week of May, and, historically, May Day has signaled the start of summer.  Similarly with the other seasons.   Got to go now, it's time to celebrate midsummer in the time-honored way - by dancing naked on the roof.  June 21, 2005.

#20: NON-FICTION BOOK TITLES: Who decided that all non-fiction book titles have to be structured in two parts?  You know, the pithy title, followed by a colon, followed by the long-winded sub-title.  Here's the current New York Times non-fiction best seller list:

1. 1776

2. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

3. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century

4. On Bull----

5. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

6. Goldie: A Lotus Grows in the Mud

7. Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper

8. America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

9. Elvis: by the Presleys

10. Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Post-Partum Depression

Congratulations to David McCullough for not letting his publisher call it "1776: Year of Destiny" or some similar crap.  And "On Bull----" was published by Princeton University Press, which clearly has a refreshingly open mind.  But look at the other eight: the first titles are all quite effective on their own: what do they gain from the sub-title?  The worst is #2, which is actually about statistics, not economics, and the author is not a rogue anything.  The second worst is #10, which grabs you with the title and then puts you right off with the sub-title.  Memo to publishers: pick a good short title and go with it, just as you do with your fiction: the sub-title is not required.  June 10, 2005.

#19: SMITH BARNEY: I know it's futile to pick on either Wall Street or the advertising industry, both of which have been fully loaded with nitwits for years, but I feel compelled to draw attention to the egregiously awful ads that now promote CitiCorp subsidiary Smith Barney.   For far too long this company used the slogan "We make money the old-fashioned way: we earn it", which was such arrant nonsense as to be laughable, and grossly insulting to all the hundreds of millions of Americans who actually do make money the old-fashioned way - by working.  Now Smith Barney has switched from the insultingly ridiculous to the meaninglessly ridiculous.  Its new slogan is "This is who we are: this is how we earn it."  What does the first "this" refer to?  What does the second "this" refer to?  What is "it"?  This is possibly the most stupid slogan ever dreamt up by the idiots on Mad Ave.  It's particularly ridiculous when you hear it on the radio: in print or on TV it could be accompanied by images that might convey some meaning, but on radio, it just provokes the reaction "huh?".  They are probably proud of it, too, poor people.  June 10, 2005.

#18: HIGH TEA: I hate to come all British on you but that complicated routine of a meal that so many hotels put on these days, in a forlorn attempt to appear to be classy, is not "high tea", it's not even "afternoon tea", it's just "tea".  "High tea" involves a cooked dish of some sort and is a working-class thing.  "Afternoon tea" is just a poncy way of saying "tea".  And by the way, the only people who eat scones with clotted cream in England are tourists.  April 30, 2005. 

#17: HOLY CITIES.  Why do the men and women of the media insist on referring to "the holy city of Najaf", "the holy city of Karbala", etc?  These cities are considered holy by some (if not all) Muslims, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Has some great guru of usage decreed that only holy cities in Iraq be described in the media as holy cities?  I don't hear them referring to Mecca, Medina or even Jerusalem as holy cities, let alone such other revered centers as Rome, Canterbury, Salt Lake City, Benares, Bukhara, Wittenberg, et al.  A little consistency is needed here, I think.  September 12, 2004.

#16: THE OLYMPIC GAMES.  Just a couple of thoughts about the Olympics.  Well, maybe three.  Oh, alright then, four.

(1) The original Olympic Games featured contests between athletes, in which one athlete could clearly be seen to win and his opponent to lose.  The modern Olympics include contests between athletes, certainly, but they also include a whole lot of non-sports, that are more displays of skill than contests.  If gymnastics, diving and synchronized swimming are sports, so are ballet-dancing and fly-fishing.  I know that this is not an original thought, but it's still a valid one that has never been adequately answered.  What is the definition of a sport?  I dare say there is one somewhere, but it doesn't seem to work very well.

(2) Every four years there's a lot of grumping about what sports are in and what out.  Why, for example, is softball in the Olympics when it's almost unknown outside the US?  Why is rugby, which is second only to soccer among team sports in international coverage and popularity, not included?  If curling makes it into the winter Olympics (albeit without the bar) why does lawn bowling, an amazingly popular sport, not make it into the summer games.  Again, we need a better definition of a sport.

(3) The original Olympic Games attracted athletes from all over the world (as seen from Greece) but nobody kept score of medals won by nationality.  The athletes didn't represent their country: they represented themselves.  Who cares where the athletes come from in these days of worldwide migration?  If I were in charge, I would cut out the medal tallies and all use of flags and national anthems.  Wouldn't that do wonders for international relations? 

(4) And finally a note to NBC: good job but not nearly enough coverage of the women's beach volleyball.  August 29, 2004.

#15: CHEWING GUM.  Before I came to this country I suspected that chewing gum was a foul commie plot to make Americans look stupid, so it was a fair scunner to discover that this chap Wrigley was actually held in quite high regard.  Ball parks named after him and all.  Good heavens, you gum-chewers, have you ever seen yourselves in the mirror?  Here's how bad it is, on a logarithmic scale:

1:    Chewing gum with your mouth closed

10:    Chewing gum with your mouth open

100:    Chewing gum with your mouth open and displaying the gum for all to see

1000:    Chewing gum with your mouth open and displaying the gum for all to see, with accompanying sound effects

10000:    Chewing bubble gum

100000:    Chewing bubble gum and making those obscene cracking noises

Next week, if I live: Chewing tobacco, crunching ice and other bestial habits.  June 20, 2004.

#14: ONLY DAYS.  I know it doesn't take much to be a journalist, but what happened to the archetypal gruff old editor?  When a journalist says or writes that something happened "only days" (or hours, or weeks) after something else happened, I want to shout out "How many days, you lazy sod?"  This is lazy reporting and, what's even more regrettable, lazy editing.  March 21, 2004.

#13: OUTSOURCING.  I'm not sure that I fully understand the arguments against "outsourcing".  Maybe I'm thick, or just more than normally obtuse.  The argument appears to be that a U.S. company should not deprive U.S. workers of jobs by moving the manufacture of a product or the provision of a service from the U.S. to another country.  Never mind the economics, this is apparently a rotten, awful, unpatriotic, dastardly thing to do.  If this were so, it must follow, must it not, that to buy any foreign product or service is bad.  I mean, they make Camembert, of a sort, in California.  How dare I buy Camembert that was made in France?  I'm depriving honest, hard-working, freedom-loving Californians of work!  And the logic doesn't stop there.  For if it's wrong for Americans to buy foreign products and services, how can it be any less wrong for foreigners to buy products and services made or provided in the United States?  See where that gets you!  This is all a load of horsefeathers: Adam Smith's theories still apply.  March 19, 2004.

#12: TERRORIST-FRIENDLY REPORTING.  Stimulated by a like-thinker, I want to beef about reporters who refer to the actions of terrorists as "tragedies" or "incidents" or even, heaven help us, "events".  They are atrocities, dammit, not events.  Atrocities, atrocities, atrocities.  Being mealy-mouthed about it gives these bastards encouragement.  And while we're on this theme, why do reporters always say that such-and-such a terrorist organization (i.e. bunch of homicidal loonies) "claimed" responsibility for the latest atrocity?  "Claiming" responsibility for something suggests that the something is a something to be proud of.  I want to hear it reported that Hizballah, or whoever, admitted responsibility for their latest atrocity.  Let's get things in perspective, guys.  September 6, 2003.

P.S.: I have since discovered that the British Broadcasting Corporation won't allow the use of the word "terrorist" in its news reporting, apparently because to do so might be thought to be judgmental.  One man's, sorry, one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, you know.  Don't it make you want to puke?  June 21, 2004.

#11: TATTOOS.  Let's be blunt (for a change).  Unless you are either Polynesian or a sailor, tattoos are for idiots.  For Polynesians, it's a centuries-old tradition that is strikingly beautiful.  It's a centuries-old tradition for sailors too, although, like those other centuries-old naval traditions - rum, sodomy and the lash - naval tattoos are not particularly beautiful.  For everyone else, it's stupid.  You might as well wear a sign round your neck that says "I'm stupid", an observation that has been confirmed by a recent study at the University of Connecticut: they discovered that the probability of a person being tattooed is inversely proportional to the level of education achieved.  As a follow-up, they could correlate the frequency of tattoos to the frequency of smoking cigarettes.  August 7, 2003.

#10: LATINOS AND HISPANIC-AMERICANS.  Why do people from Central and South America like to call themselves either Latinos or Hispanic-Americans?  This makes no sense at all.  Latin was the language of Rome and the adjacent region of what is now called Italy.  What has this to do with Spanish-speaking people from Central and South America?  Sure, Latin is the principal base for the Spanish language, but so it is of Italian, Portuguese, French and even English.  Hispanic means "of or pertaining to Spain".  Logically, a Hispanic-American is a person from Spain living in America.  Why would you use it of people from Central and South America living in the U.S.?  In fact, one might think that people from Central and South America, whether resident in the U.S. or not, would want to forget about their Spanish heritage.  It's not exactly something to celebrate.  And Spanish is a language that has limited value outside Spain and South America.  August 2, 2003.

#9: PLUCKY LITTLE BELGIUM.  I think that it's only appropriate that it is Belgium that has a law allowing it to prosecute people who it considers to have committed war crimes or other atrocities, no matter where or when.  After all, Belgium's always been noted for being morally superior to the rest of us, hasn't it?  Proud, strong, ethical, brave, handsome, intelligent, witty: that's the Belgians for you.  You know, like Hercule Poirot.  (Can you name a single famous real-life Belgian?)  I'm sure we all remember what a tower of strength they were in WWI , and again in WWII.  But, maybe before they pick on General Franks, they should ask themselves why they didn't go after Saddam Hussein.  And while they're about it, maybe they should start these prosecutions at home before they pick on citizens of other, less fortunate, countries.  Belgium was the most incompetent, corrupt and inhumane of all the colonial powers of the modern era.  Its desperately sorry performance in Africa is probably only overshadowed by that of Spain in Central and South America in an earlier, crueler, age.  In addition, Belgium's current hands-off attitude to the problems it created in the Congo make it at least partially responsible for the continued deaths of millions in that wretched region.  Prosecute your own war criminals first, Belgium: then you might have a tiny, tiny shred of credibility in this arena.  May 21, 2003.

#8: DON'TCHA JUST LOVE THESE CONFUSED ANTI-WAR TYPES?  I get a certain amount of amusement from the anti-war crowd's use of the V-sign, as displayed at the Oscars, for example, by the fragrant Ms. Sarandon.  They think, poor fools, that it means "peace" when, of course, it really means "victory".  V for Victory, geddit?  As made famous by Winston Churchill before Ms Sarandon was born.  I don't know when the so-called peace movement adopted this symbol: I suppose that it was at about the same time as it adopted the CND symbol.  The CND symbol?  Yes: that circle with the symbolic rocket inside it was originally designed in 1958 as the symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.  The policy of the CND was unilateral nuclear disarmament, i.e., we in the west had to give up nuclear weapons but not the other guys.  (Now there's a thoroughly discredited philosophy.)  It says so much for the wit and intelligence of the anti-war crowd, many of whom are, of course, sincere and well intentioned, blah, blah, blah, that they couldn't manage to think up some symbols of their own.  April 10, 2003.

P.S.: It has been suggested to me that the V-sign might have been used by Roman soldiers ordering five more beers.  Who can say if there's any truth in this, but it's a very pleasing thought.
Churchill 'V' Sign               

#7: SHORT I, LONG A.  I would be pretty irritated if foreign politicians and journalists couldn't manage to pronounce "America" correctly.  Wouldn't you?  So why can so many U.S. politicians and journalists not manage to pronounce "Iraq" correctly?  It isn't hard.  It has a short i and a long a: i-rark.  Not i-rack and not eye-rack.  I-rark.  And while we're on this tack, these nitwits might also note that in Arabic, as a general rule, there are no stresses.  It's sad-dam hoos-sane, with equal emphasis on each syllable.  It's not sad'm or s'dam and it's not h'sane.  April 10, 2003.

#6: WHY ALL THE FUSS ABOUT SPAM?  I don't see what's so all-fired annoying about spam.  It's instantly recognizable as such, without any need to open it, let alone read it, and it's the work of a micro-second to delete it unopened.  No harder than throwing fourth-class mail into the waste bin.  (And remember that we pay to have fourth-class mail delivered: since the U.S. Postal Service only charges bulk mailers a small fraction of what it charges the rest of us, we are effectively subsidizing the junk.)  Telemarketing is vastly more irritating than either spam or junk mail, because you can't avoid it, even if you hang up on the poor benighted get-a-life telemarketer.  What's the point of having Caller ID if it can't be used to screen out telemarketers?  Let's assassinate some telephone company CEOs.  March 6, 2003.

#5: WASHINGTON APOLOGIES.  It's never-endingly fascinating to me that politicians seem to be incapable of apologizing.  The process apparently has four steps.  Initially they don't appear to realize that they have said something stupid and offensive.  Then they issue a carefully worded but conditional apology, which goes "If I've offended anyone, then I apologize."  This can be translated as "I'm not in the least sorry for what I said but this is intended to placate that annoying group in the corner that's making all the fuss."  Third, when step two proves to be insufficient, as it nearly always does, they go for a slightly broader apology accompanied by some kind of rambling and confused attempt to justify what was said, usually blaming it on special but irrelevant circumstances, such as "I didn't realize the microphone was on".  Finally, they act as if it's all old news, saying things such as "I have already apologized for my remarks: I think it's now time to move on."  I suppose this inability to apologize is to be expected, given the size of the average politician's ego, but I would still like, one day, to hear a politician say something such as "That was the stupidest thing I've ever said, in a lifetime of saying stupid things.  There was absolutely no excuse for it.  It was outrageous and offensive and I apologize to everybody without reservation."  I'm not holding my breath.  December 14, 2002.

#4: BEARING POINT?  SCREAMING POINT, MAYBE.  In all the magazines and even on television, we are being blitzed by a multi-million-dollar campaign on behalf of Bearing Point, the former KPMG Management Consulting.  One might think that a management consulting company would be concerned to present itself to the marketplace as lucidly and constructively as possible, but, in this case, apparently not.  Did you ever read or hear such unadulterated BS?  What the **** does it mean?  Why don't they just admit that they are embarrassed to think that they might be associated in some way with a firm of accountants?  (Ugh, accountants, nasty, get away from me.)  And why would the fact that a professional golfer wears a visor with their logo on it make me want to hire them?  These people are deranged.  Of course Andersen Consulting did the same thing: they are now called Accenture, which may possibly be even more ridiculous than Bearing Point: it's a toss-up.  It comes as a pleasant surprise to see that Price Waterhouse Coopers' consulting biz, recently sold to IBM, is now called IBM Management Consulting.  Goodness, we can actually understand from their name what they do for a living: whatever next?  November 5, 2002.

#3: WHY DO JOURNALISTS USE "SET" SO MUCH?  I imagine that we all realized long ago that journalists are not actually required to have much of a command of the English language and that editors these days don't actually do much editing.  One usage that is now common in the print media but that is never heard in real life is "set", as in "Carlyle is set to close venture fund" in today's Wall Street Journal.  What does "set" add?  What does it mean?  Wouldn't "Carlyle to close venture fund" convey the same meaning?  And wouldn't it do it more succinctly?  What do they actually teach them at journalism schools, if they don't teach them either to write or to ask intelligent questions?  If journalism really were a profession, as journalists like to think, it would have some standards.  October 2, 2002.

#2: WHY HAVE HISTORIANS TAKEN TO USING THE PRESENT TENSE?  It seems as though, every time you hear a historian interviewed on radio or TV nowadays, he or she is using the present tense to describe historical events.  Stuff like "President Lincoln goes to Gettysburg and delivers his famous address".  I suppose that they think this practice gives immediacy and vitality to a subject that many school-kids and not a few adults consider to be stuffy and irrelevant.  It doesn't.  It's bad English, it's misleading for children, it's stupid and it's extremely irritating.  The English language has a past tense for the specific purpose of describing past events and a present tense for the specific purpose of describing present events.  You wouldn't use the past tense to describe present events and you shouldn't use the present tense to describe past events.  Stop it.  July 30, 2002.

#1: WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE "HOMELAND" SECURITY?  Am I the only person who is uncomfortable with this use of the word "homeland"?  For someone who was born in London only a few weeks before Hitler invaded Poland, "homeland" is a word that has very unpleasant connotations.  Could we not call it something else?  The Department of National Security, possibly, or does that sound too much like a fascist state?  The Department of Internal Security, or does that have communist overtones?  How about the Department of Domestic Security?  July 29, 2002.