Jacob Weisberg, who turned the Bushisms industry into a nice source of income for six years or so, must be even more excited than Rupert Murdoch about the possibility that Sarah Palin will make a serious run for president in 2012. Weisberg's Palinisms feature at Slate has already notched 71 little items, and the first […]
On January 4, Cornel West was asked on MSNBC to evaluate the state of the country and President Obama's performance. On January 5 and 6, Rush Limbaugh carried on at some length about a speech error in Prof. West's answer. On January 7, Ann Althouse joined the conversation. My modest contribution today is to describe […]
Comedians and cartoonists continue to have fun with Sarah Palin's use of refudiate, and her Shakespeare-citing defense — here's Jeff Danziger's editorial cartoon for 7/20/1010:
[Update 6/20/2010 — The linked CNN story has been extensively modified, for the better. The headline is now "Language mavens exchange words over Obama's Oval Office speech," and the article now highlights Ron Yaros along with Payack, and incorporates some information from this post. Fev at headsuptheblog has some before-and-after analysis.] It's amazing what a […]
James Taranto starts out his latest Best of the Web column with some clever wordplay, based on the status of English as a semi-negative-concord language ("He Hasn't Accomplished Nothing", 12/1/2009): Slate's Jacob Weisberg doesn't think Barack Obama has accomplished nothing, and Weisberg ain't usin' no bad grammar neither. Weisberg disputes the "conventional wisdom about Obama"–to […]
From President-elect Obama's latest weekly YouTube Address: I know that passing this plan won't be easy. I will need, and seek, support from Republicans and Democrats; and I'll be welcome to ideas and suggestions from both sides of the aisle. (emphasis added) This sounds to me like an amalgam of 1. … ideas and suggestions […]
In the Oct. 13 New Yorker, James Wood commented at length on Sarah Palin's pronunciation of verbiage in her interview with Sean Hannity ("Verbage: The Republican War on Words"), closing with this paragraph: Hearing her being interviewed by Sean Hannity, on Fox News, almost made one wish for a Republican victory in November, so that […]
What with all the controversy over Sarah Palin's views and (lack of) qualifications to be President, as far as I can tell thus far no one has claimed that she is prone to linguistic errors. That's really too bad. If only she would make the right sort of error, rather than the mundane bushisms we […]
Here we go again. Reporters and Republicans have been making a big deal out of two slips of the tongue that occurred in quick succession during yesterday's rally introducing Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate. The ABC News version, for example, is Obama Misspeaks, Calls Biden 'The Next President'; Biden Calls Obama 'Barack America': […]
In John McCain's interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America this morning, he seemed to want to turn any discussion of "Afghanistan" into a discussion of Iraq, as in this exchange: DS: Does [Obama] deserve the credit for saying that there should be more troops in Afghanistan, and now the chairman of the Joint […]
I CAN'T TALK ENGLISH PROPER SAYS PREZZA Thus trumpeted a headline in last Wednesday's issue of The Sun (the UK's trashiest tabloid; Scottish edition, page 6). Prezza is John Prescott, a burly politician in the UK Parliament (at one time deputy prime minister), much loved for his newsworthiness. He makes amusing gaffes in his public […]