Wednesday, March 22, 2006

 

This is Literally Mega-Bitch Wednesday

I was at a New Year's party my first year in college with a high school friend and some other people I went to high school that I didn't really like. I was pretty bored when a girl (and yes, I do remember her name, mostly because in German her last name was really funny to me) put on a new pair of boots and stated, quite emphatically, "I can literally jam in these boots."

It was the 1980's, and I suppose someone being proud of her ability to "jam" in her boots wasn't so out of line. Oddly enough, that wasn't the part that I remembered so clearly, it was that she could literally jam in her boots. Literally? I began to wonder why she felt the need to add that particular adjective. Could she "jam" any other way than literally? I began to wonder if she could figuratively "jam" in those boots. I began to wonder if she'd tried, then decided literally "jamming" was a better choice.

OK, so I sometimes get bored at parties and my mind grabs onto the smallest little thing in an attempt to entertain itself. I understand that people talking at parties are completely impromptu, that this girl with the funny German name wasn't working off of a script and, yes, there was alcohol involved. Hell, I certainly don't want people correcting my spelling and grammar on this blog, but I sure wish people would think before they opened their mouths.

But at least she used literally in proper context. I was listening to Colin Cowherd the other day on ESPN Radio (his name is funny in English) and he was talking about the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I'll have admit a personal bias before I go any further. I don't like Colin Cowherd. He replaced Tony Kornheiser of Pardon the Interuption as host of that day part. I don't always agree with Kornheiser, but I find him funny, insightful and as a writer for The Washington Post, literate. He's literally literate.

So Cowherd is talking about the NCAA tournament and coments that certain great college basketball teams of the past would literally destroy what we consider great teams today. His point was that those Duke teams with Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurly would have no trouble defeating last year's champion or any other team we consider a great college basketball team today. His point was that great players only stay in college for a few years now before heading off to the NBA and the big bucks. He's right. Laettner, Hill and Hurley all played through their senior years at Duke, they had played together for a number of years. They were a team, not just a collection of great individual players.

But Colin Cowherd speaks for a living. The English language is his primary tool. He should know what literally means before he uses it in a sentence. To take Colin Cowherd literally, he stated that if those great Duke teams were to play a great team from today, the great team from today would cease to exist. Literally. They would be dead, or something would happen that caused them to be literally destroyed. Not figuratively destroyed. Not morally destoryed. Actually destroyed. Duke would somehow kill this year's Memphis or Villanova or Duke. Nasty business that.

I don't mean to be down on Colin Cowherd specifically. I hear other "talent" on ESPN radio, on any talk radio make similar mistakes. I'm sure Tony Kornheiser, with all of his talent with the English language has made the exact same mistake. I hear people on talk radio who never could have passed a middle school English course. I don't mean grammar (the grammar on talk radio isn't stellar, but that will happen with the spoken word, though) I mean vocabulary. Limited vocabulary, and misuse of the words they do use.

I realize that talk radio is personality driven, but it's just one more example of the disdain our society has for intelligence. Get rid of the smart guy, the guy who uses the language well, put some idiot on the air who makes dick and fart jokes. Dick and fart jokes have their place. I'm a big fan of dick and fart jokes. You could even say that I love dick and fart jokes.

Not literally, though....

BOJ

Comments:
Kornheiser is a pretty funny name, too.

Don't get me started on virtual versus actual reality. Or is that literal versus figurative reality?

Think I need to pinch myself.

Oh, and why has "no problem" become the standard response to "thank you"? I work with an English major who says that all the time. Maybe he's merely a figurative English major, though, not a literal one. Or virtual, not real.

Potato, poe-tah-toe, tomato, toe-mah-toe.
 
1Gal, it's all virtual. Check out the holographic universe (only clue you get, you shouldn't need more at your level). Literally speaking, BOJ is literate as can be. Speaking of reading, BOJ, have you ever read Miyamoto Musashis' "Book of Five Rings"? I think you would enjoy it, 'specially chapter five.
 
Ooooh, is this another physics discussion?
 
I'd never heard of Miyamoto Musashi, but I think "Book of Five Rings" is the next thing I'll read. I read through some of this online analysis just a bit ago. The internet is so cool! Anything referred to as "Japan's Art of War" is a must read.

T1G, Kornheiser is a funny name, I don't know how I let that slip past me. He had a (thankfully) short-lived sit-com based on some of his Post columns called Listen Up! starring Jason Alexander. Leave it to Hollywood to take something so wonderful and ruin it by turning it into drivel with a laff-track.

I like to think that the idea to turn Kornheiser's work into a TV show started out with a person who loved his work and wanted to share it with a wider audience, only to see it ruined by Network execs who "didn't think it would play in the stix."
 
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