CSotD: Wednesday Short Takes
Skip to comments
So my question, Tank, is where "at the end of the day" came from in the first place?
That is, I first heard it on BBC and I'm blaming them because they've been undermining our grasp of language for quite awhile now, particularly the prepositions.
Things are suddenly "different to" rather than "different from," and "based off of" instead of "based on," because some New Yorker readers decided anything sounds better in a pommy accent, or nearly anything.
But this expression has gone from their refined, delicate mouths throughout the whole damn population and now everybody is running around saying "At the end of the day," an expression I was heartily sick of before it jumped the Atlantic with a ferocity the zika virus can only envy.
Which is surprising, but I'm blaming the movie version of "Les Mis" for the fact that it didn't stay in Manhattan and the Hamptons.
I don't know whether the Brits picked it up from the play or whether the translators of the original French lyrics decided the true measure of wretched misery would be to sing a particularly grating lyric to one of the three tunes that the musical recycles throughout its length.
But it should have stayed on Broadway, not come out here amongst the decent people who speak as their forefathers and foremothers and foregrandparents did.
Juxtaposition of the Year
I know it's only January 4, but I'm calling it early and we can just pack up and head on home, 'cause the game is over for 2017. Nobody's gonna outjuxtapose this pair.
Oh well. At the end of the day, shit happens, and it is what it is.
Non-Juxtaposition of the Day
Steve Sack is the first cartoonist I've seen to comment on the GOP's Super Secret Double-Naught move as it turned out, rather than as it was originally trumpeted.
There are many people this morning opening their papers, or their browsers, to editorial cartoons about something that didn't happen after all. And there are a lot of editorial cartoonists wishing it were otherwise.
Which reminds me of a time about a dozen years ago, when I visited a classroom to do a "Target Date" exercise. The kids had chosen a date and then each wrote to a different newspaper, asking for a copy of the paper from that date, so they could compare how the news was covered in each, the size of each, the selection of comics, the stores advertised, etc.
As we went through them, one of the stories that stood out was about a tornado in Florida. Some papers had no coverage, some had one paragraph notes promising more later, some had pretty extensive stories.
When we probed a little more, we realized the tornado had hit at about 10:30 at night and the amount of coverage varied by time zone, with the East Coast papers shut out or nearly so and the West Coast papers having the longer stories.
However, Sack works in Minnesota, which isn't so far west as to provide fig leaves for anyone else. Especially for those on the West Coast.
Nice work.
Through the other end of the telescope
By contrast, Clay Jones comments on the revelation that Nixon purposely sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks in order to reduce Humphrey's claim to be the Peace Candidate in 1968.
Which I didn't know we didn't know.
I know we didn't know it then, but I thought we learned it two years ago. Apparently, we only thought we knew it then, but now we know we know it.
Wait — you mean Nixon really was a crook? Hand me my smelling salts!
But, while I'm inclined to quote Phil Ochs, "We've done it before, so why all the shock?", I like the parallel that Jones draws in his cartoon and accompanying essay:
It sounds very similar to our current president-elect who’s asking us to stop questioning hacking by Russia, and if we can just move on.
The problem, as I see it, is that people who didn't believe Nixon was a crook then won't believe he was a crook now.
And the people who believe in Trump now will always believe in Trump, no matter how many smoking guns emerge, and, if they only emerge, as in this case, a half-century after the fact, what the hell difference will it make anyhow?
And, for that matter, much as I agree with Jones, I'm not sure comparing Trump to Nixon does much to diminish him in the eyes of his fan base.
When you compare him to Hitler, they deny it.
When you compare him to David Duke, they shrug.
I think Clay Bennett may have the more practical approach: Simply mock and belittle him, not to change the minds of his loyalists, but to buck up the spirits of those who may start to feel that they are alone in wondering, didn't the writing on the barn wall used to say "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad"?
Did that change? Am I remembering it wrong? Why is everyone else bleating "Two Legs Better"?
Plus this juxtaposition
Republicans used to be fond of saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," but, as Eagan suggests, they're changed that to "If it ain't perfect, to hell with it."
And Toles predicts that whatever they do to the health care system is simply going to put it further out of reach.
I don't know that you'll ever convince the GOP faithful that Obamacare works, despite Nancy Pelosi's famously misused prediction that, once people had a chance to see it in action, they'd stop quibbling over minor details.
Still, if Ryan & Co are serious, their cunning plan may face the same fate as their ethics reform, because "old" and "stupid" are not synonyms, and, in Trump's shoes, I wouldn't try to replace Medicare with vouchers until my second term, assuming I wanted one.
Comments
Comments are closed.