“Watch out for this one, fellas.” On Gender, and Tone.

The left blogs are buzzing about Senator McCain and Governor Palin’s joint interview with Katie Couric (see Americablog.com).  There is much talk about McCain appearing as Palin’s chaperone or her “daddy” to protect her from hard questions.  Okay, we get it.  He’s like her father out there. Yes, to the left bloggers, that is [...]

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Langauge is Power: On Conflict

We love to frame things in terms of conflict.  Liberals versus conservatives, McCain versus Obama, Main Street versus Wall Street, Coke versus Pepsi, Us versus them, good versus evil, Fox versus MSNBC.
CNN Washington Bureau Chief Nina Easton has an article on CNN.com this morning entitled “Main Street turns against Wall Street.” That’s fine. [...]

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I Love You, Buddy. On How We Say.

Some lessons are hard to learn.
Case in point: I always think it’s a good idea to send a text message with some nuanced critique of some aspect the receiver’s worldview or personal life.  Invariably, the result is great calamity of anger and apology (“How could you be so insensitive?”  “No, no – I meant that [...]

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It’s the ________, ________. On Word Fatigue.

Answer: economy, stupid

Word fatigue.  I define it as “that feeling you’re starting to get when somebody mentions the word ‘green.’”  It’s a word that has been killed, murdered by politicians, the media, PR for terribly polluting companies and industries, your local canvass bagging vegan down at the organic food co-op (full disclosure: I haven’t willingly [...]

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Mission Statement

The purpose of this blog is to offer my analysis of media on both the right and left (and the center, and everywhere else), including blogs and mainstream news and anything else that piques my interest.
The subject matter of this blog is primarily politics and rhetoric or related issues regarding language that I find worthy [...]

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