A just God would bring back the Tower of Babel
A lot of times, I think it's really important that people sit down and take a look at the options before them, and like, you know, really analyze a situation and get more perspectives, and not really do anything until they know what's going on, because whatever they do will continue to affect them into the future and beyond.
Maybe you have heard someone say something like this before. What they have just told you is that they might be interested in making a decision. Many of us however, prefer to use far more words than are necessary for basic discourse. Not an endemic social ill or pervasive problem, the use of absurd verbosity at the expense of content and logic is a frequent problem/annoyance that I feel is increasing in our fair language.
The American Heritage Dictionary offers 18 synonyms for "verbose" against only two antonyms.
Ordinary citizens are not the only ones to be extremely guilty of this heinous crime of verbosity. The Neverending Story V (the 2008 presidential election) has given ample opportunity for less-than-brilliant communications majors to expound vociferously not on actual issues, but worthlessly on intangibles. I recently saw the following argument occur nearly verbatim on a major news channel:
Pundit One: "Obama is for change. Change is good for America, and without change, we'll be the same. In fact, we'll be no different than we were."
Pundit Two: "I disagree. Obama may be for change, but Clinton wants to take America in a new direction. That message resonates better with voters. We need to take this country somewhere else. Otherwise, we'll be in the same place."
Pundit One: "But change is a better way to achieve a new direction."
And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.
Perhaps you don't think this tendency for babbling is endemic. If you're really serious, I advise you to Google the words "Miss Teen South Carolina" and click on the first response. Most people have seen the 2007 video of Miss Teen South Carolina's remarkably inastute (not a word, but it should be) assessment of Americans' geography skills, which concurrently also addresses Americans' question-answering skills.
Maybe you have heard someone say something like this before. What they have just told you is that they might be interested in making a decision. Many of us however, prefer to use far more words than are necessary for basic discourse. Not an endemic social ill or pervasive problem, the use of absurd verbosity at the expense of content and logic is a frequent problem/annoyance that I feel is increasing in our fair language.
The American Heritage Dictionary offers 18 synonyms for "verbose" against only two antonyms.
Ordinary citizens are not the only ones to be extremely guilty of this heinous crime of verbosity. The Neverending Story V (the 2008 presidential election) has given ample opportunity for less-than-brilliant communications majors to expound vociferously not on actual issues, but worthlessly on intangibles. I recently saw the following argument occur nearly verbatim on a major news channel:
Pundit One: "Obama is for change. Change is good for America, and without change, we'll be the same. In fact, we'll be no different than we were."
Pundit Two: "I disagree. Obama may be for change, but Clinton wants to take America in a new direction. That message resonates better with voters. We need to take this country somewhere else. Otherwise, we'll be in the same place."
Pundit One: "But change is a better way to achieve a new direction."
And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.
Perhaps you don't think this tendency for babbling is endemic. If you're really serious, I advise you to Google the words "Miss Teen South Carolina" and click on the first response. Most people have seen the 2007 video of Miss Teen South Carolina's remarkably inastute (not a word, but it should be) assessment of Americans' geography skills, which concurrently also addresses Americans' question-answering skills.
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GEORGE HAPP
posted 2/23/08 @ 10:07 AM EST
Not an inastute observation
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