All About the Grammar

"To be, or not to be: that is the gotcha question." — The Daily Dorkmonger.

I have to admit it was pretty funny last week when Sarah Palin assaulted the English language, but let's not forget that she was also assaulting religious tolerance:

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Yep, the latest conservative conniption is over the plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero in New York City.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was also quick to give his puerile opinion: "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia."

The old windbag might want to pause for a second and examine the irony here. If needed, he might also want to brush up on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Then take another minute to review the politics of Saudi Arabia -- a theocratic monarchy which considers the Qur'an their constitution. And then tell me again why freedom-loving Americans should emulate the religious intolerance of such a backassward country?

If Newt can't admit that freedom of speech and religion are our greatest strengths, if he can't admit that Saudi Arabia should try to emulate us and not the other way around, then he can never again utter the old canard "they hate us for our freedom."

Now, back to the subject of Sarah Palin's utterances. While trying to cover for her fake words, she tweeted, "‘Refudiate,’ ‘misunderestimate,’ ‘wee-wee’d up.’ English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

At least she's not pretending to be god this time... but Shakespeare? Really? Who has the balls to compare themselves to Shakespeare?

Seven Dirty Words You Won't Be Fined For

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An Even-Tempered Apology

I guess 50% calm and 50% furious makes him "even-tempered." This is what the real Rahm Emanual should be saying:



It also goes to show that with a bit of creativity, we can avoid the offensive r-word. Babies? Turncoats? Harpies? Hilarious!

Nutpicking

Oh how I love learning new words! I'm talking about words that aren't just new to me, but are new to the English language. I'm doubly thrilled when the definition seems long overdue.

Nutpicking: The practice of sifting through the comments of blogs, email threads, discussion groups and other user generated content in an attempt to find choice quotes proving that the advocates for or against a particular political opinion are unreasonable, uninformed extremists.

The word was apparently coined by readers of The Washington Monthly in 2006, so maybe I'm not a fashionable early adopter, but I'm early enough to identify the nutpicking strategy in the 2008 election. The right-wing blogs are pointing out anti-semitic hatred on the Obama blogs, and the left-wing blogs are pointing out the racial slurs on McCain's blog.

Of course, there are bound to be some crazies in every movement, but I must point out the irony that it was McCain who introduced the Stop the Online Exploitation of Our Children Act of 2006 (PDF) which would have regulated blogs and held bloggers responsible for the comments posted by others... responsible to the tune of $300,000!

What a mess that law would have been! Consider the Twat-O-Tron script which spits out incoherent xenophobic rants. Now consider that when these rants are posted on the BBC's Have Your Say website, they are actually rated quite highly by other readers. (h/t Kuro5hin)

So if ever such a blog regulating bill passes, then the Internet will become a battle ground of nutpicking scripts attempting to incur penalties on enemy blogs by launching the weapon of stupid comments and bad grammar.

And I bet when you clicked this post you thought I'd be writing about what people do when they have crabs. Fooled ya.