NEWSWEAK
puffstrong.
Almost as if they knew I'd be back in full and
fulminating force this morning, the fine folks at
Newsweek
have served up a fortuitously flabbergasting top
story
feature:
That's right, kids. This morning's top story on a national news weekly web site -- for more than two-and-a-half hours now -- is a recounting of Bill's less-than-rapt-and-adoring gazes at Hillary while the Clintons stumped in Iowa. On Monday. The very idea is infuriating -- this is the most substantive campaign trail story of the week? didn't someone at least do a feature on Michelle Obama's favorite cookout recipes? -- and the execution is nearly insufferable, save for a few choice, if obviously unintentional, bits of comic relief. Like, say, this sentence:
Maybe the lackadaisical crowd, which he so famously feeds off of, hadn’t given him enough energy.
We'll ignore the awkward rhythm and questionable grammar of which he so famously feeds off of -- much as we wisely ignored that last news item (Fast Cars, Small Penises and Australian Men) above; if you have less restraint than I, click here -- and get right down to the sentence's most shocking revelation: I had no idea that Bill Clinton famously feeds off of any lackadaisical crowds, much less that one. (Do they even have editors at Newsweek anymore?)
But my favorite sentence, not only because it contains my biggest communicative pet peeve, which it so fabulously feeds off of, but also because I suspect it would not recognize the face of irony were it to walk up and feed off its lackadaisical diction, is this one:
One hates to say this about anyone, but she is Kerryesque on the stump.
That's right, folks. In a sentence that could not be any less elegant if you vomited upon it, reporter Susannah Meadows, throwing both syntax and self-awareness to the wind, criticizes two other communicators for their stiff and awkward efforts. (Which seems to me a bit like Sanjaya Malakar singing a song about how William Hung and Kevin Covais can't sing. But I digress.) One loves to say this about writers like Susannah Meadows, but she is Kerryesque at the keyboard. And, worse yet, Bushesque at the mirror.
As are, it seems, her editors and webmasters, who have this morning mistaken her typing for writing, her story for news, and their readers' minds for mush.
That's right, kids. This morning's top story on a national news weekly web site -- for more than two-and-a-half hours now -- is a recounting of Bill's less-than-rapt-and-adoring gazes at Hillary while the Clintons stumped in Iowa. On Monday. The very idea is infuriating -- this is the most substantive campaign trail story of the week? didn't someone at least do a feature on Michelle Obama's favorite cookout recipes? -- and the execution is nearly insufferable, save for a few choice, if obviously unintentional, bits of comic relief. Like, say, this sentence:
Maybe the lackadaisical crowd, which he so famously feeds off of, hadn’t given him enough energy.
We'll ignore the awkward rhythm and questionable grammar of which he so famously feeds off of -- much as we wisely ignored that last news item (Fast Cars, Small Penises and Australian Men) above; if you have less restraint than I, click here -- and get right down to the sentence's most shocking revelation: I had no idea that Bill Clinton famously feeds off of any lackadaisical crowds, much less that one. (Do they even have editors at Newsweek anymore?)
But my favorite sentence, not only because it contains my biggest communicative pet peeve, which it so fabulously feeds off of, but also because I suspect it would not recognize the face of irony were it to walk up and feed off its lackadaisical diction, is this one:
One hates to say this about anyone, but she is Kerryesque on the stump.
That's right, folks. In a sentence that could not be any less elegant if you vomited upon it, reporter Susannah Meadows, throwing both syntax and self-awareness to the wind, criticizes two other communicators for their stiff and awkward efforts. (Which seems to me a bit like Sanjaya Malakar singing a song about how William Hung and Kevin Covais can't sing. But I digress.) One loves to say this about writers like Susannah Meadows, but she is Kerryesque at the keyboard. And, worse yet, Bushesque at the mirror.
As are, it seems, her editors and webmasters, who have this morning mistaken her typing for writing, her story for news, and their readers' minds for mush.
Posted: Thu - July 5, 2007 at 09:52 AM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM