– Welcome to those coming from Blawg Review Awards 2005.
For our reaction to winning he “Creative Law Blog” Award
lawyer choosing caselaw to cite, we cherry-picked banned words from
annually, without critiquing the overall quality of the list. [e.g., we touted
the censoring of “blog” in 2005 and “bling-bling” in 2004]
So caught up in ends rather than means, f/k/a even urged readers to
make particular suggestions to LSSU for this year’s list. Now, how-
ever, under our newly adopted motto of “carpe diem” — Sicilian for
“complain daily” or maybe “wrap the fish with this weblog” — we’ve
got to come clean: the LSSU list is far too banal and amateurish to
deserve all the attention it garners, even considering that the New Year’s
holiday is usually a slow period for news.
In fact, given how little there is to do at LSSU, there
is no excuse for a list that appears to have been drawn out
of a hat, from unfiltered sources, and then embellished by
the remedial English class with explanations that mostly
came from the original complainant, unedited for proper logic,
grammar or syntax.
Why is f/k/a turning its mighty weblog cannon on this tiny educational
outpost? First, because we can; and second, because the college’s
Public Relations Department began the Banishment List in 1975 “as
a publicity ploy for little-known LSSU.” If the List is meant to attract
attention to LSSU, it is surely fair to ask what it tells us about this seat
of higher learning.
The history page for the List tells us:
“OLD&NEWyearS”
“The first list was dreamed up by [Public Relations Director
W. T. “Bill”] Rabe and a group of friends at a New Year’s
Eve party in 1975. The following day, he released the list
and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, nominations
for words and expressions to be banished have been invited
and accepted throughout the year. . . .
“After Rabe retired in 1987, the University copyrighted the
concept and continued the tradition. The popularity of the
effort shows no signs of dwindling. Hundreds of nominations
are received each year.”
Thus, the first List was done overnight (probably while imbibing spiked
eggnog), while LSSUers now toil for an entire year on each Banned List,
with input from around the world. Judge for yourself whether the 2006
List is an improvement on the 1976 version (or the ones in between).
We don’t think so.
Here’s Lake Superior State University’s 2006 list of words and
phrases banished “for mis-use, over-use and general uselessness”
(check out the accompanying “explanations” for the full effect):
– Surreal
– Hunker down
– Person of interest
– Community of learners
– Up-or-down vote
– Breaking news
– Designer breed
– FEMA
– First-time caller
– Pass the savings on to you!
– 97 percent fat-free
– An accident that didn’t have to happen
– Junk science
– Git-er-done
– Dawg
– Talking points
– Holiday tree
Right off, notice that there are 17 items. As George Carlin ably
demonstrated in his When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
(at 14), when you have a list, “Ten sounds important,” and other
numbers just don’t seem serious. Seventeen suggests there
simply were no clear criteria for making the cut.
More persuasive on the lack of a standard is the fact that so
many of the items have nothing to do with the year 2005. As the
AP reports notes, “Many of the phrases banned this year are not
new.” To which I add, “and were not used in a noticeably different
or increased manner last year.” Examples are:
“first-time caller” — should have been banned
at least of decade ago by Rush Limbaugh himself.
“pass the savings on to you!” — I bet a Michigan
fisherman was using this sales pitch before the
State got into the Union.
“97 percent fat-free” — not this well-padded List
“Talking points” — was all talked-out years ago
“An accident that didn’t have to happen” — not
exactly a cliche. Was it used a lot in 2005?
Larry the Cable Guy t-shirt
Frankly, I saw no uptick in the use of “surreal” and I had
never even heard of “Git-Er-Done” until I saw it on this List
(perhaps a side benefit of my avoiding sports channels).
Are the students and professors (and PR folk) at LSSU
watching too much television, or am I watching too little?
As for “breaking news,” all urgency was sucked out of
that phrase with the birth of 24-hour news cycles (not to
mention Entertainment Tonight).
The List-makers also seem to be willing to throw out both
the baby and the frozen bath water. “Dawg” (which was
the online Rap Dictionary), for example, comes in handy
when a guy wants to show a degree of amiability toward
another male, without showing too much affection. Also,
we simply can’t go around banning all terms of endearment
that refer to animals.
law enforcement to use when it does not have sufficient
information (or strategically is not ready) to classify some-
one as a suspect, subject, target. Before banning it, we
suggest the fire science and criminal justice faculty and
students at LSSU come up with a more appropriate term.
What does the Banished Word List tell us about LSSU?
We don’t know whether the List was actually drafted by
teachers, students or public relations staff, but we can say
that whoever is responsible can’t stay on task, anticipate
consequences, or write persuasively. All in all, not the
kind of image that would seem to help the School’s
admissions mission.
Just as George Carlin whittled the Commendments down
from Ten to Two, we’d like to suggest that the LSSU List
would be better if stripped down to Four timely phrases
this year:
• Up-or-down vote
• Designer breed
• Junk science
• Git-er-done
We’re giving “Git-er-Done” the benefit of the doubt,
(mostly so we can use this nifty image again by Cable Guy).
But, we (a) will all need FEMA at some point and should not
throw out the acronym; (b) should retain the right to “hunker
down” as necessary; and (c) need to be reminded about the
faux War on Christmas that was sparked this year by Holiday
Trees.
Skeptics might think that this critique stems from LSSU’s failure
to include our choice for the most odious phrase of the year —
“nuclear option.” Skeptics aren’t always wrong, but we believe
our motives are pure. Of course, if you happen to be making
your own List of Banned or Closely-Regulated Words and Phrases,
please do check out our argument regarding “nuclear option,”
which we (like columnist Ellen Goodman) believe should be
limited to “the real thing” — nuclear war or nuclear power plants.
Once “nuclear option” was used by Senators and the press to
refer to the filibuster rules of the U.S. Senate, its use spread
to other political and social actions and decisions that various
actors or reports thought might have serious consequences.
The f/k/a Gang believes this misused, overused and confusing
metaphor is representative of a sorry trend of verbal abuse that
amounts to neglect of our language legacy. As we said last
May:
“The lazy linguistic practice (often perpetrated
and perpetuated by the popular media) of using familiar,
analogous situations not merely to explain a new concept,
but also to name it, is making a mess of our language, with
more and more phrases simply making no sense on their face.”
(We used “black box” and “DNA finger-prints” as examples)
But, taking the term “nuclear option” out of the realm of war
strategy, and using it in the context of U.S. Senate filibuster
rules is several steps farther down the road toward language
lunacy. I don’t care that a politican used the phrase. The
media are in the communications business, they need to use
words that express meaning. Did anyone think of calling it the
Filibuster-Buster Option?
“toiletpaperf” Does LSSU give “gentleman’s C’s”? Maybe next year’s List
will deserve such a grade. For now, we’re going to hand out a “D”
and hope the sting will motivate all those involved in creating the
Banished Word List to try harder and do better. The List might be
done “tongue-in cheek,” but there is no reason that cheeky tongues
can’t be eloquent, subtle, and insightful.
p.s. We would also like to nominate “heh” as a word that should
be banned from the Blogiverse — or at least self-censored by any
self-respecting weblogger other the Big Guy himself. Merely alluding
to Prof. Reynolds is not a good enough excuse for using this incredibly
overused, surreally stale exclamation, whether to show mild-ironic
“Old&NewYearS” After all this discussion of unwanted words, a new year
is a good time to reprise some of my favorite John Stevenson
haiku and senryu:
First, the title poems from three of his published
volumes of poetry Some of the Silence (1999),
quiet enough (2004), Something Unerasable (1995):
a deep gorge . . .
some of the silence
is me
snowy night
sometimes you can’t be
quiet enough
under the
blackest doodle
something unerasable
“snowflakeS” And, a miscellany of poems I wish I had
written:
wind-beaten marquee
saying only
“Coming Soon”
proud host
his orchard bursting
with fireflies
– from Some of the Silence (Red Moon Press, 1999)
the tethered dog
watches the guide dog
enter a deli
one last look
through the old apartment
a dry sponge
the mirror
wiped clean
for a guest
“stevensonQuietN” – quiet enough (Red Moon Press, 2004)
city lights —
the brightest are all
selling something
dawn
before there is any
tune in my head
– from Upstate Dim Sum (2005/I)
“AnnouncerS”
January 2, 2006
LSSU’s banished words list get a D grade
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