Grammatically Infuriated

I seem to recall a time when Wolf Blitzer didn't annoy the hell out of me.  Whenever it was... and I just spent a minute or so trying to place it in context.... many years have past since then.  Now, his little face and little voice and little mouth make me want to scream.

We all have our annoyances; I'm just sharing mine out loud.

TBG likes listening to the talking heads of all descriptions.  We have this conversation periodically, when I open my ears and hear words strung together in vague approximation of sentences by bloviators on the left and the right.  I cannot argue with his response to my astonishment that he would spend time letting them into his ears let alone his brain. "Without being there myself, without seeing it in person, I can only gather as many facts and opinions as are out there and decide for myself what to believe."

He spends his days thinking and comparing and groaning aloud.  This afternoon we watched Wolf and his reporter deconstructing the Romney campaign's attack on President Obama's donors and the government contracts they received.

I thought CNN was the thoughtful arm of the media.

Duh.  What voter is naive enough to think that donors don't receive federal dollars?  That's what appropriations are all about.  Living in Tucson, where Raytheon is a major employer, I certainly hope that they are spreading their wealth around Washington, reminding our legislators that jobs are needed here, too.  I'd be disappointed if they and their spokesmen lobbyists were not extending their largesse on both sides of the aisle, covering all their bets.

This is the best that they can come up with seemed to be the reporter's thesis.  His disdain mounted, Wolf's eyebrows lifted, and then the graphic came on the screen, the one with the misplaced apostrophe, the one that makes me throw pillows across the room.

I know you think that you're being very clever, using a grammatical rule.  Unfortunately for you, oh person who is typing the words I saw on the screen... and for the editor/supervisor who monitors your work..... its is possessive without the apostrophe.  It goes against the rule you think you are following.

When you see it's it means it is.  Nothing belongs to it at all. 

And so, there I sat, fuming at the folly of it all.  The facts are the facts.  A company gave money to the President's campaign, now that companies are people and can do that sort of thing, and then that company was awarded a federal contract.... or a grant... or an opportunity of some sort.  I was too infuriated by that errant ' to pay much attention to the content. 

This was CNN, not the local middle school's audio-visual department..... which would probably have a teacher who could correct the mistake before it went live so maybe it should've been in a middle school.  This was on television.  I remember when that meant something.

My grandparents, immigrants to this country at the turn of the 20th century, read four or five newspapers each day.  They listened to the radio.  They needed to learn the language and that was the best way to do so.  Care was taken with the words that were printed or broadcast; good grammar was absorbed along with the content. 

They went to the movies, where they read titles like this one, from Buster Keaton's The General

So I thought it best to hold her...... all that grammar packed into eight little words.  My grandparents learned English, their third (or in G'ma's mom's case, her fourth) language by imitation and through conversation.  I remember being chastised for using slang.... It's not right!

There were expectations of excellence, and no thought of dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.  Valentino, The Sheik, expected his audiences to contend with screens like this

And, somehow, they did.  G'ma remembers reading the titles aloud and having them read to her.  There was hooting and hollering and laughing accompanying the pianist down in front, and then there was a low murmur when the words appeared as seatmates shared their English expertise with the newly arrived or the infantile.

Reading aloud as a group exercise... I'm loving the image right now.

And my brain is back at being furious with CNN and Wolf Blitzer and the reporter whose name I've blessedly forgotten.  If you are that flippant with the rules of grammar, why should I not assume that you are simiarly oblivious to the rules of good reportage?  Why should I believe a word you say?  You obviously don't care about doing things well.. or right.... nor do you check your work.

Humph.  I am infuriated.