“Anyone can commit an act of journalism.”

That’s what Ana Marie Cox said during last Sunday’s McLaughlin Group discussion devoted to “new media.” The panelists didn’t mention that neither New Media nor the older term for it—Web 2.0—is very new, but they clearly weren’t assuming their television audience to be Net-savvy multitaskers: Even blog was explained graphically (WEB + LOG) for those not yet up to speed.

Panelist Scott Gant’s book was cited, too, but one of the most genuinely important aspects (in my opinion) of New Media’s journalistic standards never came up. I raised my point in the following feedback submission:

Dear McLaughlin Group staff,

I enjoyed the discussion on September 2, 2007, about evolving journalistic practices in the Internet era, though I was a little surprised to see “new media” still treated as though it’s news.

In Ana Marie Cox’s words, “Anyone can commit an act of journalism.” That statement’s implicit allusion to vandalism made me realize that one area in which old media diverges significantly from the new is adherence to (or disregard for) conventions of style and usage. Generally speaking, dot-com companies—and individuals who self-publish on the Internet—don’t have access to, or possibly even perceive the need for, the editing and proofreading resources taken for granted in traditional mass media.

I wonder if it might be newsworthy that some people are actively trying to remedy that disparity. Even vigilant volunteers (as, for instance, at Wikipedia) are promoting a less anarchic, more grammatical model for the user-generated content that drives “Web 2.0.” Of course, it’s great to get the details right on principle—but when represented only by words, one’s reputation and success could be at stake, too. Raising people’s awareness of the role our writing plays is the first step of enterprises like my own (www.sharpermessage.com).

Best regards,

Whoops! I forgot to end my message with “BYE BYE.”

Duck, it’s a coup de gras!

On Sunday, September 2, 2007, Chris Matthews, speaking as host of his morning talk show, listed some Republican politicians whose behavior proved troublesome for the party’s image: Bob Livingston, Newt Gingrich, Mark Foley, David Vitter and “the latest coup de gras [sic]: Larry Craig.”

Wikipedia’s explanation under Coup de grâce is characteristically illuminating:

The French pronunciation of the phrase is [ku də gras], but English speakers sometimes mispronounce it as [ku de’gra]. Not pronouncing the final “c” is an example of a hyperforeignism: in French, this mispronunciation sounds like coup de gras, which means “a blow of fat.”

I didn’t know coup de gras was representative of a linguistic phenomenon; I wondered where Mr. Matthews might have encountered that mispronunciation. Now, for many viewers who will be citing The Chris Matthews Show as the place they heard it spoken that way, another hyperforeignism has been added—or its presence confirmed—in their own idiolects.

Did the WTC collapse form energy?

“It was just an enormous amount of energy that was being formed by the collapse of the building, and that energy compressed the air and caused the dust to be blown out of the side of the building.” Gene Corley, Structural Engineer, “The 9/11 Conspiracies: Fact or Fiction,” The History Channel.

Does that make sense from a scientific viewpoint? This statement caught my attention because I’d assumed that energy is released.

I admit that it’s been a long time since my high school physics class. (At least it was math-based; my college course was as close to a “mick”—i.e., an easy class with watered-down material (in this case for humanities majors)—as UCLA offered in those days.)

Wikipedia: “The total amount of mass and energy in a closed system … remains constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed ….”

Is this definition accepted only as applies to a “closed system”—which I’m not sure I understand!—or does it have broader application? Is it accepted as scientific fact, or considered an aspect of the theory of relativity?

Grasping the science is probably both beyond me and beside the point. I just wondered if a falling building forms energy, or if it’s plausible for a scientist to say that.

“Helmsley’s inheritance for her dog”

When one thinks of inheritance, is it implicitly from the perspective of the beneficiary? Is an inheritance—like a birthright—understood to be received or possessed, rather than bestowed or given? I think so, though I didn’t find supporting evidence in the definitions I found.

This was the announcement of an upcoming segment on Entertainment Tonight, WCBS-TV, on September 1, 2007:

“Inside Leona Helmsley’s inheritance for her dog.”

Helmsley’s point of view is established by the prepositional phrase for her dog. Wouldn’t what she gave her dog be better described as a bequest or a legacy? I feel pretty strongly that’s the case, but don’t have any explanation but the prosaic one: different words, different shades of meaning.

On a lighter note, the phrase brought to mind Groucho Marx’s old chestnut, too:

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too hard to read.”

Who is John Galt Construction?

Among the scars of 9/11 that are still visible in downtown Manhattan, none could be creepier than the Deutsche Bank building—an ugly, festering hulk that remains abandoned and shrouded after all these years. Following the fire that took the lives of two firefighters recently, New Yorkers seemed to wish this atrocious eyesore could just be teleported the hell out of there.

It looks like the wish for a magical solution even extended to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation! What else explains their motivation to hire a chimerical entity—The John Galt Corporation, aka John Galt Construction—as demolition contractor to take the building down?

This New York Times article mentions the plain reference to Atlas Shrugged, though it doesn’t comment on the irony that should also be apparent to the many people who’ve fancied Rand’s writings (at some point in their lifetimes, anyway).

I read The Fountainhead to steel myself for Atlas Shrugged, Rand’s real chef-d’oeuvre—a massive tome of fine print with a speech by John Galt himself extending for over 50 pages. (That makes Gary Cooper’s courtroom declamation in the film version of The Fountainhead, courtesy of Rand’s screenplay, seem brief in comparison!)

(Atlas Shrugged might remain forever unfilmable (“This project is indefintely [sic] delayed,” according to the Internet Movie Data Base entry dated June 18, 2007), but nonetheless it landed a place in The New York Public Library’s Books of the Century (in the chapter called Utopias & Dystopias, naturally). The NYPL list is fairly narrow, with just 150 books or so, too—and is worth having just for its graphics by the extraordinary Diana Bryan.)

The irony to which I referred, quite inescapable to me even as a high school student reading The Fountainhead, stems from the overabundance of horn-blowing Howard Roarks in the world who are, in reality, Peter Keatings. Considering the prevalence of problematic human self-perception in areas from appearance to intellect to character—ranging in severity from modest to ridiculous—who’s surprised that The John Galt Construction Company should go down in the flames of a classic NYC corruption scandal?

I guess we’re pretty inured to our classic scandals; local reporting seems almost restrained and tasteful. “They failed at essential tasks” sticks in my mind as representative.

The villians of Atlas Shrugged, typified by Dagny Taggart’s brother, James, are a mixture of Keating-style mediocrity and outright malevolence. But if I were the LMDC and awarding contracts, I’d rather have chosen The Jim Taggart Construction Company! They might not be competent contractors, but a rapier wit is a smarter choice any day than a moniker as questionable (and, quite possibly, delusional) as John Galt.

Keeping up with the Joanses?

“The Joans and the Smiths led similar lives, until the Joans decided to drive 106 miles to a casino down the Jersey Shore.”

That’s how the voiceover begins in a television commercial for a local venue called Empire City at Yonkers Raceway. (It’s in current rotation in the New York City area, and I don’t even understand the legal basis for a casino to operate in New York State—but that’s another story.)

My set is running in the background pretty often, so I heard this advertisement before watching it. And I recognized immediately that there must be people who didn’t grow up in families that tried to “keep up with the Joneses” (which, it turns out, has its own Wikipedia article)—or hearing about this vain endeavor, at least.

But until I saw the image that would either confirm or refute my presumption, my brain sought a context in which what I heard could be possible. Who were the Joans? Would I look at my television set and see a pair of lesbians? Or close friends who happened to share that name?

Dang. I turned around to find an unexceptional couple of heterosexuals after all, indistinguishable (even in their eagerness to gamble!) from the Smiths next door. Okay, so they’re not Joans. I hadn’t seriously believed they could be—but I wondered how many other people thought that the plural of Jones was Jones.

I might have staged a Googlefight called Jones vs. Joneses right away, but I wanted to see the contexts in which these forms were used, too. (For what it’s worth, Joneses loses the match.) I encountered some queries as to what the correct plural of Jones really is—and lots of putatively legitimate uses of “the Jones.” Wow.

I’ll concede that Google’s hits for “the Jones” could have turned up a love jones or two, but I doubt that that kind of jones accounts for such a significant part of the populace being off the mark! (And here’s something for which I was even less prepared—The Jones’ (used as an ordinary plural, not a plural possessive): “The Jones’ couldn’t keep up with the Smiths.”)

There’s some unmistakable confusion and hesitation about pluralizing words that already end in “s”—more specifically, the phonemes /s/ and /z/. And that’s probably due to the similarity between plural and possessive structures in English.

Yet we do tend to make possession explicit in our speech, even with monosyllabic words like Jones. Consider, for example, that Jones’ and Jones’s are both acceptable in writing; even though the former is more common, there’s a strong tendency to pronounce them the same manner, viz., with the extra syllable that denotes possession: [dʒoʊnz.əz].

What’s the role of the number of syllables in a word? When offered a polysyllabic surname ending in a sibilant—“Douglas,” for example—wouldn’t most speakers know instinctively that the plural is the Douglases (and likewise, pronounce it [dəg.ləs.əz]? Sure, some might spell it the Douglas’, but I honestly don’t think many would offer the Douglas unless they were trying to pluralize Dougla!

Why, then, does it seem to be easier to add the syllable [əz] to indicate possession than to indicate plurality?

(I limited my commentary to surnames because the original example that provoked these observations was one. English doesn’t favor singular nouns that end in sibilants, so there aren’t many of them—but I don’t believe that surnames (or proper nouns in general) receive special treatment by the subconscious rules operating when we form possessives and plurals. Or do they?)