The Meaning of Grilling
Whether we are talking police officers or former cows, we strive to demonstrate, with bell-ringing lucidity, that a single verb can satisfactorily describe both antipodean activities.
We are not trying to trap or seduce our readers.
The devious left-wing linguistic larcenists at the Los Angeles Times are. They love the pinched-face older ladies of Code Pinky-Poo.
Even though the Times has dumped two erratic editors in the last couple of years, the newspaper still keeps sending dropouts from the Boob Patrol to cover Israel.
Boob or Boobette?
You must have to pass an I Wanna Be More Ignorant Than I Already Am test to qualify as a Jerusalem correspondent.
Several years ago, we were stuck with Tracy Wilkinson. She performed as if she were a just-graduated restroom attendant.
Now she is on the Vatican beat, trying mightily to add Catholicism to the laundry list of religions she has screwed up.
At the Rotary Club yesterday, several persons complained to me about how difficult it is for them, as purveyors of serious news, to judge what is factual, what is opinion when they read the Los Angeles Times.
Why the Times Is Floundering
Like virtually all of Americas leading newspapers, the Times slant is unapologetically left.
Like virtually all of Americas leading newspapers, the Times is losing money, losing ground, losing advertisers, losing readers, shedding prestige faster than a drunk gambler in Las Vegas.
It is closer to the Los Angeles Titanic than the once-proud Los Angeles Times.
There are two tall reasons.
One is their constant political demagoguery.
The other is their too-slick corruption of the English language, driven, of course, by their fealty to modern extreme liberalism.
Cant Anybody Here Write Straight?
The political ideologues who glut the reportorial staff have seriously marred the newspapers once respectable reputation.
Under the failed editorship of Johnny Carroll and of Dean Baquet, news stories and opinion pieces have become indistinguishable.
As I mentioned to the Rotarians yesterday, a bold, dare-you corruption of the language has greased the slide of the Times.
Corruption or manipulation of the language has two faces.
The furiously dogmatic Times has slyly altered the traditional meaning of some words.
I Have Seen This Stunt Before
The second explanation is that they resort to an old liberal trick, substituting an abstract word for the appropriate term because they fear Muslim terrorists will come to bomb them or torture them in other ways.
The Times is suffering cancerously these days because of the newspapers inherent inability to call evil by its true name.
The editorialists of the Times are liberal pillows.
Paunchy wimps.
They are terrified of calling Muslim terrorists by their names.
Like sneak thieves in the night, the Times robs generic words of their true meanings. They substitute militants for Muslim terrorists, hoping that since they did not call the savage beasts by the name that President Bush uses, the Times wont be tarred.
Has Anyone Here Seen a Spine?
The spineless editors want the Muslim terrorists to think of them as just nice guys shlepping down the boulevard so that the worst Muslims on earth wont torch their headquarters at 2nd and Spring.
These thoughts were sprinting through my mind this morning, before light, at the breakfast table, when I read the latest dispatch from Jerusalem, written by another Boob Patrol dropout, one Ken Ellingwood.
No Improvement
I am just guessing he was a carpet salesman before he landed or was saddled with the Jeruselm beat.
He is Tracy Wilkinson redux, only with longer pants and shorter hair.
Boob Ellingwood was writing, I would guess, about the 700th agreement that the Times has reported on between the Hamas terrorists and the friendlier terrorists of Fatah, Arafats old boys.
You have to be an Arab with a killer mindset before you can join the Hamas or Fatah terrorists.
But you never would gather this from reading the refined work of Boob Ellingwood.
Just a Soldier, Digesting Orders
At his bosses direction, Boob E., as he is known to sensible people, lards his stories on terrorists with daintier words deemed frilly and inoffensive.
Inaccurate, too but who at the Times cares?
Scared of Muslim retribution, Mr. Ellingwood opened his misleading report this morning with this disingenuous choice of terms:
The main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, agreed late Wednesday
Please Dont Say This Word
When my sons were small, I forbade them to use the abstract word thing. I prohibited such vague words and the Times prefers them for the same reason they throb with imprecision and indecision.
Again, as I told the Rotarians yesterday, the Times quaking about Muslim retribution all the way through its waking hours denudes words of their meaning in hopes that the most evil Muslims will not punish them.
He Weasels Out
Therefore, Boob E. writes nonsense when crafting an important story.
He cannot even mouth the word terrorist. He substitutes the punchless, meaningless faction.
Mama, what the hell is a faction?
