Watch Your Diction

Actually, I do have one more thing to say. The news media need to choose their words more carefully. Criticizing football players isn’t an attack. Even when the criticism is wrong or intemperate. Deliberately running people down with cars or shooting at people are attacks.

Trying to get millionaire entertainers who aren’t being entertaining fired isn’t coercion. Beating people until they work or fight for you is coercion.

When you call things that aren’t attacks attacks and things that aren’t coercion coercion, what do you call attacks and coercion?

7 comments… add one
  • Guarneri Link

    I think we all understand medias motivations.

  • Gustopher Link

    If you’re going to be pedantic, at least be pedantic and correct.

    Attack has many meanings, ranging from verbal to nuclear war.

  • Conflating metaphoric attach with physical attack is unhelpful.

    I’m not being pedantic, I’m being precise. It’s the definition of the word. “Attack” means to assail using violence and force. It doesn’t mean criticize.

    It’s the ordinary meaning of the word. If you say, I was walking downtown and I was attacked, you don’t mean somebody called you fat.

  • TastyBits Link

    ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, …

    But I digress. If I am not mistaken, we were discussing how to identify a Boojum.

  • Guarneri Link

    You know, just last week I was attached by a boojum…….

    In best Curley: nyuk, nyuk, nyuk

    The commentary around this whole thing is nuts and being overly complicated. The NFL, the NFL media complex and the anti-Trumpers know many of the players have put them in a hopeless public perception position. They are desperate to recast the issue. If you have not been comatose the last year you know it won’t work. Time for a strategic retreat.

  • Janis Gore Link

    Don’t argue English with a guy who’s studied Latin and Greek, Gustopher.

  • Janis Gore Link

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