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Sunday, January 22, 2017

Obituary Overload


When I put this year’s list of banned words and phrases together, I wanted very much to include “obituary.” It was a fool’s errand to consider that, since there is no way we can get through 2017 without seeing that word again. But it did get me to thinking about some specific obituaries from 2016 and obituaries in general.

Last year began with the death of my former significant other, Charlie Schneider. We co-owned a home for about eight years and remained close after he bought out my half. I visited him a few times back in New Jersey after I married Jagdish and moved to Rhode Island. In his last years, Charlie suffered from dementia. I kept abreast of his condition through his daughter. He was bed-ridden at the end, which would have devastated him if he’d been aware enough to fully appreciate what limitations that had put on him.

Several months later, my sister’s husband, Bob, passed away. It was one of those deaths that we call a blessing. He’d been diagnosed with a stage-three brain tumor coming up on six years earlier. High-end survival is pegged at five years, so he was on borrowed time. He was bed-ridden in a nursing home for over two years at the end, and wheelchair bound at home for a considerable time before that. So, yes, his death truly was a blessing. Of course, his obituary didn’t say that. It was filled with the many good things about his life.

I’m so tired of reading those final accounts. Tired of hearing who died this week. It seemed like 2016 had more deaths of celebrities than usual. For some reason, the loss of Gwen Ifill hit me hard, probably because I didn’t realize she was ill. I accepted PBS’s simple explanation that she was “away.” The end-of-year summaries always include the video montage of who has left us. Singers, actors, sports legends, notables in the field of science. As I watched one of these recently I realized something that made obituaries even more depressing for me.

When I was young—say in my twenties and perhaps thirties—there were always some people who had died whose names were unfamiliar to me. Those were the older ones, the actors and prominent names of my mother’s generation. Eventually, I reached an age where I seemed to know almost everyone in the montage, both young and old. I didn’t give this much thought. At least not until this year.

Once again there are faces that are unfamiliar. Oh, I’ve probably heard their names at some point. But if you asked me what type of music they sang, what was their signature song, I’d be clueless. George Michael is a good example. True, those luminaries died “before their time,” but not in their youth. They just moved on at the beginning of that phase where people start dying.

Where does that leave me? Recognizing all the older faces and names in those montages. Shedding a tear to think that no, we won’t see Debbie Reynolds in some new project in the future. Knowing that Zsa Zsa Gabor had a sister Eva and too many husbands to count on one hand. Aware of the health issues faced by the trail blazing women, Janet Reno and the much younger Pat Summitt. I’ll always remember Alan Rickman from Love Actually (I own the DVD), not the Harry Potter movies (never saw any of them). I even had a brief crush on George Kennedy when I was young.

If there’s a bell curve of obituaries, of deaths recognized, I’m now on the down slope. I may not be able to ban “obituary” for 2017, but I can certainly make a desperate plea to the powers that be, assuming there are such powers and that they’ll listen. “Please let us have Betty White for many more years, another gig or two hosting Saturday Night Live, and a few more cameo performances in a movie or TV show.” I cry enough when I watch reruns of The Golden Girls. I don’t think I could handle it if Betty were also gone.

It would be nice if we could also hold on to Robert Duvall (another of my former crushes) and Anthony Hopkins a bit longer, too. And if Jimmy Carter could build a few more houses before we lose him. Is all of that really so much to ask?

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Banned Words and Phrases for 2017


January is the publication month for annual lists of banned words and phrases. As with last year, I collected ones that were annoying me throughout 2016. If my 2017 list is like my previous compilations, several of my choices will appear on other popular round ups. Also predictable: most of my entries were inspired by the 2016 Presidential election. Since they’re election-driven, we’ll need to keep the ban in effect through at least 2018. I can’t bear to think farther into the future than that.

Let’s start with a phrase that’s not political, since there are plenty of those further down. I am so over hearing “I mean,” especially on television. “I mean” seems to have replaced the simpler “so” as the filler noise in an interview. Filler words are even more annoying than filler sounds like “er” and “um.” Fie on them all.

So much verbiage assaulted us during the election that I can’t remember what prompted me to include ‘Siren Call’ on this year’s list. Back in February, 2016, RealClearPolitics.com ran the headline: “Millennials Heed the Siren Call of Socialism.” It was referring to Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. But it might also have been a polite way to say that Donald Trump’s rhetoric was a dog whistle to White Supremacists. Whatever my motivation, ‘siren call’ is out, but you can keep ‘dog whistle’. For now.

Staying on Trump (do we have a choice?), say goodbye to ‘Pivot’. Our President-elect changed his positions so frequently and so quickly that he should have been put in a tutu and mounted on a music box. He defended this by saying, “It’s not change; it’s negotiation.” Fine. You can keep ‘change’ and ‘negotiation.’ But any reporter who talks about someone’s pivot will land on my growing list of no-longer-news-sources. Not even for ideas for my blog posts.

As a logical extension: Say so long to ‘By the Way,’ especially when it’s used as a pivot (appearing in its swan song here) in answering a question from the press. The Donald was a master at using that phrase to redirect attention away from the question at hand and to meander down some totally unrelated path. We shall keep the extremely useful non sequitur, by the way.

Another Trump favorite that often accompanied ‘by the way’ in a pronouncement was ‘Believe Me.’ Not unlike the expression: “With all due respect…” (when you know no respect will be shown), “believe me” is a red flag that we probably shouldn’t believe him. So, I’m banning it, but don’t be foolish enough to believe me if I say Mr. T will abide by this.

This next phrase is one that actually might get sucked into a dark hole now that I’ve banned it. I don’t think the President-elect will have much need for ‘People Are Saying’ once he’s inaugurated. He’ll be too focused on what he’s saying. So I’m banning his previous go-to expression in favor of a new one: ‘You don’t say?’

Here is yet another banned word provided thanks to Trump: ‘Rigged.’ Now that he’s won the election, he really has no further use for this. Unless it’s put in the negative, as in “The 2016 Presidential election definitely was not rigged by Putin.” Either way, it makes the hair stand up on my nape, so it’s de rigueur to avoid it.

Next is a phrase that more than one Republican tossed about during the primary like a live hand grenade: ‘Carpet Bomb.’ We can thank Ted Cruz for motivating me to ban it this year. It’s not that ‘carpet bomb’ is a bad phrase per se. It’s just that it was woefully misused. Kind of like ‘per se’

Similarly, commentators on both sides of the political divide droned on about the ‘Ground Game,’ which was also proven to be misunderstood. Ground games that were assumed to be solid turned out not to be based on terra firma. And the one that seemed murkiest yielded concrete results. We’ve sent the pundits back to the drawing board on this. They’re sequestered with the pollsters until midterm elections.

My final entry is a trio of ‘-ibles’ and ‘-ables’. As in ‘Horrible’, ‘Terrible’ (and in a nod to equal censure) ‘Deplorable’. They were all overexposed during the campaign, so they no longer carry any weight. It’s lamentable, but at least I’m keeping ‘basket’ so I have something to hide my creative light under.

One word that is conspicuously missing from this list is ‘bigly.’ The fact that Trump is trying to convince everyone that he was really saying ‘big league’ is so preposterous (and entertaining) that I couldn’t bring myself to ban either biggie. I suppose we could at least give him a hand for trying. A bigly hand…