David Wadler’s Assorted Thoughts

Would someone tell Kanye West to stop being such a diva? I’ll give him a pass on his Katrina rant since it wasn’t inherently vain. But Kanye has been whining about not winning awards with great regularity.

First, the irony. President Bush, whose many malapropisms and linguistic gaffes are well-chronicled, called out John Kerry for mangling a joke. Bush said, “Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words.” One might have assumed that the President would be sheepish in calling attention to such verbal missteps. But, in his own words from October 11, 2006, I suppose “One has a stronger hand when there’s more people playing your same cards.”

SI’s Phil Taylor questions Derek Jeter’s leadership. I didn’t think any mainstream sportswriter had the cojones to do so. Whether it’s true or not, kudos to Taylor for at least opening up the subject to debate.

I wanted to post this after the Jets blew a fourth and goal attempt against the Colts several weeks ago, but simply forget. As it turns out, the numbers say that teams should punt only rarely on fourth down.

I must admit to being pleased that others are similarly vexed by the misuse of the word, “literally.” Jesse Sheidlower, has a piece in Slate about the literary histoy or literally. I was also quite amused to find that there is a blog devoted to the subject of misusing “literally.” Now, if I could only convince those people to keep an eye on the misuse and abuse of “nonplussed.”