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The grammar police school Mike Wankum
By adamg on Mon, 02/09/2009 - 8:03am
Dave Alpert doesn't mind that the WCVB weatherman boasts of meeting Jewel. What frosts him is how Wankum says he met Jewel:
... Mike Wankum explained that he met Jewel because at a KISS Concert they invited "my daughter and I back there" [to meet her]. That is retard English, ENTIRELY unbecoming of a TV celebrity with an advanced degree (and from a man that innocent, grammar loving children look up to). Shouldn’t he be punished like Phelps???? ...
Would it be obnoxious to point out that Alpert made a grammatical mistake in complaining about Wankum's grammatical mistake?
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Comments
Well, for starters, "retard
Well, for starters, "retard English." Classy.
My Guesses
The brackets, rather than parentheses, and/or the period outside of them? No dash hooking up "grammar" and "loving"? Four question marks after one sentence?
Ah, I've got it! The dangling "to", rather than "to whom grammar-loving children look up"! Am me right?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Close
Last I checked, Wankum is a person, rather than a clever Disney animatronic device, so it should be "and from a man WHOM innocent, grammar loving children look up to" rather than "and from a man THAT innocent, grammar loving children look up to."
The dangling "to" I can live with, because that is nonsense up with which I would put (also, don't get me started on split infinitives and anal English teachers who refused to admit English is not Latin).
Me me me
I'm not so sure a weatherman is really a person up to whom children look, but the trend to use I or myself instead of the perfect good word me does bug me.
You hear it everywhere - I think some people think they sound smarter if they don't use the word me.
Hypercorrection
It's called hypercorrection.
It's a hard habit to break.
I figure,
I figure, there's an extra comment in this sentence.
er
er, comma
If you're all that worked up about a weatherman's grammar...
...then you have way, way too much time on your hands. Happy blogging!
Alpert makes my point
Pathetic bloggers...
Since it's Monday
Since it's Monday, you might want to check your sarcasm detectors. They may have thawed yesterday but froze up overnight.
What do you expect? It's
What do you expect? It's Dave Alpert. His blog exists for two reasons: #1 to promote his music and #2 to find things to bitch about.
And your point is?
What's wrong with promoting yourself and bitching about things on your own blog?
Nothing is wrong with it,
Nothing is wrong with it, but the curmudgeon act gets old fast. Usually the curmudgeon will make himself look like a hypocritical jackass at some point, though, which usually brings the lulz.
First rule of correcting
First rule of correcting someones grammar/spelling, be sure not to make a mistake yourself, otherwise you look silly. That is why I do not generally correct the grammar of others, mainly because Im sure you would need a scoreboard to keep track of the number of mistakes I made in this paragraph.
Trying to get over it
I've at least stopped yelling at the TV every time a newsperson says, "An historic...."
It depends on how they say
It depends on how they say it. If they pronounce the "h" clearly in "An historic," they're wrong. If they say "an 'istoric," and drop the "h", it wouldn't bother me. There are English dialects that do that, so the rule would follow the practice. Personally, I go with "a historic."
oh, and
Also, the word retard is incorrect in that sentence - not politically (though it's that too), but grammatically. The writer should have used the adjective, retarded, to modify the noun, English. This could be debated, however. After all, nouns can modify other nouns at times.
This is fun / I'm a dork.
No, I don't think so
Maybe if I was watching the BBC someone would say "an 'istoric" but I've never heard anyone on local/national TV news say it that way.
Wow. This is AMAZING!
Okay. I'm not going to defend my grammar in an admittedly empty and poorly written blog post (although I do content that grammar loving shouldn't have a hyphen). I did write the entire post while he was still on the air. Cut me some slack. I just have an issue with the basics (my daughter and me).
As for the fury, come on! I write about funny shit: the lady trying to get me to save polar bears, the octuplets, the boston chargers slavery scandal. Scientologists. It's friggin' fun--for me.
And, some people actually like it. Just yesterday, a guy thanked me for turning him on to good shawarma. Now, that's satisfying.
And YES! I love promoting my music... in fact, come out to my show on Thursday downstairs at the cantab at 9pm my blog loving friends (no hyphen)! :-)
Thats why you never correct
Thats why you never correct someone elses grammar unless yours is in top notch shape. Hell hath no fury like the grammar police looking for other members of the squadron to make mistakes.
Never Say Never
OK. I wasn't going to get into it, but many of the "grammatical mistakes" pointed out by the grammar scholars here were not, in fact, wrong. Second, grammar police are the types that "pull you over" for high level grammar infractions like screwing up conditional tense in a complex sentence. Pointing out professional adults making fourth grade grammar mistakes is just being the moron police.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, I am a humorist. And the main point of my blog post was not grammar at all; it was the fact people accused Michael Phelps of letting down the American people and accused him of setting a poor example for the children who admire him by smoking pot. I was joking that making basic grammar mistakes on regional tv should infuriate people for the same reason. Oh well. You win some; you lose some.
The problem with no putting
The problem with not putting Phelps on a pedestal is that he makes a fortune being touted as a role model for children. If all he did was swim and win medals I would be ok with his bong usage, I really would. The problem is he had a publicity campaign that led me to believe he was the all american boy, that he is what we should aspire to, that I should buy this cereal because his name is on the box. A weatherman gives you the weather, heck he could even do it high as long as he did the work sober.
Also Phelps was a bit of a moron, from what I understand he walked into a party, began drinking and then grabbed the bong and took a hit in the middle of the room. First off who in this country has not seen a million pictures of phelps in the past year? Also he is a BIG guy, seriously he is surely a presence in any room he stands in, so even if you dont recognize him at first you will figure it out. He did not even know the people in the party, it wasnt his private party with friends, what was he thinking? Of all people he should know that cameras are everywhere, and that people love taking pictures of him. For his own good he should avoid public bong usage and should have only been using one in the privacy of his own home or at a friends house. If that is unfair then I ask him to turn in all of the endorsement contracts that are using his all American image and Id be willing to let him off easy. His "job" as a spokesman for all these companies is to be out in the public eye being a goody two shoes, thats all he has to do in life and he makes millions, he is better off then 99 percent of politicians in this country and you know we would slaughter them in an instant if we had that same picture of them.
Cool
I have nothing against you, and I wish you all the best. I was just playing along with the challenge presented by Adam. Also, I know I'm not grammatically without fault!
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Good thing
Good thing that you're not defending your grammar, because you're "contending" not "contenting", "grammar-loving" and "blog-loving" should be hyphenated, em dashes are delimited by spaces as if they were a word, and proper nouns like "Boston Chargers" and "Cantab" should be capitalized.
Hehe, just playing. I don't care about grammar as long as you are coherent.