Frnak McKenney wrote:
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:45:34 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:
On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:39:26 -0600, RB wrote:
Why_is_everyone_so_cruel wrote:
I think the reason for the Republicans failure at the polls was their
inability to distinguish between their, there and they 're.
It's a national epidemic.
That and overuse of the word "literally".
My pet peeve is people who substitute "een" for "ing".

How about the excessive use of pronouns with obscured or improper
referents? I recall a Senate committee hearing where Sen. Kennedy
used "we" to repeatedly and indiscriminately refer to one or more
of the following (it was hard to be certain which):

- The Committee
- The Committee and the witnesses
- The Senate
- Massachusetts residents (voters, anyway)
- All (right-thinking) Americans

I'm not a fanatic about grammar, but this kind of vague and
sloppy use of words makes it hard to understand what someone is
_saying_, let alone figure out whether they're right or wrong.

In Kennedy's case, he's probably being deliberately ambiguous so he
can't be held to what he says. Or maybe he was just drunk.

Oh, and I'd like, just once, to hear a speech from a politician
that made _no_ use of the phrase "the American People".

I agree with that. Like we're all one big anomalous lump