Dennis Kneale Is Right, Except in His English Usage

2 Comments

CNBC host Dennis Kneale, who appears at 5 p.m. PDT and 8 p.m. EDT, etc., is taking a lot of heat from the blogosphere for proclaiming the recession over. I happen to agree with him that we’ve come out of the depths and are moving back up, and in fact I date it earlier than Kneale dpes. I say the depth was reached in February, but it had nothing to do with Obama or his inauguration. Right about the time of Puxatawny Phil’s spring-into-action on Feb. 2, the depths had reached us as the Lehman/GM shock began taking perspective. In fact, about a month later (a lagging indicator, as they all are except for us sages), the stock market started going up in fairly dramatic fashion, and consumer confidence started returning.

Lately, however, we’ve had a lot of Obama arbitrage and profit-taking from other people’s woes–investors and companies hunkering down and hoarding up on profits (or money however they can get it–think layofrfs) as a hedge against maniacal Obamaic plans to raise taxes, raise the minimum wage, rip off corporations in the name of nonexistent global warming, socialize the banking and auto industries, unionize every firm in America, and turn health care back to the dark ages when it was cheap (because nonexistent).

All that being said, my main point is that Kneale was right in calling the recession over. For the next months, or years, until Obama comes to his senses, the arbitrage and profiteering will be the logical response to illogical governmental actions. The recovery will stay on hold until then, but it’s over if we can get the government to realize it and take a two-year vacation.

Where I part with Kneale is in his choice of words when he was fighting back against bloggers who were calling for everything from his dismissal from the network to decapitation on public television. At one point, he referred to "homoerotic" bloggers who accused him of being gay (which he denies). However, that was surely the wrong word. What he meant was "homophobic," unless he was referring to bloggers who get orgasms by blogging against him. Then, that would truly be "homoerotic." Sadly, though, it may also be close to the truth.

Categories: Grammar Sucks

2 Replies to “Dennis Kneale Is Right, Except in His English Usage”

  1. actally i DID indeed mean homoerotic: these guys are at once gay bashers but then also saying things akin to “suck my…” which is h’erotic. but i DO wish i’d used your better word for more of those comments, homophobic would have been a great paired alliteration: “homoerotic and homophobic comments.”

    thanks for noticing. now if you could please help me teach the world the difference between it’s and its. at forbes i told my writers—who never got it right—to just always write “it is” and they’d be fine. dk

    1. Yeah, it’s would be like hi’s when used as a possessive pronoun. I taught this stuff for more than ten years to college students and never found a way to get people to remember the difference. People are stubborn in their mistakes.

      Another biggie is their for they’re. To be honest, when I’m writing, I often type the wrong it’s or its and their or they’re (the latter much less frequently), but the point is to go back and proofread the stuff and correct it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *