Judge Grammar?

“You are not a we. You are an I.”

This from DC judge Judith Bartnoff to plaintiff Roy Pearson, who is suing a laundry for $54 million over a pair of pants and false advertising.

Actually, Pearson is a judge himself — an administrative law judge* — and he also styles himself a “private attorney general” fighting for the citizenry.

But the DC district judge says Pearson speaks only for himself.

That may be true. Still SL must defend the poor fellow’s right to refer to himself any way he wishes, even — especially — in a court of law. After all, our name is all we have, that and a few pronouns. We say let Mr. Pearson call himself WE and set the word in 60-point Roman bold, should he so choose.

Surely there are bigger problems in Judge Bartnoff’s courtroom. For example, the elephant sitting in the middle of it: Why is this trial happening at all? We can only wonder which judge is crazier — or more abusive to the laundry owners.

As always, we hold no brief. For the tort reform crowd it’s all good, but for the plaintiff bar . . . otherwise.

______________________________________________________________

* What is an administrative law judge?

After a bit of research (SL at its post), we can report two things:

1. It outranks Judge Wapner but not a real judge.
2. The job often requires pants, though ALJ Pearson has not made that assertion.

The Sopranos’ perfect pitch

Goodbye, North Jersey.

The Sopranos is by far the best drama we’ve ever seen on television. (The New Yorker editor called it “the highest achievement” in the history of the medium, but we don’t watch enough to know that.)

We’re perfectly happy Mr. Chase did not choose a cartoon finish. Angry fans felt otherwise, crashing HBO.com with complaints. Where’s the closure? they raged. One sobbed “I’ve wasted ten years of my life!”

.

Well, it takes all kinds.

Meanwhile the show refutes one argument forever, which is the argument against TV itself. Condemnation of the medium seems pretty foolish, after The Sopranos.

But we faced resistance.

“Don’t you like it mainly because you lived there?” they asked.

We certainly loved it for that. The many sidewalk scenes at Satriale’s were played and filmed in Harrison, a few blocks from our place in the Ironbound. Another scene was shot in our local fish store on Market Street, between the banks of snappers and octopii. Over all loomed Newark Cathedral and the Pulaski Skyway — the Notre Dame and Eiffel Tower of our Jersey years.

But what clinched it for us was The Sopranos’ perfect pitch in language. Three great moments:

#1: When they mimic reruns of The Godfather.

#2: When Ralphie stirs the pasta sauce and calls it — not marinara or bolognese, but gravy.

#3: When Paulie, alarmed at rumors of municipal reform, asks Tony, “What about our thing?” (Normal voice, slight emphasis on our.)

Paulie doesn’t say The Mafia (clashing cymbals) or The Family (dum-de-dum-dum) or Organized Crime. He just asks about “our thing.” A casual shorthand expression, as it was in Italy: La cosa nostra.

It’s how real people talk.

Real people, bestial killers

Portrayals of real people were critical to The Sopranos’ success. What made them real? Their hopes, fears and mundane lives, conveyed mainly though language.

Hopes, fears, mundanity: In the right hands, it’s a powerful combination. It made millions of people feel sympathy, if only for a moment, for bestial killers like Tony Soprano and Chris Moltisanti.

And Paulie Walnuts and Bobby and Furio and Uncle June and Silvio and Pussy and Ralphie (my vote for most bestial) and Phil and Richie and Eugene and Patsy and Vito and Carmine and Benny and Little Carmine and Little Paulie and Johnny Sack and Larry and Gigi and Matt and Sean and Philly Spoons and Mikie and Chuckie and that guy from Down Neck and those guys from Brooklyn and all those other guys too.

With a very few exceptions — random victims, fawning civilians, clueless kids — virtually all the male characters on the show were violent sociopaths. And while their female soulmates didn’t personally whack people, they were in pretty deep. As Carmela told Dr. Melfi, she knew that behind Tony’s every gift “was a guy with a broken arm or worse.”

Melfi, of course, stands alone.

Literally

Stuck with a weak metaphor? Pump that sissy up!

Just stick “literally” in front of it. Watch:

“Literally on his own back, (Mayor Allen) carried the city’s white establishment into a more enlightened day.” That’s how author Gary Pomerantz describes a famous chapter in the history of my hometown.

We have one little problem: By definition, metaphors are figurative. And that’ s the opposite of literal, literally.

We can’t help wondering . . . did the mayor carry all those fellows in a single load, or one by one? Did he wear one of those weightlifter belts?

BTW, the story of Atlanta’s business leadership in the face of the civil rights movement is well told by Ivan Allen himself in his book Mayor: Notes on the Sixties.

 

* * *

Saying literally when you mean the opposite: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Weak disguised as strong.

 

Captcha? Wha’wuzzat?

Captcha is fairly new word. It refers to a graphical representation of type that Web sites use for security.

After you type your user name and password, some sites ask you to identify a phrase in a box. The type is easily recognized by a human being, but not by a machine. So you get into the site, but automated trolls don’t.

Now comes word on the street: It’s over. You’ll continue to see captchas, but the tide has turned.

Why? Because the captcha race is burning itself out. As machines get better at reading them, designers must produce more and more intricate images — and before you know it, they’re turning out captchas that humans can’t decipher. Defeating the porpoise, as we say.

So long, captcha. We hardly knew ye.

Added June 08: Microsoft captcha hacked

Google “hostile to privacy”

“Don’t be evil,” say the choirboys at Google.

Well, maybe a little evil. Check out the new report by Privacy International, which assesses the privacy commitment of 23 top Internet service companies.

See Between the Lines for a good summary. You can also view the report and the rankings. Turns out there’s plenty of evil to go around.

Numerous companies have “serious lapses” or worse in their respect for privacy, including Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Facebook, and YouTube. Google shows up in the last category: Hostile to privacy.

The powers that be yanked Admiral Poindexter, but his project is alive and well. This crowd wants your soul on a spreadsheet.

Do colleges stifle writers?

Flannery O’Connor set the gold standard in American literature. And she said:

“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”

Read the current crop of “Southern writers,” and then read Flannery. You’ll never go back.

Introducing le book

When new technology baffles, call the help desk.

Introducing le book [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX0-nqRmto]

The right to request

Do you need permission to ask?

Google shows 1.2 million hits for “the right to request.” That’s a lot of rights! One or another institution graciously permits you to request:

• correction of an error in your doctor’s record. (Displayed in most medical offices.)
• correction of an error in your school’s record. (Thank Congress.)
• access to federal records. (Congress.)
• a paper ballot in a California election. (State law.)
• limits on an insurance company’s sharing of your health information. (Assurant Health.)
• a million dollars from Strong Language. (Ask away.)
• and many other things.

What do these “rights” have in common? They’re meaningless, that’s what. And these outfits know it — Assurant declares in the next breath that it has no obligation to meet your request.

“The right to request ______” is a phrase by which some organizations give an appearance of commitment to their customers or constituents. But it actually commits the organization to nothing.

 

* * *

The right to request: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Extremely weak.

Never

Jim Clark died last week.

From 1955 to 1966 he was sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, whose seat is Selma.

He was a man of extreme violence, and his NYT obituary vividly illustrates what the civil rights movement overcame.

Clark wore a button on his chest that said Never. Now that’s strong language, like it or not — clear, direct, and to the point.

It was one side’s entire case in the “debate” on integration — the one-word slogan of American apartheid.

After Jim Clark was turned out of office, he moved into home sales, drug smuggling and federal prison.

Never was trampled by marching feet, and the South was integrated. There are stronger things than words.

*   *   *

Never: strong or weak?

The SL verdict: Not as strong as they thought.

What’s writing worth?

How much should I pay (or charge) for writing?

Strong Language has heard many versions of that question, including

• How do you set your pricing?
• How does X thousand a year sound?
• Here’s what we can pay — yes or no?

We’ve taken a few swings at the pricing ball. We’ve dived for low pitches, swung for the fences, left money on the table, taken home tidy sums, earned our keep, and lost our shirt. Our experience was not for nothing, because nowadays we (and our clients) find the sweet spot more often.

But we’re not giving away our own wisdom today. Instead we’ll just pass on a nugget.

If your job requires excellence — in precision tools, fast freight, C-level editorial or anything else — you can be sure that someone downstream (your employer or your customer) understands Mr. Ruskin’s words.

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper. People who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.

It is unwise to pay too much, but it is even worse to pay too little. If you pay too much, you lose some money, that is all. If you pay too little, however, you will sometimes lose everything, as the thing you bought cannot do the intended job.

The law of economy forbids to obtain something of high value for little money. If you accept the lowest bid, you must add something for the risk taken by you. And if you do so, you have enough money to pay for something of higher value.

John Ruskin (1819-1900)

Merck bows to science

Merck’s TV ads for Vytorin have recently undergone a small but important revision.

Their message is that high cholesterol comes from two sources — food choices and inherited genetic makeup — and Vytorin treats it all.

Here’s how one ad explained matters:

You get high cholesterol “not just from crab cakes, but from your crabby Aunt Betty.”

No, SL explained.

No one inherits genetic traits from an aunt — not any, not ever.* We suggested Merck stop broadcasting its ignorance of basic biology. And now it has.

Surely others pointed out the mistake, but Strong Language may have been the first. We happened to see the first ad right after a visit to the Museum of Natural History in New York — a visit that had confirmed our little notions of science. Wepromptly alerted Merck and the world.

Strong Language  . . . at its post.

* Not unless there’s more going on, in which case counseling may be more effective than pills.

KrugerSnäack

A wild free-for-all in the bush involving lions, buffalo and a crocodile. Battle at Kruger

But what’s the relevance for a blog about language? Surely none of these species can write!

Answer: You’re right. Only the pale hairless ones have language, and they can only be heard, not seen. The audio on Battle at Kruger is worth a listen.

Most of the humans appear to have a buffalo bias, but two of the females aren’t buying:

[4:23] While the lions disassemble the calf, a lovely lilting laugh rises in the background. It’s a laugh you might have heard in the old days, over gimlets beside a Jo’burg pool. Before all that Mandela business.

[5:20] In their first attack the buffalo almost catch a lion (whose jaws still drip with blood). Listen for another female voice, low and earnest, urging the baby-killer to escape: “Run . . . Run. . . .”

These two, at least, identify with carnivorous mammals over herbivores or reptiles.

Poooor Snäack

And just because the rest of the vid is so astonishing, don’t fail to appreciate the beauty of Lion Queen’s initial run to isolate the buffalo calf.

The calf’s name, SL has learned, was Snäack. Watch Ms. Lion catch the little rascal from behind — she grabs his shoulders, rolls herself into the drink, and brings Snäack along, resembling nothing so much as Lawrence Taylor engaging a rookie quarterback.

Whew! Be glad you entered the food chain when and where you did.

The humans, in SL’s view, are overly optimistic about Snäack’s future. This kid wasn’t just up to his ass in alligators — he had croc on one end and lion on the other. Now that’s an issue, and statistically it’s one that very few calves survive.

Sure, let the humans cheer when the calf stands up. But Strong Language will never raise false hopes. We’re telling the kids Snäack went to a nice farm on the veldt.