Another alleged “professional” writer deploys the bane of my existence. Eleanor Clift, writing in Newsweek, uses “so-called” to disparage something:
The fact that Kerry attributed the breakdown in military discipline to the policymakers in Washington is lost on these men, who take Kerry’s words personally. This is not about Kerry’s performance in Vietnam; it’s what he said when he came home. Kerry has never made extravagant claims about his heroism in Vietnam. He never said his wounds were serious, and he never said he didn’t want to get out of Vietnam. After three wounds, under military rules, he was entitled to ship out, which he did after a combat tour of four months and 12 days. Nothing these so-called Veterans for Truth have come up with contradicts what Kerry has said, but that’s not the point.
Come on, Eleanor; so-called makes your prose sound more juvenile than your content does. It’s “talk to the hand” or “whatever”; if you say so-called past age 23, your development has arrested.
(Link seen on Outside the Beltway, where James Joyner thoroughly fisks Clift’s column.)
