Author: Brian J. Noggle

In his latest six-columns-for-the-price-of-one, which would also seem to be six-columns-with-the-forethought-of-one, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times spends a little time between the asterisks to ding Bush for not attending soldier funerals:

In the meantime, our current president Punk’d the world with his stealth visit to Baghdad last week — proving that even in this day and age, it’s possible for POTUS to make a safe, quick visit to almost any event in the world.

Sure would like to see President Bush try a similar mission and show up at a memorial service for one of those American soldiers who keep getting killed in Iraq, even though the war is over.

Hey, Rick. You pick one. The single soldier to be so honored. The one who’s more important than the others.

Pretty easy for a newspaper columnist, wot?

Virginia Postrel, commenting on David Brooks’ recent New York Times column (registration required), asks and then answers her own question:

The column, which deserves reading in full, leaves unanswered a rather important question: What’s the point of Republican political power? Nothing more than job security for a different clique?

Well, yes.

Oh, yeah, secure your gear. Office creepers aren’t something from a horror movie crossed with Dilbert. They’re thieves who prowl office buildings, often during work hours, who hoover up unsecured wallets, purses, and electronics. I have warned you time and again.

(Link seen on Techdirt.)

A non-story: Bush mispronounces Nevada in first presidential visit. But thanks for trying, guys.

Let’s face it, most Americans pronounce their place names incorrectly. I live in a suburb of St. Louis. Since the canonized Louis was French, we should pronounce it St. Louie. And who knows how one should authentically pronounce Missouri. Residents get into fist fights over it yet, but generations-long blood feuds over long I versus schwa are petering out.

Back to the point: Nevada, from el Español, should be pronounced nayVAHdah. Not:

To properly pronounce Nevada, the middle syllable should rhyme with gamble.

(Does anyone beat the reporter about the head and shoulders for the whole middle syllable should rhyme thing? Rhyme means all syllables sound similar but for initial consonants. Don’t you damn kid free versers start up with me.)

So Bush’s pronunciation was a little closer to the original than the current bastardization favored by both native Nevada residents. In two hundred years, after the next great vowel shift, Bush will read like Shakespeare reads to us, no matter how stoopid his critics try to make him sound. You know what the real twist of the box cutter is? People will read Bush’s speeches in 200 years. No one will read his opponents’ press releases.

Even James Earl Jones and all the All-Star sales pitching in the world won’t help when you come up with business decisions like this: Verizon will charge double expected fees over new rules.

Punish previous customers’ disloyalty by destroying goodwill among current customers. Buy that man an MBA!

Richard Roeper, accused of living in the Midwest by one of his coastal friends, invents the Middle Coast to refute that fatal accusation:

Not long ago, I was at dinner with a group of entertainment industry professionals, including a Los Angeles native and resident. Nice woman. After talking movies, we got into the “Where do you live?” and “Where did you grow up?” stuff — and when she learned I had spent practically my whole life in the Chicago area, she talked about how much she loves our great city. We have the Cubs (does anyone from out of town ever say the White Sox?), the architecture, the food, the lake, the blues, the shopping, the Oprah, etc., etc.

Not to mention the wonderful people of Chicago — the “down-to-earth” types with “good solid values,” as we’re often labeled.

And then this nice woman used the term that almost always makes me cringe. The label is favored by East and West Coast types who use it like a pat on the head to tell us how quaint we are, how charming we are — and what rubes we are.

“I just love that whole Midwestern thing,” she said.

I can’t precisely recall the specific wording of what she said next, but there were a few more “down-to-earth” references, and something about how we’re so much more “real” than Los Angelenos and New Yorkers, and how it’s so refreshing that we’re not embarrassed about our love for Wal-Mart and Celine Dion and Krispy Kreme.

Then, she mentioned that her husband attended school in the Midwest, and he has family in the Midwest, and she knows a lot of other people from the Midwest, including her college roommate who was from the Midwest — and at that point I had to cut her off and explain something.

Chicago ain’t the Midwest.

He pushes one of my buttons and then keeps pushing it to make the elevator come faster.

Dude, just move to LA so you can hang out with your movie sophisticates or move to New York so you can hang out with your Esquire cosmopolitans.

Is it Friday yet? When’s the next Neil Steinberg column due?