Commentary from Larry Solway
For years I was paid to be cranky. I made a name for myself for about ten years on the radio in Toronto with CHUM, two years on CFRB then another couple - a last dying gasp on TALK 640 complaining endlessly about everything. What really worked was that my carping gave others permission to carp. I had a whole career based on being a curmudgeon. I miss it. But not enough that I would go back on the radio and do it all over again.
Been there. Done that.
For the last several weeks I have fumed and fussed over the demise of the Left and the decay (except in three provinces - soon to be reduced to two) of the only real voice of the true liberal, Social Democratic Left - the NDP. It's time to move on. I've had my say. Now it's your turn.
This, as Humphrey Bogart said to Claude Rains as they walked away in the closing scene of the movie _________ (I'll send a Straight Goods T shirt to the first one of you to get it right) "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
This is my carping-over-little-things column. If it works Straight Goods will usher in a whole new dimension of public dissent and discussion: complaining, carping conniptions. You pick the name. We may run the feature.
Let me get it started:
People only call you when they need you. Long-forgotten friends suddenly show up and they invariably want something from you. When CHUM announced it would abandon music and go All Sports, I got calls. Reporters who had forgotten I was alive wanted the skinny from one of the guys who helped make CHUM the winner it was back in the 60s. Another example: I worked for a while with Juliette, possibly the biggest "star" Canada created until Celine Dion. Forgotten now, but living in Vancouver, Julie told me a few years ago that "They never call me except when they're running a benefit and want me to sing for free. Then they remember me."
Like many cranky old farts (of both sexes and indeterminate age) I am one of those fussbudgets who can't let a grammatical error go by; who can't abide a solecism; who explodes at a mixed metaphor. Usually I write a Letter to The Editor. Usually they don't print it. Like the one I just fired off to the Toronto Star:
"As a card-carrying member of the Quibblers and Nigglers Club I thank you for the recent piece on Language. (The Ombudsman had written a piece responding to people who carp constantly about language misuse.) I was especially impressed by the comment on 'begs the question.' I'm not sure that when we misuse an expression we are advancing the language through evolution. I believe that vulgarizing language or diminishing its intent panders to the semi-literate." How's that for snobbery?
Then there's the sportswriter's determination to misuse the word "howitzer." It began with Danny Gallivan referring to a board-rattling shot as a "howitzer shot." For years people reminded Danny that a howitzer was a gun that had no speed but lobbed shells high in the air. He would never change. Instead of referring to a blistering drive as a "cannon shot," he persisted. In the Paul Stewart column on Frederik Modin and the skills competition, he evoked the image of a howitzer to describe a puck travelling at more than 100 mph. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. But they're stuck with it. Giving a misuse dignity and persistent usage appears to make it right. Like turning momentarily from "for a minute," to "in a minute." Some dictionaries accept it. But they also accept chaise lounge instead of longue. Do I give up? Is nu-cu-lar to become correct?"
Whew. That felt better.
Complaint: One word gets into everyday language and is used to extinction. Running on my treadmill I tuned in to the emptiest, shallowest, most vacuous TV I could find: Joan Rivers and her daughter interviewing the stars as they arrived for the Golden Globes award. She gushed. She fawned. She prostrated herself before the Hollywood mighty. Bad enough. But one word was the catch-all adjective for everything from a great performance to a beautiful dress to a brilliant hairdo, to a hit movie: amaaaaaazing!
Remember when the catchall adjective was "awesome?" My son, who is more au courant than I scoffed at my using this old relic: "Dad - you're way behind. The word is now "sweet." Go know.
So this is my carping column. This is my invitation to you to write about little stuff that bugs you. Everything from the self-important and their cell phones in restaurants where everyone can hear how important they are to people with a cart full of groceries in the 8 items or less line.
Fume on. I'm waiting.
Bad drivers? Trendy expressions? Corporate greed? Gabby internet publications? Media commentators? What bugs you?
And don't forget to take the Straight Goods poll.
Posted: February 12, 2001
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