Scott Pelley, on the CBS Evening News a few minutes ago: “. . . how man is attempting to restore bird populations threatened by climate change.” Man oh man. A better way to put it: “. . . the effort to restore bird populations,” and so on. Who but people — men and women — would undertake such work?
Pelley fell into the language of “man” last October too. How it grates.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Scott Pelley, man
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Just saw that report to, by coincidence (since I almost never watch the evening news... visiting parents currently). I also noticed how they naturalized the ISIS bombings by saying it was like the moon rising and the desert blooming. Geez.
I just caught that online: I must have tuned it out while writing down the “man” bit. Yes, terrible.
Man does nothing and everything, meaning little and meaning too much, which explains my shunning the evening news as man says such or such. Collective nouns collect like silt on the language's river floor, and man is one so overused that, hey, man, it's a bore. Man is said to collect us all, though all sure disagree, yet on the evening spouting news words mangle impressively. Spot telly to see talking heads, consider well and true that man says such or such-n-such but never quite like you.
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