Hey, since I am no longer with the MSM, I don’t have to listen to your whining, bitching and moaning about us.
So it is that I don’t have to be diplomatic, and can now answer your feeble complaints with the full disdain that characterizes the finest traditions of the MSM.
Such as when our valued friend Kathryn brought our attention (see how easily I slip back into the royal, editorial first-person plural?) to this article, headlined “Journalism monopoly was also a market failure,” and particularly this passage:
“If your neighborhood or community or issue didn’t interest the newspaper, it might as well have been banned from the community agenda. And if you had something to say, and wanted the community to hear or read it, your options were to pray you could get a letter to the editor published, or an even-rarer Op-Ed piece, or put out fliers around town. “
Added Kathryn, who passionately cares about Columbia and is always getting involved up to her elbows in the nitty-gritty of community issues, “I found this to be true, far too often…”
Oh, yeah? Well, now hear this:
Related Posts
I would respond more fully, but I am busy copying flyers to post around town. 😉
I believe the word is better spelled “flyer,” not “flier,” but I’m not sure why that is.
Have I mentioned how much of a joy it is to be around someone who spends most of the time in a conversation correcting your grammar?
FWIW, I was not correcting grammar. I was speculating on proper spelling. Many words in English have multiple spellings. It’s such a fun, fluid language because of it.
Reading comprehension is such an important skill, isn’t it?
Yes it is important, especially when you have the schoolmarm standing over you with her ruler.
A flier is someone who flies. A flyer is an announcement printed “on the fly.”
Now Brad, explain to the folks the difference between “flak” and “flack.”
Ah, yes, thank you, Mr. Burlingame…
I love this one.
A “flack” is a publicist or PR person. “Flak” is an abbreviation of the German “Fliegerabwehrkanone,” which is one of those wonderful run-on, compound German words that means “anti-aircraft gun,” or more literally, “Aeroplane Defence Cannon.”
It entered the language via American FLIERS in the war who were subjected to it. They used it, however, less to refer to the gun itself but to the deadly bursts exploding around them.
It is almost always used metaphorically today, to refer to being subject to heavy amounts of criticism or rhetorical interference, especially if it seems designed to discourage you from proceeding toward a goal, as in, “I’m catching a lot of flak on my proposal.”
Brad, I love your blog. Learn something new every time. Thanks.
Thanks, Burl! Now I know!
Now, isn’t “flak” an acronym, more properly speaking, like scuba and radar and laser? (At least I think the last two are acronyms).
Yeah, whatever. I was going to say “bastardization,” but decided that wasn’t right.
I used “abbreviation” in the generic sense of “made shorter.” Yes, if you can pronounce it, it’s an acronym. And “flak” is eminently pronounceable. But ultimately, isn’t an acronym a type of abbreviation?
As I understand it, all acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms.
So my sin in this case was to fail to be as specific as possible.
Exactly what is a “chopper”? Is it someone who cuts up vegitables with a knife, a helicopter or a special type of motorcycle.
@Brad–why I said “more properly speaking”–could better have said, “more narrowly speaking”…an acronym is an abbreviation formed by using the initial letters of the term abbreviated. Query: are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae acronyms, or a verbalization of an acronym (FNMA, FHLMC, SLM, respectively)?
@ Burl– I’m thinking more motorcycle enthusiasts search for things on Google than helicopter or culinary ones do…not sure that means that the use of the word for motorcycle exceeds that for helicopter (doubt the culinary one is popular).
Bud, all three, albeit spelled the same each time.
Because the way the search algorhythms are set up, Google is a handy way of assessing popular word use. Google tells me that “chopper” is primarily linked to motorcycles.