Project Wonderful Banner

Saturday, April 09, 2011

That damned Agreement

What's Mallard raving about today?

Grammar, Students.

Having long ago abandoned the principle that "ordinary people need a break, not a lecture" in favor of lecturing people all day every day, Mallard goes one step further and decides to lecture people on their use of English, something at which he is exceedingly bad.

12 comments:

KMD said...

Nah, "people need a break, not a lecture" doesn't apply to kids and teens, since they need to add to the already present pressure to succeed and clean up all the mistakes of the previous generation.

It mainly applies to washed up, middle aged drunkards who never contributed anything to society. If anyone needs a break, it's those poor guys!

dlauthor said...

Tinshley should write an English usage guidebook from his perspective. He could call it Drunk and White.

NickE said...

dlauthor wins the internet!

Frank Stone said...

Well, Brucie would know from unintelligible...

By the way, Mr. Random Television Watcher: If you wanted to sue Bruce Tinsley for giving you that hairstyle, I think you'd have a very good case.

CW in LA said...

First, the use of a comma where the same subject is used for both sides of the conjunction is incorrect, dooshbag.

Second, this is the guy who's spelled 'publicly' as "publically", to, as young people today would say, he should STFU.

Taquelli said...

Wow, this makes the least sense ever. A native speaker of a language very rarely makes spoken grammar mistakes, and can recognize them when they happen pretty much instantly. Writing is different, but writing is another skill entirely, requiring different thought patterns, so of course there are likely to be mistakes by students. Mistakes that are caught instantly when something is read aloud. The only way you can make the show difficult to understand is intentionally have incorrect subject-verb agreement, like a poorly voice-dubbed foreign show.

But expecting Tinsley to put even the slightest amount of effort and research in critiquing anything is a fool's dream. The real question is: why is he reading so many high school essays?

Kip W said...

He's right. I have a class with a bunch of freshment college students, and whenever I use correct grammar talking to them, they just stand and look at me until I rephrase it in syntax as bad as Mallard's art. True story. Happened to this guy I know.

Marion Delgado said...

If anyone could make subject-verb agreement unpopular, it's Tinsley. Or as They Might Be Giants put it, I know politics bore you but I feel like a hypocrite talking to you and your racist friend! I bet they were falsely accusing Bruce Tinsley.

As some dialects of English might say, we was thinkin' maybe Tinsley's on a tear about "non-sexist" pronouns. Everyone is singular, so "everyone brings their own beer" is incorrect, as well as being cheap and mistrustful. It's "everyone brings HIS own beer!"

Randy said...

BTW, today's Tom the Dancing Bug features a certain "unemployed duck" getting some treatment we might all like to see.

wordsmith said...

I think the "Lucky Ducky" in the Ruben Bolling cartoon actually refers to the Wall Street Journal editorial page's "Lucky Duckies" who are too poor to pay taxes (unlike the unfortunates who earn 7-figure and above incomes).

Tog said...

Lucky Ducky's been an on-off recurring character in TTDB, always in the same situation: reduced to horrible, self-mutilating debasement by economic woes, Ducky nonetheless incurs the wrath of silver-spoon-suckling Hollingsworth Hound by celebrating the handful of coins (or worse, some small government assistance such as a discount bus pass) he earns for his trouble.

I'm sure Tinsley thinks it's a stab at him and not (as Wordsmith notes) a reference to the WSJ obscenely deeming the working poor to be "lucky duckies." After all, it gives him another non-existent "enemies list" on which to pretend to be #1. Celebrations are in order.

Next week, Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1 hits theaters, and as a fan of insane-cult-based box-office disasters (Inchon!, Battlefield Earth), I couldn't be more delighted. (I'm already enjoying the foaming-at-the-mouth flamewars in response to initial reviews.)

Prediction: Randists and their teabagger patsies will channel their dollars into propping it up at the box office for a couple of weeks, and it will promptly vanish from our consciousness. If AS2: The Shruggening ever gets made, it will be straight-to-video and squish the remaining two-thirds of Ayn's insane rant into an hour and a half. Get the popcorn!

rewinn said...

I know a heck of a lot of students (I volunteer at a thrift store where work-study students labor) and most of them are nice, studious and intelligent.

Sure, they're making some of the same stupid mistakes I made at their age, and I'm sure they're listening to my warnings just as carefully as I listened to the old farts warning me at their age. But anyone who thinks they aren't at least as bright as our generation is just being arrogant.

Indeed, between email, texting and so one, a strong case could be made that they're writing FAR MORE than we did in our youth. Pounding away on my Brother (tm) Portable I could do a ten quality pages a day, much less if it were heavily sourced. My nieces can do that in two hours ... typing with their THUMBS.

I'm sure that's a lot of stupidity going around and, thanks to the internet, we can see it more easily and mock it. But the smart stuff is there too and I for one salute the upcoming generation.

What a sad, angry world Bruce Tinsley lives in!