Get Off the Bus

Frequent visitors to this site are aware of my distaste for words that have been grossly over-used. Of late, I have found that I cannot wait for the annual New Year's list from Lake Superior State College, as there is a new contender for the throne. I refer to the one word that has been used in nearly every article I have seen written about the next Republican nominee for President. It's bad enough that we have been bombarded with this for months; over the past week, after the announcement of the #2 person on the ticket, the same adjective has been applied to him, ad infinitum. The word has not been limited to print or online commentary; those talking heads on the networks spout it as well.

The frequency of the use of this word has led me to conclude that people reporting on this year's election are lazy. This is not a new phenomenon. My first exposure to this notion came from Timothy Crouse's tale of the 1972 campaign, The Boys on the Bus. One of the themes of the book was that reporters exhibit a pack mentality; they will, as a group, follow any tidbit that one of their members has unearthed, until their readers (and the writers themselves) become exhausted by it. The story then becomes a footnote to that campaign, remembered only by geeks like me who cannot unclutter their brains of such trivia.

There were but three synonyms listed in Dictionary.com: probable, possible, circumstantial. I cannot recall seeing the word used in any previous election. I am hopeful that after the offical dubbing concludes next week, I will not suffer it again anytime soon.

The picture above is from Poet's Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, certainly one of the more moving spots on the planet. Somehow, I cannot picture "presumptive" being chiseled on the floor alongside words penned by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Wharton and Twain.