It's Official: NOAD Demeans Self for PR Gold (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Ronald Butters]

I agree with Bill about this, and I am responding to the whole list rather than just to him because I think he makes an important point about list etiquette. I'd go a step further, having already suggested that all the liberal hand-wringing about the promotion of Ms. Palin's putative solecism to putative brilliant neologism is at the very least amusingly slightly hypocritical. (And of course when Bush blundered, it showed how stupid he was; when Obama blundered, it maybe showed how clever he was to be able to speak the language of the people. Heck, maybe he is even speaking Ebonics!)

My first impulse, though, was to respond only to Bill--and I noticed that it is not easy to reply to the author of a posting without replying to the whole list. Is there some way that ADS-L could change the default for "REPLY" to be the  original author rather than the list as a whole (or is this just a problem with my e-mail)?

It seems likely that, if hitting the "reply" or even "reply to all" button would get one the author rather than the entire list, we might cut down on a lot of junk replies really meant only for one person, which are my chief complaint (even worse than the Vocabula plugs and the posturings about how clever we are to know the proper Latin ablative ending for "tequilana").

On Nov 16, 2010, at 9:54 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:

> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> Was there any reason to make this post other than to make a political
> point?
>
> I'd much rather see people self-censor their off-topic political views
> than to ask Wilson to stop his reminiscences, or even to limit the plugs
> for Vocabula Review.
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> Behalf Of
>> Victor Steinbok
>> Sent: Monday, November 15, 2010 8:46 PM
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Subject: Re: It's Official: NOAD Demeans Self for PR Gold
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> ----------------------
>> -
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: It's Official: NOAD Demeans Self for PR Gold
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------
>> -
>>
>> I can live with "refudiate"--whatever!
>>
>> But can we please refer to Palin by her full title, please?
>>
>>> The former governor used the word in a Twitter message last summer,
>>> calling on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" a planned mosque near
> the
>>> site of the 9/11 attacks in New York. When critics pounced on the
>>> made-up verb, Palin deleted the Tweet and replaced it with one that
>>> called on Muslims to "refute" the site - even though that usage made
>>> no sense, either, since to refute is to prove something to be
> untrue.
>>
>> Please--it's "former half-term failed governor". If pressed, one can
>> omit the "failed" part.
>>
>> VS-)
>>
>> On 11/15/2010 4:42 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20101115/pl_yblog_theticket/almo
> st-
>> 5-million-people-watched-sarah-palins-alaska
>>> JL
>>
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> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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