more taboo avoidance

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

If Jet Blue sold ANYONE 8 drinks in a flight, they are at least partly to blame. If they sold even one drink to an 18-year-old, they violated another (albeit misguided) US law.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 12, 2011, at 12:20 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> I'm not sure how much interest there might be in this, but there are some
> potentially attention-worthy elements in the story of an 18-year old drunk
> (no longer) US Olympic skier arrested after an incident on a JetBlue flight.
> There seems to be a dichotomy between the more formal traditional media (and
> their websites') reports of "urinating" and the bloggers comments on
> "peeing", while the guy's own explanation involved "pissing".
>
> I also had a question concerning the MSNBC headline:
>
> http://goo.gl/KwCYN
> Olympic dreams dashed after unfortunate in-flight incident
>
> I am not sure whether to characterize this as an unfortunate
> misinterpretation of events or their attempt to give the kid the benefit of
> a doubt. My own stylistic gremlins would not allow me to use "dreams dashed"
> in this context, as this would have implied external or independent (random)
> agency--being beaten by someone else (including losses due to own admitted
> mistakes /during the competition/), accidental injury, unusual
> circumstances, parental action, etc. But, in this case, being kicked off the
> team is a direct product of the skier's own asinine behavior (drunk or
> not)--basically, if it's your own fault, your dreams can't be "dashed" (in
> my writing style). What I am trying to figure out is whether it's my own
> predilections or some kind of received rule or some kind of frequency
> analysis. In fact, in this particular headline, as an editor, I would not
> have used "unfortunate" either, because it also suggests a random act or an
> external agent.
>
> VS-)
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org