Delonte West kicked/left* off the bus

[Joel S. Berson]

Delonte West has been banned from going to the White House for a
meeting of the NBA champion Dallas Mavericks with President
Obama.  He failed a "routine background check" by the President's
security team.  The linguistic item that interested me in the story
(on "Ball Don't Lie", by Kelly Dwyer)** is:

West is quoted as saying "It's going to be ashamed the President
isn't going to get a chance to meet me. I'm the president of my
house.''   Is this the irresponsible passive (it ... ashamed),
because West didn't dare criticize the (other) president directly; or
spoken ungrammaticity; or someone's typo?  (I will skip over the
hubris of the metaphor of a meeting of equals, both heads of state.)

*  The writer used "left off".
** No I don't read sports blogs -- this is Yahoo's lead news story
this morning.

Joel

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