Delonte West kicked/left* off the bus

[Joel S. Berson]

A perhaps-important correction -- not the lead story any more, as
Yahoo rotates them.  But presumably still accessible somewhere in the
cloud ... at
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/mavericks-delonte-west-m-banned-going-white-house-022258022.html

JSB

At 1/9/2012 10:56 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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