Don't give up your day job

This is the first and greatest commandment of knockoff doggerel: It has to scan. Not "almost," not "most of the time," but relentlessly and throughout, else you are no craftsperson. And that increases the likelihood that you will be mocked through the streets by urchins. Take it away, Las Vegas Review Journal!

’Twas the season of Christmas, and all through the land

OK so far ...

Were signs and symbols some folks couldn’t stand

BZZZZT! Those pesky anapests claim another victim.

The evergreen conifer many decorate with glee,
But don’t you dare call it a Christmas tree.

Those two kind of work, if you close your eyes and imagine the Child Knights of the Round Table as voiced by Yogi Bear.
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Had to happen to somebody ...

... and give or take a slip of a finger, it could have been you:

A front-page story in some editions Monday incorrectly referred to Osama bin Laden as Obama.

Are there worse things you can do in covering this event than typos? Well, sure. As noted elsewhere, you could tumble for a basic fallacy of logic. Worse, you could be indulgent toward columnists who, despite an evident shortage of clues, seem to think their thoughts on the matter are relevant. It's early days yet, but so far young Ross Douthat is looking like a champion:

I moved to Washington, D.C., a year after the twin towers fell, and there was a touch of London during the blitz in the way that people carried themselves in those days.

Ross? I don't think so.
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Cliche corner: Calling in the experts

I guess so. On the other hand, you could be wondering if you can gnaw your own leg off and escape before the writer manages to come up with a third cliche for this miserable lede.

The online version, should you be scoring along at home, is different for no apparent reason:

When you run into your worst nightmare, what are the chances it will also be someone else’s finest hour?

That, I think, suggests why this is such a singularly awful piece of writing. It really doesn't matter what order the words go in, or whether they form a question or a declaration. The Freep has decided that the best way to handle this story on Wednesday (the accident in question did close one of the interstates during rush hour, but that was Monday) is to let an editorial writer ruminate about it on the front page. And from that no good can come.

Any story of this nature -- the "news" version inside manages to use "Good Samaritan" four times, nearly all of them spelled correctly -- is likely to underscore the deeply ideological, persuasive nature of the news enterprise in general. As surely as the latest installment of the War On Christianity at Fox, this is a tale about how the world ought to be, rather than a report about what it is. If you put your dollar in the machine hoping for some news, you can be forgiven for asking why you were given a bedtime story instead. And why, if it must be a bedtime story, it couldn't be written with some minimal attention to form.

No evidence: Better than fake evidence?

The 30-second Kathleen Parker:

I'm not saying Obama is a girlie president, but he is the first girlie man to be president! Here are some random observations, some misinterpretations of a genuine rhetorical scholar and some bogus pseudo-linguistic assertions I don't understand either! More Pulitzers, please!

Thanks to the eternal vigilance of the cousins at the Language Log, this summary can be appended: Yes, it appears possible to analyze the speech in question so as to yield the asserted proportion of "passive-voice constructions." But even if the Global Language Monitor was able to recognize the passive voice at better than chance levels (it isn't), there's no correlation between the grammatical construction we call "passive" and the concept of "passivity in a leader" -- and a good thing too, since the manly boil of George W. Bush's speechmaking appears to contain significantly more of it than the mincing simmer of Obama's.

That's getting to be a familiar refrain: Columnist makes stuff up, Post fails to exercise minimal due gatekeeping diligence, and yet another steaming cartload of bullpoop is loosed upon the world of political discourse. So it was hardly a surprise to click over to the Foremost Newspaper of the Carolinas this morning and find this:

Is Obama paying price for acting too much like a woman?

Which is the same column, with a notable deletion:

His lack of immediate, commanding action was perceived as a lack of leadership because, well, it was. Campbell's research, in which she affirms that men can assume feminine communication styles successfully (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton), suggests holes in my own theory. She insists that males are safe assuming female styles as long as they meet rhetorical norms for effective advocacy - clarity and cogency of argument, appropriate and compelling evidence.

Whoa! I don't think Kathleen Parker's a very good writer, but I do think she's a less clumsy writer than that -- I mean, going straight from her core assertion to the acknowledgement that her own "theory" is unlikely to hold water. Here's her original:

His lack of immediate, commanding action was perceived as a lack of leadership because, well, it was. When he finally addressed the nation on day 56 (!) of the crisis, Obama's speech featured 13 percent passive-voice constructions, the highest level measured in any major presidential address this century, according to the Global Language Monitor, which tracks and analyzes language.

Granted, the century is young -- and it shouldn't surprise anyone that Obama's rhetoric would simmer next to George W. Bush's boil. But passivity in a leader is not a reassuring posture.

Campbell's research, in which she affirms that men can assume feminine communication styles successfully (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton), suggests holes in my own theory. She insists that men are safe assuming female styles as long as they meet rhetorical norms for effective advocacy -- clarity and cogency of argument, appropriate and compelling evidence, and preempting opposing positions.

The "13 percent passive-voice constructions" is gone. That's pretty obviously an editorial change, but where did it happen? Is it just the Observer omitting words at random to make the column fit in the designated hole?* Or did the syndicate have a belated change of heart? Or is something else afoot?

My bet is on random -- though having spent 11 years omitting words, needless and otherwise, under that very roof, I'd like to hold out hope for "belated attack of conscience." The column appeared today, and the Logsters first nailed it last Thursday. It's run in quite a few places since then, but I haven't seen that omission anywhere else.

Promising sign, but not conclusive. Columns, unlike news stories, tend to have conclusions, and the Observer omitted Parker's:

And, perhaps, next time will be a real woman's turn.

Yeah, it's lame, stupid and irrelevant, but it is a conclusion. And that suggests that space was the main issue -- meaning that any couple of sentences could have brought the thing down to length. Why were the ones referring to Paul Payack's fabricated data the ones that went? And if it was an attack of conscience, why not kill the damn column altogether?

Accounts from those at the Obs are thus solicited. And anyone who wants to explain why deleting the faulty evidence makes it all right to run a column based on faulty evidence can step to the head of the line.

* In case you were wondering, kids, a change in the SAU column width from 12p4 to 11p ain't just whistling Dixie.

Expression is the need of my soul

We went into the study later than usual the other night, and discovered the cats with InDesign open on the desktop. They did not see us, and we watched them for a while. The front page was actually in very good shape, given how hard it is to operate a mouse without opposable thumbs. They had the Tigers as a centerpiece and were ledeing with the Middle East.* But they were still arguing about the editorial, so I showed them one that a dog wrote for one of America's Newspapers:

Annie Poo Robinson, guest column: Putting a bite on the news
ANNIE POO ROBINSON Guest column
("You're not going to try writing a whole post in my voice, are you?" asked Bernie. "Because I am so peeing on your laptop two or three times tonight if you do. As soon as you go to sleep." Woodchuck was still working on the jump page and didn't look up.)

My name is Annie Poo. Five years ago I arrived at Fuzzy Friends Rescue as a 6-week-old red poodle puppy weighing two pounds. I was as skinny as uncooked angel hair pasta, I barely knew that newspapers were for housebreaking, and I was just eager to become someone’s little love.

I was lucky. Someone I know as Miss Bow Wow took me home and introduced me to my prospective daddy. ("If you start calling Language Czarina 'Miss Bow Wow,' can we sell tickets? To, like, you sliding down the wall with a knife in your back?") It was love at first sight.

Daily, I sit in queenly fashion up in my daddy’s downtown Waco office building, greeting visitors with barks. I enjoy watching them dance about the room as I nip merrily at their shoes or attack their pants legs. That includes the postman, whom I attack as if I were a Doberman.

Lately, though, I’ve gotten to know the Tribune-Herald, the hometown newspaper that my daddy purchased this summer. ("Hey, why don't you buy a newspaper? I'll gnaw on the laboring classes, and Dreamsicle there can write the columns.") It’s a bustling place, full of vivid personalities and rich talents, all serving in different ways as — dare I say it? — the watchdogs of this community.

That’s something a pooch like me can respect and admire.

Call me crazy, but the Trib building spurs my extra-sensory qualities. (Woodchuck was puzzled. "Do dogs have extra-sensory qualities?" "Yeah, sorta. In lieu of 'clues'.") There are days when I see spirits of yesteryear roaming the place. One day I saw Harlon and Clara Fentress studying the new Trib, smiling upon seeing “In God We Trust” on the masthead of what used to be their newspaper. ("Why does that make them smile?" "I don't know. Maybe they think it makes the newspaper into a muneez.")

There was the spirit of Jinx Tucker, typing football stories on the old linotype back in the Trib museum. ("The sports editor's typing a gamer into a Linotype? That's one dumb ghost. Even for a sports ghost." "Well, consider the source.")

...But there’s also a lot of the here and now in the Trib newsroom, bustling with those who consist of flesh, blood and a passion for news. ... As hard-working as the Trib news staff is, a sense of down-home camaraderie pervades. Great smells waft through this newsroom after hard-hitting investigative reporter Cindy Culp drops off, for her colleagues, homemade cookies and cakes, or Tim Woods brings by a whole box of barbecue from Vitek’s or Mama & Papa B’s. ("Does that Dan Brown guy write for newspapers too?")

My most fun time is going to editorial board meetings each morning with publisher Dan Savage, editor Carlos Sanchez, senior editor Bill Whitaker and my daddy’s son, Gordon, president of Robinson Media and the one who often shows street smarts. (There's a special contribution insurance salesmen can bring to journalism!)

Animated doesn’t begin to describe these meetings. The fur flies. And, yes, my daddy gets carried away, more than anyone else, vigorously arguing some obscure point on one issue or another with his colleagues. I’ve seen him stomp on the floor and gesture wildly while telling a story that he only hopes and prays illustrates his point. (This really had the cats' attention, because nobody ever stomps on the floor and gestures wildly around here. Freedom of stomping around the boardroom is guaranteed to those who own one.)

During intense debate on CIA interrogation techniques, Mr. Savage actually challenged my daddy to get himself water-boarded. ("Is that something poodles do?" "No, that's got to be something insurance salesmen do. It's why we're all the time hiring more of them to do Middle East policy.")

Sometimes, my canine instincts bristle and I want to bite one of those arguing with my daddy, but he’s trained me better. Besides, he says, they might bite back. ("Aw, yeah! Prisoner without a name, THWACK! Poodle without a face!" "Bernie, no! It's not Annie Poo's fault! It's the Stockholm syndrome! She can't help it!")

Daddy says we have a good newspaper getting better by the day, and that the news media world is watching our “Waco Experiment” to see if former insurance salesmen like my daddy and Gordon; veteran publishers like Dan Savage; and a team of dedicated professionals can reverse a sad trend in the daily newspaper business. (Yes, because the "news media world" is so completely flummoxed by the idea that amateurs would buy their way into journalism with ... oh, you know, money, that we can't imagine someone trying it in the sunny uplands of 2009. Blew that one past us while we were looking for the breaking ball outside, Space Family Robinson!)

This much I know. If I have to wet on a newspaper nowadays, I think twice about doing it on the Trib. Daddy wouldn’t be happy. ("Hey, kid? Poodle? Word from the wise. If it's between the sofa and the Trib, pee on the Trib. Every time.")

The cats are trying to figure out what goes in the skybox and how to handle the playoff on Tuesday. I wish them luck. I mean, really. Nobody ever said journalism was going to be easy.

* Daddy's kitties!