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Sunday, November 23, 2014

The Meaning of Words


From Stilettos (and mini-skirts) to Sneakers (and sweaters): The Fox Five Bunch

The irritating commentary group The Five comes on periodically on Fox News. I don't know their schedule, and if I find them when I tune in, I listen for a while to see if they have anything worth listening to. Sometimes they do.

The infantile Greg Gutfeld, who almost always wears sneakers and some kind of sweater, and has his hair disheveled like a toddler, did have something to say yesterday.

The topic was Obama signing the two executive orders on Friday to delay deportation of illegal immigrants [KPA: I didn't know he signed them on Air Force One. Is this another of Obama's nonchalant and casual attitude when it comes to the laws, and the governing, of the United States?], then heading over to Las Vegas to rally support for his actions.

About two thirds into the video (below), which just has a portion of the hour-long program, Gutfeld talks about words that he says have been "abused." Gutfeld thinks he's a bit of a wordsmith, and adds his own embellishments usually at the end of the program, with words he declares "banned."



Gutfeld makes his case for a brief half a minute between 13:18 to 13:40 before he got interrupted. I've transcribed what he said:
America has a hard time trusting a President when the language keeps changing, when terrorism is "workplace violence." If breaking the law is considered "dreaming" [KPA: as in the Dream Act, Well Done Gutfeld!], consider the implications. Could theft be "A wish to own something?" We're screwing with the language so that the logic allows for a redefinition of abuses. So that almost anything could mean can mean anything. Rioting could mean...
Gutfeld was on a playful roll, but his dry co-hosts (one of the women is a lawyer) bring in the clearly obvious problems with these politicized words, and they drowned the insightful and amusing commentary Gutfeld was making. I think if he went any further, he would have brought up Orwell, 1984 (and probably Animal Farm), and how they relate (because they do!) to our present time.

The problem with "The Five" is that there are too many of them, they take themselves too seriously, and they are pedantically obvious. There is not much insight to be found there, except occasionally with Gutfeld, and if you can bear his sophomoric presence. Dana Perino is the most serious of the group, although she doesn't take herself as seriously as they do themselves), but she is strangely self-conscious. I don't think she has much practice in front of the camera like her other co-hosts, and she's probably thrown off by their juvenile banter.

Gutfeld has his own blog, so he probably has (or will have) this idea about Obama's words completed and written up somewhere.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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