Sentence Enhancers

For the last 7 days by far and away the most overused word in the Entrenched Media's lexicon............FINALLY. Help arrives FINALLY. People are being evacuated from the Superdome, FINALLY. Bush sends more help to beleaugered New Orleans, FINALLY. Bush FINALLY spending time on hurricane relief.

They all did it AP, Reuters, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, even Fox. It was like some sort of bizarre echo chamber inhabited only by aliens from the planet melancholia. It brings to mind something I saw while my 7 year old twins were watching an episode of SpongeBob Squarepants. Spongebob ran across a dirty word scrawlwd on the side of a dumpster. His buddy Patrick explained to him it wasn't a "bad" word but rather a "sentence enhancer". You know, like, what a beautiful $#*in day.

Well the press has definately found their sentence enhancer. Unfortunaely it's more than just a sentence enhancer, it's editorial comment. Finally is an adverb which modifies meaning. It's usage is inherently subjective, thus by definition interjects the users personal opinions into the statement of fact.

Usually the author of a "straight" story waits untill at least the second or third paragraph before editorializing, not so with hurricane reporting. It's clear that in the minds of the Entrenched press, the story was soooo monumentally important that any self imposed restraint should be discarded; Straight reporting just couldn't tell the story. So we got it all, ranting, raging, tears and an unending diatribe of political commentary with a smattering of facts mixed in.

Well, with other big stories looming on the horizon, maybe soon the press will begin to cover a few other subjects.........FINALLY.