Charlie Rose on asking an expert on China to describe the host of the Olympic Games and the world's third largest economy:
"I know you can't speak with a broad brush..."
That is correct, Charlie. In fact, no one can speak with a "broad brush" which is used for painting, not speaking. The correct verb even for a figure of speech would be "paint" or perhaps "make strokes" in describing China while using perhaps "colorful" words which provide "texture" and therefore a better "picture" of the Asian power.
Such words contribute to the usual bombast spewing from American media whenever someone excels in his or her sport. Give credit to Michael Phelps, a seemingly unpretentious young man, prodigious swimmer, and winner of eight gold medals in one Olympics. We're not saying the boy can't swim. We're not saying "greatness" should not be associated with his name. We are saying to American commentators: Go to the history books, recover your memory, and develop a sense of proportion. (For further commentary on the media commentary, please read after the listing)
Compare the athletes named below, all Track & Field Olympians. I borrow liberally from a piece by David Powell from TheTimesOnline. These athletes should be included among the greatest Olympic athletes. Key qualifying phrases as to their greatness are put in bold:
Carl Lewis
King Carl – to use the popular headline - was officially named IAAF world male athlete of the 20th Centuryand deservedly so. Although his fame was driven largely by his position as the world’s fastest man, it was as a long jumper that Lewis delivered his greatest Olympic feat. One of only three athletes – Ray Ewry and Al Oerter were the others – to win the same individual event at four Olympics, Lewis claimed his last long jump gold against all odds. His best days over, he scraped the last place in the US team, was 15th after two of the three qualifying rounds, with only the top 12 making the final, then produced his best jump for four years to retain the title. Lewis was cleared of drug-taking before the 1988 Olympics when he was one of eight athletes found to have low stimulant levels in his system.
Lasse Viren
As if doing the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres double twice was not enough, Lasse Viren wrote his place in Olympic history in dramatic fashion. During his first final, the 10,000 metres in 1972, he stumbled and fell just before halfway but got up to win in a world record time.
Fanny Blankers-Koen
NamedIAAF world woman athlete of the 20th Century, Blankers-Koen is the only woman to win four gold medals at one Olympics. How many more she was denied one can only guess as the Second World War robbed her of two Games. At 18, she did not win a medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where her highlight was collecting Jesse Owens’s autograph. By the time the Olympics resumed after a 12-year-break, she held six world records.
Jesse Owens
Unimaginable as it may seem now, Jesse Owens set six world records in 45 minutes on one May afternoon in 1935. Yet he is better known for his four Olympic gold medals in 1936. Owens, an African-American sprinter/jumper, embarrassed Hitler’s attempt to use the Games in Berlin to prove his theories of Aryan racial superiority. Aged 22, it was his only Olympics, as he turned professional soon afterwards.
Rafer Johnson
Rafer Johnson, especially considering the dramatic circumstances of his achievement (one also thinks of Mark Spitz, Jesse Owens, and Lasse Viren for "circumstances" in which they achieved) but also because Johnson was a decathlete. After all, the decathlon includes ten events measuring agility, strength, finesse, endurance. By this measure other decathlon Olympic champions could be included. But I choose Johnson for reasons stated below from Wikipedia:
Due to injury, Johnson missed the 1957 and 1959 seasons (the latter due to a car accident), but in 1958 and 1960, he improved the world record two more times. The crown on his career came in 1960, at the Rome Olympics. His most important opponent was Yang Chuan-Kwang of Taiwan. Yang also studied at UCLA, and the two were training together and had become friends. After nine events, Johnson led Yang, but Yang was thought to be capable of overcoming this gap in the final event, the 1500 m. Johnson however managed to cling on to Yang, and won the gold.
When was the last time anyone took interest in the final event of a decathlon at the Olympic Games? The conclusion to this event on a warm Roman evening remains one of the most stunning performances in Olympic history.
At UCLA, Johnson also played basketball under legendary coach John Wooden, and was a starter on the 1959-60 Men's Basketball team.
Johnson was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year in 1958 and won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1960, breaking that award's color barrier. In 1994, he was elected into the first class of the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame. In 1998, he was named one of ESPN's 100 Greatest North American Athletes of the 20th Century. In 2006, the NCAA named him one of the 100 Most Influential Student Athletes of the past 100 years. Al Oerter One of only three men to win the same event at four successive Olympics– Carl Lewis and Ray Ewry are the others – Al Oerter broke the Olympic discus record on each occasion. In other words, he kept getting better. And, just to prove the point, after a decade out of competition, Oerter made a comeback in 1980, aged 43, with a lifetime best distance.
Peter Snell
The surprise winner of the Olympic 800 metres in 1960, Peter Snell won the 800 metres and 1,500 metres in 1964 by handsome margins. (Think of Usain Bolt magnified). Prior to Tokyo, Snell had never run a 1,500 metres race, although he had competed many times over the mile. He came to international attention when he won the gold medal and set a new record for 800 m at the Rome Olympics in 1960. He was particularly dominant four years later at the Tokyo Olympics where he won the gold and set a new record in the 800 m, and won gold in the 1500 m. His time in the 800 m would have been good enough to win silver, and only fractionally miss gold, 36 years later at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The 800-1500 m double was not achieved again by a male athlete in open global championship until Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain won both golds at the 2005 World Championships at Helsinki.
Snell's 800 m time from 1962 remains the fastest ever run over that distance on a grass track. (Note: superlative well-used here). It is also the oldest national record recognized by the IAAF for a standard track and field event.
Bob Beamon
One Olympics, one medal, one giant leap into the Olympic hall of fame. Only** Michael Johnson’s world record 200 metres at the 1996 Olympics can be spoken of in the same breath as Beamon’s extraordinary first-round leap in Mexico City.Beamon bypassed 28 feet on the way to taking the world record from 27ft 5in to 29ft 2½in. “You’ve destroyed this event,” Lynn Davies, the defending champion, said of Beamon’s winning jump in his only Olympic appearance.
What we ask is that commentators on these matters use as a critical measure the concept of proportion before making haughty statements about good, better, best, and of course "Best of all Time," a favored American phrase since the glory days of post World War 2. Let us remember that more people run than swim; therefore, to excel in Track and Field--a sport gone missing from American media coverage in the past quarter century*,--is to achieve on a greater scale.
Historically, Track and Fieldsignified the Olympic Gamesto most people for more than a century since the advent of the modern Olympic Games. That was before American television together with its advertising in the last quarter century began delivering viewers to select markets*subsequently corrupting what should have been an inviolate tradition. But we know how American popular culture when tied to commercial markets can corrupt most formerly inviolate traditions. Presently, we are living in the apex of that inglorious period.
Let us also include the concept of longevity when assessing achievement. Over how long a period and under what circumstances does an athlete achieve?
*Because they perceive no market exists for their advertisers better than, for example: baseball, basketball, and beach volleyball.
**Perhaps Usain Bolt's achievement makes the grade.
In winning the seventh of his eight gold medals in the Olympic "Water Cube" in Beijing, Michael Phelps recounted his proper choice of taking one final stroke before touching the wall. In taking "a final half stroke" instead of gliding as had his Serbian opponent in an adjacent lane,
Phelps secured first place by a "finger tip" in .01 second, the most narrow margin possible in swimming competition. While his choice of strategy was correct, Phelps' choice of verb tense in describing the strategy would have left him off the medal stand. Phelps said:
"If I had glided, I would have came up short."
Phelps should have said: "If I had glided, I would have come up short."
The proper sequence: The verb phrase following the pluperfect or past perfect tense, "had glided," employs a past participle, "would have come up." In this case, the second verb phrase is in the potential mood expressing something probable or possible. That is, he probably would not have achieved first place because his chief competitor was only .01 second behind. Regardless of the mood of the verb, the second verb phrase still requires the use of the past participle "come," not the simple past "came."
"When I made that final half-stroke, I thought I'd lost it there," said Phelps, who won the 2004 Olympic final by a similar margin, edging American rival Ian Crocker by just .04 seconds. "But I guess that was the difference in the race. I'm kind of at a loss for words."
No, Michael. Not a loss for words, just one lost past participle.
At dinner recently with a group of friends, someone reflected on the shortage of food in "remote" parts of the world. Certainly, remote to our own, preferred experiences.
One thinks of names and corresponding images from Darfur, Sudan, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia. One clearly sees the starving children, their gaunt faces, their weary eyes devoid of promise.
Annoyance at the timing of such a deflating relflection before a bounteous meal among friends would be understandable. After all, ambience counts, it establishes mood, and mood affects appetite. Happily, all tolerated the reflection. One friend was even moved to offer a toast in the form of an antimetabole*:
"Take what you need so long as you need what you take."
Quiet agreement, followed by a savory meal, promoted by an elegant thought.
*In rhetoric antimetabole is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in reverse grammatical order (ex: "I know what I like, and like what I know").
As an Iraq war policy loyalist, comedian turned political commentator Dennis Miller may be fairly labeled a French basher, a practice much ballyhooed by the American television media in the early days of the war. Remember, one in three French persons did not favor the United States' invasion of Iraq. That's 33%. In a pseudo act of patriotism, the Hill cafeteria in Congress renamed its French fries and French toast to "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast." The practice soon caught on as "freedom loving" Americans soon began eating ravenously the newly named pomme frites .
Yeah, well that's the United States Congress. On the street at least one in two Americans would admit they still consume French Fries and French Toast as 51 per cent of respondents to a TNS poll released by the Washington Post and ABC News think the United States is not making significant progress toward restoring civil order in Iraq.
Can we say therefore that a representative 51% of Americans don't feel like much "freedom" has been sown in Iraq?
A fact often overlooked is the one clouded by the obscurantism* of American television media** that a greater number of United States citizens than French citizens are not approving of the war. According to the same TNS poll, 63 per cent of respondents think the war with Iraq was not worth fighting." That's over 50%. (Angus Reid World Opinion Monitor).
Back to Miller who was asked by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly about a recent meeting Miller had experienced with a celebrity named "Mr. T."
"Good guy," responded Miller, or words that effect. "He gave me a five-pack of Milky Way (candy bars)...I remember when six-packs were du rejour." "Rejour" (spelled the way Miller pronounced it) is the mispronounciation of de rigueur, meaning "customary or proper (behavior)." Merriam Webster OnLine Dictionary. Thus, Miller was saying that it used to be customary to give people six instead of five of something when rendering (a gift) in bulk.
Miller couldn't hate the French so much as to say "du rejour" for de rigueur. Fluent individuals who can't pronounce French succeed well enough in pronouncing the phrase: də-(ˌ)rē-ˈgər. (Go to link to hear pronunciation). If Miller is going to use a French phrase often used in English, at least he could pronounce the word the way fluent Americans do, whether or not they agree with one-third of French public opinion. Then again, he may hate the French so much as to sacrifice the suave image he projects.
*n. resistance to progress (political and/or social) and the spread of knowledge; deliberate creation of obscurity. (Oxford Concise English Dictionary).
**Many newspapers have remained faithful to their journalistic calling and the promise of the 1st Amendment, and have reported this fact.
My wife gardens for pleasure and for the pleasure of others. She loves dogs and other animals. However, when the Newfoundland "puppy" next door wanders into the garden, patience suffers.
Sniffing around innocently, the 80 pounder (his father is 180 lbs.) knows little of the osteospermum and the salvia officinalishe "bewilders" with his bear like paws.
Since we live in Southern California, I recommended that my wife try a cactus to steer the pooch elsewhere.
"A cactus?" She inquired.
"Yes, a cactus. Believe me, that "little" Newf* will get the point.**
*Shortened version for Newfoundland (dog) which we love. **Actually, our "little" friend will probably not get the point. His fur is thick enough to cushion any points made by cactuses.
Clever and not so clever writers use old rhetorical devices as antimetabole and chiasmus to get our attention. What separates good from bad turns of phrases (or clauses) we leave up to you. antimetabole is the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in reverse grammatical order (ex: "I know what I like, and like what I know." It is similar to chiasmus although chiasmus does not repete the samewords or phrases.
chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism. (Wikipedia). Example: I went to school,to work went they.
"We are in the business of educating, not the education business." -- JET Tutoring Company, Santa Monica, California) (The larger point: Your child's eduction will not suffer at the expense of our bottom line profit)
It is easy to see you in your kids, but sadly not the kid in you. -- Jack Sands (The larger point: Someone who has perhaps lost the joy in life?)
"Games put China under**spotlight"read a recent Los Angeles Times Headline.
Why use the preposition "under"** instead of "in"?* What may be the difference? What was the headline editor thinking? What did the editor mean to suggest? How could prepositions be so important?
A simple definition: "A preposition indicates a relation between things mentioned in a sentence." (Wikipedia). The relationship is either one of modifying or complementing (adding to the meaning of other words).The ways prepositions modify and complement other words are many. They serve as a workhouse of those languages which contain them, and English is the more powerful for its possession of such a worthy linguistic laborer.
Below are listed a few of the functions of prepositions. Outlined in blue are the functions applying to the preposition "under" in the Los Angeles Times headline:
*spatialrelations: modifying by location (inclusion, exclusion, proximity), direction (origin, path, endpoint)
temporal relations
comparison: equality, opposition, price, rate
content: source, material, subject matter
**instrument, manner: modifying by demonstrating how an action is accomplished:("beneath" the spotlight,"under the authority" of the "light")
cause, purpose, agent: modifying by demonstrating cause and effect, agency, or purpose: ("The Olympic Games act as an "agent" of "purpose" to "expose" some "truth" about China other than that of sponsoring the 29th Olympiad in the modern era).
Thus, the "Games" use a "spotlight" which may be pointed at China or shinedupon China; Or, China may be putin the spotlight; however, it is another matter to say that China has been putunder the spotlight.
All of the above mentioned prepositions serve the spatial function of showing "direction, path, or endpoint," but more importantly, the preposition "under" makes the Games and the "spotlight" an instrument of political analysis. The preposition shows a manner in which the games are operating. It's about more than just the Games.
Perhaps more Games should be put under the spotlight. "The Montreal Games in 1976 lost more than $1 billion generat(ing) a profit of (merely) $250 million." Guess who paid the bill? The people of Montreal paid it as many private investors profited. (Sports Business News, Blogger). By contrast, "...it was Peter Ueberroth’s (organizer of the Los Angeles Games) vision that saved the Olympic Games (emphasis mine) and turned the debt ridden Games into a money making machine." (Sports Business News). One may ask: Should "money making machine" fall under the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius (Swifter, Higher, Stronger)?
The point is, pay attention to headlines, pay attention to prepositions. A brief but careful analysis of them may provide a means of better understanding the article or statement which follows.
Should the Games in China merely operate in the spotlight, or under the spotlight as well? You decide. After all, you are a citizen of the world and you now understand the power and reach of prepositions.
Many words may be spoken about the elaborate opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing. Outperforming the opening of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, for example. That's saying something since "Hollywood" helped produce that ceremony. And we thought communists were supposed to be boring.
Not when they run the third largest economy in the world and currently produce more billionaires than the other economic juggernauts.
Be that as it may, like many onlookers, I was moved by the guileless beauty of the Chinese children, the sound and light issuing from the stadium, and the athletes parading before the crowd. An element of hopefulness briefly emerged from the deep well of cynical, political reality. Then, in the final phase of the pageant a group of stern-looking, goose-stepping Chinese soldiers porting the Olympic flag and raising it cleared the brain of its sentiment.
I reflected that in the ancient games in Olympia, Greece all militant actions of war were put off. All ornaments and military trappings were set aside. Here we have the Chinese military goose-stepping with the flag, its five rings representing the five major regions of the globe firmly in their grasp.
Then again, we know that Chinese soldiers have been used for purposes other than military engagement before, as when they were ordered to don Buddhist robes in order to impersonate Tibetan monks in a movie. Is the word propaganda out of order? Note the red robes in the soldiers' arms in the photograph below.
But was this really so contradictory a conclusion to the opening ceremony? After all, Baron Pierre de Coubertin who conceived and promoted the revival of the modern Olympics at the beginning of the last century "...was convinced that the sports-centered English public school system of the late 19th century was the rock upon which the vast and majestic British empire rested."
Recently, a friend described a meal he had savored at a good local restaurant. He said to me:
"I would have wanted to have eaten every course."
He might have said more plainly and economically:
"I would have wanted to eat every course."
The problem is my friend's sequencing of tenses is overworked where it need not be. The verb phrase "would have wanted" is in the potential mood expressing a wish, something probable or possible. (John B. Opdycke, Harper's English Grammar). "...would have wanted" is the principal verb phrase and "tells the whole story." No necessity to repeat verb structures. The wish has been expressed, therefore, no need to repeat with "to have eaten," the perfect infinitive which basically expresses the same thing in terms of time frame.
If my friend had gotten his wish, yes, he "would have eaten." We know already the expression is in the potential. Just use the simple infinitive phrase, not the perfect infinitive.
If my friend had been expressing his wish in the nineteenth century, even into the early twentieth, he might have said something like: "...that I should eat more if I were capable." If this were the case, he would have been using the imperfect subjunctive (subjunctive mood), a verb structure not uncommon in those days.
But we are living in the early twenty-first century, and can still express ourselves economically with the added benefit of also being grammatically correct (in this case more aesthetically pleasing)* by using the perfect infinitive in the sequential phrase that follows the principal phrase. We understand the wish, we know the time frame, no need to repeat the time frame.
*I share a philosophy of grammar similar to that of Eric Partridge: Better to be moderate with respect to rules unless (emphasis mine) either logical or aesthetic sense be disturbed.
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