To Bill O'Reilly the oil crisis is merely a "thing"

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News is provoked. OK, so that's an oxymoron. O'Reilly overreacted recently, (OK, so that's an excessive oxymoron) to a statement made in a commencement speech in which Brian Williams of NBC News said to the freshly minted graduates of Ohio State University: "We need you to fix the country.... And I'm deadly serious..."

To those not so casual observers of the world scene, or better yet, those with no ax to grind, Williams' petition might not seem so odd.

Though O'Reilly is no casual observer, we may yet identify him as a tendentious media man. O'Reilly responded roughly that Williams didn't know what he was talking about.

What was Williams proposing to be fixed? Well, he highlighted: "Energy, politics, diplomacy, science, education, military, transportation...(and) climate." Who would disagree who reads the news or has any feeling left for contemporary history? The response: Fox News, and its main man Bill O'Reilly.

Marginalizing all except the energy problem facing the world, O'Reilly, deferring to "energy" as "fix worthy," bleated something like, "OK, there is the oil thing."

As we spoke earlier, (8 May 2008) employing the word "thing" as a replacement for otherwise perfectly useful, specific nouns is acceptable in normal daily speech, but certainly not in any discussion respecting specificity and clear communication. That is, when we're getting down to serious business. Most average people would say the price of fuel counts as serious.

Certainly, Mr. O'Reilly counts not as an average person, nor is he a run-of-the-mill propagandist. He may be more fairly described as a tendentious media type posing as a news analyst who makes millions each year striking his surly poseur stance.

The phrase "Oil thing" works just fine for those making millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. They who wouldn't flinch if the price of fuel were to climb to $8/gallon. The phrase does not work for the millions who struggle daily just to makes ends meet. These folks might speak more expressively saying instead of "oil thing": oil dilemma, or oil catastrophe.

The savvy observer will correctly say, those damned oil speculators operating in the New York Mercantile Exchange, (NYMEX). What goes on in that unregulated trading environment where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has been kept from enforcing margin requirements is the "artificial manipulation of oil prices by hedge funds and speculators resulting in ever higher gasoline bills." --Deborah Fineman, president of Mitchell Supreme Fuel Co. in Orange, New Jersey

"Oil thing," Mr. O'Reilly! You'd better stay away from using the word "thing" in any commentary unless, of course, you happen to be Keith Olbermann who takes care in his use of words.

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What kind of "thing" is contemporary news reporting?

The word "thing" can be used with good effect. See 5/8/08 Keith Olbermann, "The Fuel Tax Thing." However, when used indiscriminately, as had a Los Angeles television reporter while reporting on a fire threatening the ruin of nearly completed condominiums, "things" like using language to actually name a solid object can cause alarm.

As the reporter from local station KTLA channel 5 approached a harried construction worker her microphone at-the-ready, the fire was still a concern. Lives could have been imperiled. Firemen were seen scurrying in the background. What was the point of the reporter thrusting herself directly into the activity? We seem to have an explanation by her choice of words given the gravity of the situation.

Reporter to construction worker: "Did you smell the security thing? She said, looking at the construction worker stopped from his progress, not fully understanding, What thing? What smell? He must have thought.

The reporter seemed to be merely searching for "action images" and found one, a man, presumably engaged in an important action. The reporter stopped the man, pushed the microphone in his unlucky face and used the word "thing" to describe some sort of olfactory security mechanism. We are used to calling the auditory variety fire alarms. How difficult is it to say, "fire alarm," or "security alarm?" whether it be the smell or sound variety?

"Security thing"? Reporters should be communicating concrete information to the public by both questions and descriptions. "Thing" says very little. Use a noun which squarely names that which is spoken of. Provide a precise mental picture, please! Simply because television mostly concerns visual images, when language is used, we should expect the same clarity a camera may provide.

We might say the reporter presented a nuisance to the firefighter, and certainly to her audience.


Thing: n. object, fact; idea. (Concise Oxford Dictionary). A "thing" can name any object, fact, or idea in the abstract. When it counts, use the concrete name.