For Denise Richards, the "I's" have it

Actress and current "reality show" celebrity Denise Richards recently on her show documented her being escorted by her father to an entertainment gala/awards ceremony. (It's always one or the other these days).* Denise described the date with her father thus:

"Tonight was a great night for both my father and I to go to this event."

Denise meant: "...for both my father and me to go to this event."

The phrase "father and I (me)" serves as the object of a preposition, even though it appears to serve as the subject in a clause. There is no verb, really, even though the infinitive phrase "to go" has verbal qualities. "Me" is an object pronoun and needs to fulfill its mission. "I" can only act, not be acted upon, not even in the most narcissistic of circumstances.

The sentence parsed:

Tonight: (A noun subject of clause)
was: (v. linking)
a great night: subject complement, predicate noun phrase
for: preposition
both: pronoun
my father and I (me): compound object of preposition
to go: infinitive phrase used as adverb modifying "great night"
(answers question: "How is it a great night?" That is, if you were to go to the event, it would be a great night)
to this event: prep. phrase (acts as adverb modifier to "to go" (answers the question: to go where?)

*Should we be tiring of the term "Red Carpet Event"!

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She said, He said, Whom to believe?

Economist and Journalist Robert Kuttner responded with the correct pronoun case to a "He said, she said" question concerning Senators Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama and their respective stances on mandated health insurance coverage. Incidentally, Kuttner probably also gave the right answer to journalist Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! See below, in blue, Mr. Kuttner's proper usage.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you, in terms of the mandates issue, because obviously both(Paul) Krugman, in his various articles, and Clinton have claimed, on the one hand, that Obama does have mandates—he has mandates for coverage of all children—so that the mandates issue is not a principled issue, it’s a tactical issue as to what you think could be approved. Your sense of that?

ROBERT KUTTNER: My point is that a mandate, in a situation where the whole system is sick, makes that sickness the problem of the individual. Instead of putting a gun to people’s heads, typically people who can’t afford good quality insurance, and saying to them, “You must, under penalty of law, or pay a tax or pay a fine, go out and find decent insurance,” it’s so much better policy to just have insurance for everybody. Then there’s no question of a mandate.

I think it’s a very bad position for progressives to back into, because it signals that government is being coercive, rather than government being helpful. Now, we can split hairs and argue whether Obama is being principled or tactical, but I think his discomfort with the idea of a mandate is something that I applaud. I wish that both he and Clinton had gone all the way and said, let’s just to do this right and have national health insurance. I think they could have used this as a teachable moment. They could have bought public opinion around. Medicare is phenomenally popular. Medicare is national health insurance for seniors. Let’s have national health insurance for everybody. Some might have been tempted to say: "...both him and Clinton."

"Both" may be either a pronoun, adjective, or conjunction depending upon its syntactical position in the sentence, how it is used.

A closer look at the sentence but by no means thorough:

I pronoun subject wish verb (transitive) that (1) conjunction both adjective he (2) pronoun subject and coordinating conjunction

Clinton (2) noun subject had gone 1st verb in compound verb (3) all the way (adverb phrase, modifies "gone") and said 2nd verb in compound verb (3)

[ let's just do this right and have national health insurance.] (complete direct object of the verbs "had gone" and "said")

note (1): "that" is a conjunction (“complentizer”complementing & connecting what is wished for)
note (2): “he” and “Clinton” act as subjects in the subordinate clause in which they operate
note (3): The compound verbs “had gone” and “said” stem from the compound subject "he" and "Clinton"

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For Valerie Plame Wilson Pronouns Are a Minor Problem

Valerie Plame Wilson, the ill-fated CIA operative outed by Vice President Cheney, Carl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Robert Novak, in a most ill-mannered way, not to mention an allegedly illegal way, recently responded to an interviewer who asked her the importance of writing a book to explain her side in the matter:

"It's important to tell for we as citizens." Plame should have used the objective case pronoun us, as in "...for us citizens."

Again, it is difficult to edit yourself in the act of speaking, and most of us will think one thing without expressing it in its entirety. We might refer to such errors as an elliptical trap. Elliptical expressions indicate only a part of a thought, the remainder assumed to be understood in context.

Valerie Plame might have been thinking: "It's important to tell for we as citizens need to know all that occurs in the executive branch that might breach certain laws, and that certainly might do harm to a legitimate CIA agent performing her country's work in good faith."

It that is what agent Plame was thinking, we'd have to say she's probably right.

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Is Michael Jordan a He or a Him, It Depends

Charlie Rose recently asked two-time NBA Most Valuable Player Steve Nash which players inspired him growing up. Nash, who had gone through the entire interview in an ingratiating manner using impeccable grammar then made a gaff:

"He was my hero growing up, him and Isiah Thomas."

The "he" and "him" Nash referred to was Michael Jordan, also known as Air Jordan, or His Airness because of his leaping ability. The second part of Nash's sentence is shorthand for, "He and Isiah Thomas were both my heroes growing up." In speaking and writing it is not necessary to repeat word patterns exactly as listeners and readers understand by context what the speaker or writer intends. A sentence which leaves out certain understood words is called an elliptical sentence. Nash's intended expression: Michael Jordan (he) and Isiah Thomas were my heroes.

Some would suggest that Nash's ear was fooled because "him" appears late in the sentence, a place where objects usually are expected. Whatever the reason, the correct form:

"He was my hero growing up, he and Isiah Thomas."

Pronoun Confusion on MSNBC's "Countdown"

Yesterday on MSNBC's Countdown, Keith Olbermann's guest host reported the termination of the marriage of a Hollywood couple. Referring to the wife, the guest host said:

She dissolved her marriage to he. Once more, we have an otherwise articulate media person ignoring the virtue, if not the grammatical necessity of the object pronoun. She should have said: She dissolved her marriage to him, "him" serving as the indirect object of dissolve.

Later, in the broadcast, Mr. Olbermann, otherwise a media man who epitomizes good use of the language, also stepped into the pronoun trap when he said in a recorded promotion of a future broadcast:

It is Hillary Clinton and us instead of expressing correctly:

It is Hillary Clinton and we.

Here, Mr. Olbermann chose the object pronoun over the subject pronoun, the correct choice after a linking verb. Linking verbs of the "to be" variety: am, are, is, was, were... have the responsibility of putting together words of equal grammatical rank. Thus, if Senator Clinton is a subject, and a pronoun is linked back to her, that pronoun must be put in the subjective case. "Case" indicates how nouns or pronouns function: subject, object (of some variety), possessor.