Click Image to Make It More Awesome!

What’s happening to language?

It’s changing, of course.

We had breakfast a couple of days ago in one of our fine local restaurants.

The young waitress asked us what we’d like to drink, and when I said “water,” she said “awesome!”

It’s interesting how such reflexive overuse of words eventually empties them of meaning. Try saying “soul” a hundred times quickly and you can instantly experience that collapse of meaning.

Words are used for a complex of motives, including (1) to convey meaning, and (2) to announce our tribal membership in a Granfalloon.

The trouble is, even when the meaning runs its course, as it’s now done with “awesome,” the word continues to get used by the Granfalloon wannabes … and we’re all GF wannabes to some extent.

The word “awesome” is now the linguistic equivalent of a cold soufflé.

When everything is “awesome,” nothing is.

What word will we use next to convey our sense of awe and wonder and excitement?

Carpe Awesome Diem!

Or, wait a minute, the FBI thinks this “geezer” may actually be a young guy in disguise. I hope not, because he’s gaining a cult following among the true geezer set. It would be shame to let them down just when they were finding hope for a viable retirement.

pp

HEIL BECK!

Lewis Black sees Glenn Beck clearly. It’s not too much to say that Beck is such a clown that only a comedian can truly understand him.

Lewis Black’s riff on Beck (below) is funny, but it also highlights Beck’s weird psychopathology, which seems uncategorizable, so why shouldn’t another comedian name it?

Black names it “Nazi Tourette’s.”

By the way, whenever I hear Beck I always suspect that his grip on weak minds is due to his mellifluous daddy-sounding voice. Seriously! It’s a very good voice. Which makes his ability to mesmerize the susceptible all the more creepy.

My own theory about Beck is that he subconsciously understands that his grip on people is due to completely irrational resonances in his performance, and at some level that makes him feel a weird kinship with the Nazis, who also mastered the art of insidious propaganda.[ 1 ]

He subconsciously knows that he himself would have been a great Nazi propagandist!

So, Herr Beck’s incessant obsessive attacks on Nazis, his ability to find them everywhere, is — psychologically — an attempt to exorcize the Nazi Devil in himself. Much like the anti-gay campaigns of hypocritical charlatans who are later caught vacationing in Europe with Rent Boys.

1. It may well be that Beck is completely conscious of what he is doing. A Forbe’s article of 4/26/2010 quoted Beck as saying “I could give a flying crap about the political process.”

If you laugh at this video, you’re probably an elitist.

Live with it.

See also an earlier entry in this category (Ignorance as a Point-of-View), “The Depth of Ideas Behind the Tea Party Movement.”

This child has enough focus and intensity to make it big someday!

Watch his lips and facial expressions! And check out how he shunts across the stage during those guitar riffs!

Nevertheless, its lies are probably more than good enough to fool regular Fox viewers.

OK, so I already lied a bit here. I did watch the infamous YouTube video of Glenn Beck using Vick’s Vaporub high on his cheeks under his eyes in order to produce fake tears. That’s when I knew I’d be unable to watch his program.

Watch Jon Stewart and you won’t have to watch Glenn Beck.