Cephalogenic

or, stuff that I dragged out of my head

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Location: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Inaccuracy

Why is it that conservative political cartoons seem to be so unfunny?

I mean, just look at this:

I have two words: Kenneth Starr. The behaviour of Republicans during the Clinton administration has debarred them in perpetuity from criticism of investigating political scandals, or, as was generally the case with Clinton, "scandals". (The previous cartoon showed Democrats frantically getting into shape--President Obama playing basketball, of course--because, as the Joe-Blow character says in the last panel, "They're getting ready to spend our money", as if Republicans had not spent the last eight years spending incalculable sums of taxpayer money, including at least half a trillion dollars on a needless war which, one recent book says, is likely to end up costing the U.S. at least three trillion dollars and probably more. The very idea that a conservative could call Democrats spendthrift boggles the imagination.)

At any rate, that's not the reason I showed you this rather desperate and mindless cartoon. The reason is that we yet again have someone who doesn't understand how to pluralize a possessive noun. The possessive of "The Dems" (an abbreviation of "Democrats", if that wasn't instantly obvious) would be "The Dems'", my preference, or "The Dems's", if you insist that a possessive must always end with apostrophe-ess (which I dealt with when this blog was not even a month old). Instead, the cartoonist has written "The Dem's", which is the genitive of something or someone named The Dem, which is wrong.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is about as relevant a place as any to ask about spelling variants.

Last week, I saw in a department store a display of a commemorative plate marking Obama's election to the presidency. It is marked as a "Collectable Plate". Maybe it's because I'm from the states, but the -able ending just seems...wrong. I know that it is the British standard, and is a recognized variant of the US-preferred -ible, but it still makes me want to grab a label maker and cover that A with an I.

Monday, January 12, 2009 10:08:00 PM  

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