Everywhere I go these days, it seems as if people are getting “literally thrown under the bus,” and yet nobody seems to be worried about it.
Everywhere I go these days, it seems as if people are getting “literally thrown under the bus,” and yet nobody seems to be worried about it.
Observe:
“Bush was literally ‘thrown under the bus’ by his Republican colleagues.”
“Naturally, a big scandal ensued, and several supervisory officers were punished, literally thrown under the bus by LA’s hack police chief, William Bratton.”
“I understand we have had our share of slack donors, but they should have been treated with respect and dignity. Instead, they were literally thrown under the bus.”
“At last month’s special board meeting, coaches (Ted) Suttmeier, Slate, and myself…were literally thrown under the bus by our central administration and a panel of so-called experts.”
“Has anyone dealt with the FOP in a legal capacity over the years where they were promised the world and literally thrown under the bus?”
While all these are real quotes from real people, what’s exasperating to any earnest student of the truth is the fact that in none of these cases—not ONE of them—was anybody LITERALLY thrown under a bus. If they had been literally thrown under buses, they would be dead or at least limping along with some serious signs of disfigurement.
“Literally” is one of our language’s most frequently misused words, and since I always assume that most people— even the shrinking minority who know how to read— are congenitally stupid, let me break it down for you: It means the same thing as “factually.” It means in real life rather than symbolically, OK? So you can’t say you were “literally in stitches” over a comedian’s standup routine unless his jokes actually induced a flesh wound requiring a hospital visit. You can’t say you were “literally walking ten feet off the ground” unless you were actually walking ten feet off the ground, and nobody in history has ever actually done that except, perhaps, Jesus. And I bet if they get around to doing an updated version of the Bible that’s more attuned to modern street argot, it will say that Judas threw Jesus under the bus.
I know it seems as if I’m splitting cunt hairs here, but this is why I’m upset at all this figurative throwing of people under buses—it’s highly insensitive to the poor dead and crippled souls who HAVE been literally thrown under buses, pushed in front of cars, and shoved in front of speeding trains. What about their feelings? Unlike the rest of the world, I haven’t forgotten about their pain.
Telling someone you’ve been “thrown under the bus”—when in fact you haven’t been thrown under a bus—is highly insensitive to the silent victims of this annoying new catchphrase. If your jawbone was missing and you were confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life because some thrill-seeking thug pushed you in front of an oncoming Greyhound, you might not find it such a cute cliché.
It’s not cool to throw people under buses, and it’s definitely uncool to trivialize their pain.
It’s like telling a black person that your boss is working you so hard, you feel like a slave.
It’s like telling a Jew that it’s so hot today, you feel like you’re inside an oven.
It’s like telling the parents of a Down Syndrome child that the new Fall TV lineup is retarded.
It’s like telling Stevie Wonder that justice is blind.
I feel that if we honestly want to perceive ourselves as a sensitive and progressive nation, we need to ensure that our slang terminology is duly sensitive to the suffering of the unfortunate and disadvantaged. Like black people with the “N” word, the only people who should be permitted to say they’ve been “thrown under the bus” are those who can present conclusive physical evidence that this event has indeed happened. Likewise, I would support legislation declaring that if anyone claims to have been “thrown under the bus” when this is proven in a court of law to be a patently untrue statement, that person is guilty of a hate crime.
this was already on slate
http://www.slate.com/id/2194425/
for some reason the story of the dude getting his head cut off on the bus makes me laugh
son you made me laugh you pyscho.
bleh..
the man whose head was cut off on the bus was- figuratively speaking – thrown under the bus, “literally.”
LOL DO ONE ABOUT “YOUR” AND “YOU’RE” HAHA I’M SORT OF A GRAMMER NAZI
isn’t this also a david cross joke?
yesterday I told a jew that the humidity made the city stink so bad I felt like I was in a gas chamber.
yeah this is a goddamn david cross joke, and his wasn’t as drawn out and unfunny
Really? Do tell! David Cross did a routine about how saying you were “thrown under the bus” is insensitive to people who were actually thrown under buses?
That wasn’t the thrust of the Slate article, either, but I wrote about “being thrown under the bus” long before they did, anyway:
http://www.jimgoad.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1175000468;start=17#17
I also wrote (and had published, both in print and on the WWW) a full-blown article complaining about that phrase two months before Slate did, but Gavin doesn’t want me to talk about that one.
There’s a whole weblog devoted to misuse of the world “literally”:
http://literally.barelyfitz.com/
Nobody has dibs on correcting illiterate people.
Fuck! Looks as if Seinfeld might have ripped me off…
http://jimgoad.net/cgi-bin/archives/00000059.htm
Now shut the fuck up and go fuck your mom with your dad’s clit.
Christian Psychiatrist, shame you’re not a spelling nazi.
It’s ‘GRAMMAR’.
Cunt.
I swear I left a comment here a day ago….
Oh goad, even when you write something reasonably readable, you revert back to your unfunny race baiting shtick. Black jokes! Jew jokes! Completely irrelevant to the article but SO shocking! Jim Goad, you so crazy! You’re the number one button pusher! If it were 1987!
You so right, girl! You go! WHOOOO! America has “gotten over” race, which is why you never, ever, ever, ever, fucking EVER see the topic mentioned in public discourse these days. Dat’s OL’ news!
WHOOO! You right! Aww, yeah! The media have realized “race” is merely a cynical and manipulative smokescreen to deflect attention from this country’s growing class disparities, so that’s why now they mention “class” in every other news item instead of race! It ain’t as if ’round-the-clock sanctimonious anti-racist agitprop blared from JumboTrons wherever you turn your head keeps the public consciousness focused on race far more than some Klansman who lives in a rusty trailer without running water and lives in the woods somewhere!
It ain’t as if “racism” is a modern-day moral panic and that today the “racist” is what the “communist” was in the 1950s and the “witch” was in the Middle Ages. And it sho’nuff ain’t as if this is 1,000,000 times more true now than it was in 1987!
And no one EVER gets their buttons pushed anymore if you don’t toe the party line regarding what’s considered acceptable dialogue on the whole “race” tip. That’s why the hate-speech laws throughout the entire industrialized world are either disappearing or getting far more lenient—instead of more fascistic and Orwellian—with each passing day.
And it’s not as if the black underclass and the white working class—whence I sprung—have far more in common with one another than the vapid, nightclubbing, middle-to-upper-class silver-spoon-fed babies who frequent sites such as this and freak the fuck out about racism but perpetuate double standards about precisely which segment of the lower orders it’s acceptable to demean and dehumanize, which is why none of you would give a fuck if I told jokes about Guidos or trailer trash.
I simply tell stupid old racist jokes bereft of the aforementioned subtext that apparently flies straight the fuck over your heads. HOOOOO! You told me! Git on with your bad self and testify! I ain’t mad atcha!
Everything that Goad wrote in that last post is 100% true.
Yeah, but the point is that it has nothing to do with the subject broached in the article, it was just a last ditch throwaway for a lazy attempt at starting controversy.
Jim is the best! I want more articles!
half the retards on here are too dumb for goad. “already on slate” “david cross bit” blah blah check your facts fucknuts. the other half probs get him though so i ain’t hatin. if y’all digs, get answer me, if y’all donts, get fucked.
Hey, there, li’l buddy who calls himself “fofrgot other sn,” AKA “shnitzel,” AKA “Cheese United,” AKA “AyatollahAssahola,” AKA “Dr. Aidstein McGillicuddy,” if you’re so opposed to me “starting controversy,” why in Christ’s bloody world would you post under so many pseudonyms every frickin-frackin-crackalackin’ time I toss an article up here and contribute so mightily yourself to the alleged “controversy?” (I, among a select few, have the password that lets me check IP addresses on here, foo’!)
Do you think you’re omniscient? Don’t assume you know my motivations, because you’re always wrong about them.
Much better than the last few articles along the lines of: My wife is hot and submissive….blah,blah,blah….i live amongst black people….blah, blah, blah….i had a lump in my head, but now it’s out….blah, blah, blah….jews….blah, blah, blah.
[...] I think I may have caught him stealing a Slate article – at least its concept – and running it himself. What are the parameters for this $100. Is it first come first served? Am I first to notice this? [...]
hahaha, if you think this is like the slate article, hahaha….
This is more like the William Safire ‘On Language’ thing, but better and a little more interesting (but maybe with less weight)
oh , look, goad is the modern day swift of racism!! Because you can always compare one phrase to another extreme to make an example.. you’re a true genius…
I literally fucked a stripper, once.
Now I only fuck jews.
word.