Very bad words

Fiscal cliff, my ass!

That wasn't the worst phrase of 2012, not by a flying leap.

Sure, we lemmings declared it the worst — while we were also filling out our 10-best lists, noting notable deaths, celebrating Christmas and fulfilling all the other rituals for kissing off the dying year.

We had a terrible choice of words to choose from.

"Fiscal cliff" is truly bad — politically charged, inaccurate, uttered ad nauseam  — but not the worst.

Nor is "artisanal," a made-up marketing word appearing suddenly on cheeses and breads and lunchmeats this year. It's meant to evoke the sentiment, "Buy the damn thing, already!"

We doubled up on "double down" each time Mitt Romney put his foot in his mouth and refused to remove it.

Most of the other bad words of 2012 escaped my notice because I don't do social media — "meh," "cray" (for crazy), "YOLO" (short for "you only live once"), "hashtag," "jeah" (Ryan Lochte's contribution to language, apparently).

But these are wimpy one-offs, merely annoying mosquitoes compared to the chronic torment of the worst phrase of 2012 or any other year:

Going forward.

If this phrase had its own slogan, it would be, "The really dumb phrase that people use because they think it makes them sound really smart."®™

Which it doesn't.

Not long ago it meant something, as in:

The bus is going forward. (The bus is rolling in a forward direction!)

or

She is going forward with the plan. (She is carrying out the plan!)

See? Good, plain sense.

No more.

Now people use the stupidest phrase ever this way.

"How will the Giants fare going forward?"

or

"What is the Republican strategy going forward?"

or

"Going forward, how will she plea?"

Completely. Meaningless.

Here are the same sentences without: "How will the Giants fare?" "What is the Republican strategy?" "How will she plea?"

Did they change with going forward's removal? They did not! Why?

(1) Someone did us the favor of inventing verb tenses, which tell us when events took place in the past, are happening now, or will happen. Thank you, prescient inventors, for saving us the trouble of having to say going forward when we talk of future events!

(2) Time (as we know and use it) moves in one direction: Forward. We already move forward! We don't have to say so all the time! People know this!

(I don't discount that in my lifetime some kid will roll out of MIT or Yale or Heald College with a $1.99 app that enables easy time travel; until that happens, we won't need going forward to distinguish when and where we're going. We're going forward.)

Stupid and redundant and dumb.

Still, TV and radio pundits say it many times daily, maybe moreso in sports broadcasting. Listen closely next time. Even the otherwise erudite National Public Radio personalities and guest experts say it every day. I bet you heard it six times at work yesterday.

It probably started when someone supposedly smart said it, and admirers copied it because that's how smart people talk — like dumb people. Now it's become the office-speak version of "y'know," and, like, "like."

You can stop it.

Call people out when they use it; it's OK to tell them it's the stupidest phrase ever; they need to know. Recommend they repeat themselves but substitute going backward or going sideways, just to humiliate them. Kick the habit if you're the one annoying the hell out of your office mates; use "at the end of the day" as your linguistic pacifier instead; it's annoying too, but at least it means something ("in the end" or "at the end of the process").

Invent time travel and give going forward meaning.

You owe it to children and the English language. And to physics.

Going forward, I hope for the best. Wait, I'm already going forward.

Pay no attention to the reality behind the curtain

For every four events happening worldwide, Kim Kardashian must do something — anything, really — and we must pay her attention.

Add this immutable truth to Newton's laws and Galileo's discoveries.

Learn to live with it. Apparently, you have no choice.

My daily online news source (aside from the hunk of newsprint on my doorstep and National Public Radio whispering sweet somethings each morning) includes a collection of videos across the globe, in constant rotation.

"Old" videos (a whole two hours!) drop out of rotation, and new ones take their place, constantly, constantly.

You must have an iron constitution or money to burn in order to watch the videos, because each comes with a 30-second commercial first. You cannot avoid or truncate the commercials. The things I must endure to tell you useless things.

Something called the News Distribution Network aggregates the videos — some from hard news sources, some from entertainment news shows, some from companies that exist solely, it seems, for posting on these news aggregator services.

They're probably on your daily online news source, too. Check them out, and you'll see the Kardashian Konstancy in effect.

The headlines for a typical rotation of videos might go something like this:

Romney Concedes Defeat in White House

(Newsworthy; I might have missed it on TV the night before …)

Man Steals Gas, Catches Fire

(Not newsworthy, but I'm morbidly curious …)

Time-Lapse of Aurora Borealis over Minnesota

(Hey, maybe you've never seen the northern lights. You might even
learn something!)

Damage in Gaza from Israeli Missile Strike

 (News and action! Plus, more morbid curiosity!)

Then …

Kim K Debuts Slimmed-Down Figure

The mandatory Kim Kardashian picture usually comes from her cell phone, a self portrait in her closet, trying on something she has found there. She apparently uploads this to twitter, and the celebrity press distributes it for your enlightenment. Though a grainy low-resolution photo, the celebrity press examines it in breathless sweep like it's dissecting the Zapruder film.

After four more videos of mayhem and nonsense around the world, we are brought to our senses with a video headlined:

Kim Kardashian's Hot Bikini Shot

Another closet shot, another excruciating analysis by a celebrity news show, complete with innuendo and high praise for a woman who … what does she do again?

Except become anxious that the world might stop thinking about her, I mean?

In the rotation that includes, "Train Hits Texas Vets Parade," "UFO Mystery over Denver, Colorado," and "Killer Whale Chases Dog," we are guaranteed a video called, "Kim K Stuns at Marine Corps Ball." Again, not a video, just a grainy shot worked over like CSI: Miami evidence.

For every "FDA: 5-Hour Energy Drink Linked to 13 Deaths" and "Black Friday Mall Fight Caught on Tape," we can count on "Kim Kardashian Gets Death Threats over Gaza Tweets."

(Hey, wait a minute: That last video might have been actual news! Sure, Kim K's statesmanlike tweets may have inflamed Mideast tensions, but the ceasefire soon followed so … coincidence?)

Sometimes, believe it or not, Kim Kardashian cannot be as konstant as this rule suggests. No worries; plenty stand in for her.

While actual news may rock the rest of the world, we frolic to videos with headlines such as:

Miranda Kerr Rocks Sheer Top

I hadda look her up; she's a Victoria's Secret model; you know, thin waif, tall hair, great big insect wings trailing behind her?

Jada Rocks Teeny Bikini

I think this is Jada Pinkett Smith at the beach. The number of celebrities putting on clothes and then rocking them is an epidemic.

Beyonce's Revealing Photo (without makeup!)

Snooki tweets makeup-free pic

Makeup-free celebrities, also an epidemic.

Jennifer Lopez makes ET's First Annual Power List

As if anyone could doubt …

Rihanna's Nearly Nude Spread

Good old Rihanna … word is she sings, too.

Coco competes in booty Olympics

Coco Austin, married to actor/rapper Ice-T, gives new meaning to "well endowed." She returned TV to its awesome power to enlighten by keeping a coin aloft on the rise of her butt longer than another endowed woman on a talk show.

Let's see, it's Tuesday morning. It's been hours since Kim K made news. Maybe something's wrong.

Vaguely tangent segue:

One of my personal Thanksgiving traditions is listening to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant Massacree," a joyful and hilarious rejection of convention and the absurdity of the Vietnam War, in the form of a true event that took place over Thanksgiving 1965 in Stockbridge, Mass.

It's proof once again that if you ever want to see or listen to something, Youtube probably has it.

It's also reaffirmation that nothing is free. Ads, as you know, precede many Youtube videos anymore. My pre-Thanksgiving listen-to of Arlo's great song came on the heels of a commercial for Lexus ("Buy one for Christmas, of course!")

I wonder what Arlo would think of that.

If the shoe fits

As we chat, thousands are working to fix the Republican Party.

The solutions floated so far are the stuff for meaty conversation. As the country becomes more diverse and trends younger, the Republican Party is becoming less relevant to the the populace, and some strategists are looking at ways to make the party mirror the population while retaining bedrock principles.

Others are saying the party is not conservative enough and must speed off to the right, though I don't know how that addresses the whole younger-and-more-diverse issue.

I'm not equipped to say how to fix the GOP, but I can tell you how it broke.

When you say:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down …"

as Rep. Todd Akin did, losing himself the U.S. Senate race in Missouri; and when you say:

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen …"

as Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock did, losing himself the U.S. Senate race in Missouri; and when you say:

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like."

as Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney did, losing himself the presidency and any hope of respect from the Americans he dismissed wholesale for the sake of some rubber chicken and high-stakes campaign cash, then no amount of that cash, secret or SuperPac or otherwise, it turns out, will save you.

They would have been better off just shoving in their size 10 1/2 Bruno Magli's before risking a moment to talk.

Five stages of "Good grief!"

Shame on two men today.

(Not those two, not Romney or Obama, though they could take heed.)

Today two men should feel properly hung over, as if awakened from a stupor, having let their baser Mr. Hydes overtake their Dr. Jekylls, with disgusting result.

Two decent men, I'll wager, became less in their attempt to be more.

Two who would not ordinarily act as they did the last two months, and would not have drawn their friends and families and co-workers into shame on their behalf.

Except this, they decided, was an extraordinary time, and shame, they decided, had use.

Tomorrow one of these two men may wonder if he could have managed without acting like such an ass. He will be declared the winner. The other may wonder if he should have — and somehow could have — been more of an ass. He will be the loser.

We lose, either way.

In the spirit of Tip O'Neill's "all politics is local," I confine my rant to the race for my assembly district.

The Republican candidate is Peter Tateishi, as close as I've ever been to knowing a real-life politician. He and his siblings went to the same school my kids did. His mom teaches at the school. His dad is a deacon in the church.

I don't know him personally; I have surmised from the literature that he has sought a political life — maybe even, you might say, a life of public service. He runs on his experience as chief of staff for Rep. Dan Lungren, our congressman, himself having run a shame-for-shame campaign with his opponent Ami Bera.

Peter came to our doorstep one day, canvassing the neighborhood, also a first; I've never seen a candidate show up at our door. Just him, with his satchel of pamphlets, surprised I recognized him.
His red-white-and-blue signs had covered the intersections long before. "Peter Tateishi … To Fix the State Assembly." Quixotic and awkward: Does any voter really expect one representative to clean up an entire legislative house? Tip O'Neill would have told Tateishi the slogan should be, "To Fix our Potholes."

Peter Tateishi's career has included serving as a planning commissioner, a parks and recreation district commissioner, a president of a state group of parks and rec commissioners, and creator and CEO of a foundation to support parks in his community.

In other words, he's doing something, trying to make a difference, to lead the way, not relying on the public weal. An honorable person, I'm willing to guess.

As is his opponent. Ken Cooley is a city council member from Rancho Cordova, has been since the new city was incorporated, was mayor twice. Outsider news media might call Rancho Cordova a hardscrabble city, with an equal share of mini-marts and massive corporate headquarters, never the twain meeting. Crime and blight, outsiders may first think of Rancho Cordova. Ken Cooley lives there and has been walking his talk to make his community better.

Here are two candidates who present a tough choice, two candidates who could have — should have — run on their records and left it at that.  But of course, politics must be usual.

The campaign has run a cycle, a kind of reverse interactive Kübler-Ross five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

We started with acceptance, as each candidate presented himself, stated his qualifications and achievements, with solid street cred and just enough bunting on their campaign literature.

Then commenced the anger, with a trickle of accusations that arrived in our mail. They're running for office, after all. Being good, making a difference, is not enough. The other guy must be evil.

The endorsement groups — firefighters, police officers, teachers, nurses, the League of Women Voters — began bargaining with us over the candidates. If you're one of us — if you want us patrolling your neighborhood, teaching your kid — vote for our guy.

We became depressed. We accepted the deluge of mail that our postal deliverer actually complained about having to bring us. With a smattering of "I'm the good guy" came mailers mostly with variations on "He's the bad guy!!!" Charges of corruption, of dark connections, of trojan horses disguising wicked agendas; multiple mailers from each candidate, every day but Sunday.

"He's Dan Lungren's chief minion!"

"Oh yeah, well he's the insurance industry's henchman!"

"I balanced 10 straight budgets. He only improved a local skate park."

"He gave away pensions and went on trips at taxpayer expense!"

"He'll raise your taxes!!"

"Lobbyist!"

"Lackey!"

And so forth. My favorite moment so far was last week, listening to a radio commercial featuring Peter Tateishi's wife, who outlined her two tours of duty in Iraq training police —a family embodying public service! — and then deplores Ken Cooley's hurtful lies and accusations against her husband.

Simultaneously came the Tateishi fliers, proffering their own lies and accusations.

(Second favorite: An anti-Cooley flier with a connect-the-dots line-art portrait of Cooley, the dots representing the increments of donations "Big Insurance" has made to Cooley's campaign. Unlike the postcards, this flier is folded an closed with two stickers. That's asking a lot of the people who applied the stickers, and a lot of voters to work so hard to be insulted.)

Neither of these candidates is the scum the other has suggested. Each is doing far more for their communities than I and most others. But they fell into the mucky pit of politics, or someone pulled them in, because that's how it's done.

How I wish these two — or someone! — would start the trend: I'm running on my record and I'm not denigrating my opponent. Vote for me if you think I can do job.

Candidates need to run ads like this, the world I want to live in come every election time.

Instead, candidates show they don't think much of their constituents' intelligence.

Shame on these two. Shame on us.