“To be honest,” the first one said, “basically, at the end of the day, it is what it is. Y’know what I’m sayin’?”
That’s what the man said.
Then the second one replied, “Needless to say, that sucks 24/7.”
I hurriedly jotted verbatim each semi-precious syllable—God have mercy on us all—so as not to miss the weight of this exchange. I heard the above mishmash of clichés and rubbish phrasing the other day at a local Starbucks as I read the morning paper. Mildly annoyed, I wanted to insert myself into the conversation the twentyish men were having by screaming, “You aren’t saying anything at all.” But good manners prompted me to remain a listener rather than that teacher who stood in front of classrooms for over thirty-five years. Even if I knew the context of the dialogue, their rhetorical filler amounted to nothing of greater value than dogs barking at the vacuum cleaner.
Let’s parse the dialogue, shall we. “To be honest,” the tattooed one began, which suggests to me that honesty is not a regular habit of the speaker. “Basically,” he said, an expression that I have always found wanting because of its arrogant implication. When someone uses the word “basically” repeatedly, that person makes the suggestion that the party to whom he or she speaks cannot cut through the complexity of a subject; the know-it-all must stoop to make matters clear to the dolt on the other end of the exchange. “At the end of the day,” an expression that clutters our everyday speech, gains no traction (another cliché placed here for demonstration purposes only) because of its commonness, its lack of original thought. And “it is what it is,” of course, is nothing more than bacon fat. It sizzles a little the first time one smells it, but it is rhetorical rendering—nothing to bite, just a small greasy flavor. Finally, “y’know what I’m sayin’?” gains the distinction of coming from people who say almost nothing worth listening to. That idiom begs the listener to nod or in some cosmic way agree with the speaker. It is, I suppose, a polite way to keep the conversation going, but it too amounts to nothing but wind through the bellows.
Then, the second young man, the one with a hatpin impaling his eyebrow, added inspiring wisdom. “Needless to say,” an expression that is, by its own admission, needless to say or write precedes “that sucks 24/7.” Whew! That young man would have done better to just nod and season the gesture with a grimace. True, sucking has some indelicate shock value, but no one seems to know the origin of the expression. If you are a babe at the pap, sucking should mean goodness. If you are an egg farmer and you discover a weasel sucking your inventory, well, that cannot be good. Now, that 24/7 tag (y’know what I’m sayin’?) remains simply a clichéd abbreviation for the length of time that the speaker avoids choosing the right words in the right word slots.
Our conversational speech has devolved to the level of grunts and idiotic exchanges that denote the lack of concentrated thought. Perhaps it has always been that way, but I doubt it. In part because of developments in digital communication, because topics trend across our little screens, and because one little rhetorical sneeze (“Yada-Yada-Yada”) can infect a vast viewing public, the standard conversational tools have become cut-and-paste applications. Sure language passes on by imitation, but never before has it spread in the mass production one-size-fits-all media culture under which we now suffer.
A little critical thinking would serve us well. Recently, I heard John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, talk about what the “American people” would not stand for. He is forever going on about what the American people think and want. Listen to him. Every time a reporter shows up, he breaks into a speech about what the American people seek. Just about every politician (both sides of the aisle) seems to know what American people want. Of course, rhetorical presupposition is just part of partisan politics, but it also represents a worrisome sickness in the way we communicate. Here is how that works: if Boehner says it first and often enough, the herd just may stampede in the direction he indicates. At the same time, the Democrat leader will exclaim that the “American people” desire the exact opposite of Boehner’s premise. It gets confusing when hundreds of representatives and senators, each with a different take, tell us what we want. Please, RoboVoices, you need not tell this American what he wants. Bottom line (gag), I want Boehner et al to forego speaking on my behalf. That would be, frankly, awesome (gag).
We live in a day and age when damn near everything is awesome. “Shall I pass the butter for your dinner roll?” “That would be awesome.” “Here’s the awesome butter for your awesome dinner roll.” “Awesome.” Now, when an eruption column rose fifteen miles into the atmosphere above Mount St. Helens and the north side of the mountain collapsed creating the largest earth slide ever recorded, the word awesome fits the event. So with all due respect, think about the denotation of a word before it drools from your mouth.
Speaking of which, I always cringe when someone begins to address me with the phrase “With all due respect.” Look out! That slippery and disingenuous opener always means trouble. It means conflict, disagreement, and probably the speaker has a complete lack of respect for me. It goes without saying, which is another phrase that ought to go away and stay away, is probably better than “I’ll tell you what.” One baseball color commentator has never offered a comment—not once—without using that phrase. “I’ll tell you what” is a phrase less than nothing, a bell without a clapper. What is the difference between these two comments: “I’ll tell you what, he hit that ball outta da park” and “He hit that ball outta da park”? The first utterance is twice as long as it should be, that’s what.
If I were to record my every utterance each day and play back the results, I would probably make a New Year’s resolution to take a vow of silence for 2015 because I, along with the rest of us, fill speech bubbles with empty words and unrefined thoughts.
Words matter. They reflect what we think and who we are. Bottom line, when we open our mouths, we should be mindful of Homer’s advice: “Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.”
Am I right, or what?