Grammar-punctuation of Tampa Bay are publications
A Mystery Solved at Last:
Why Wayne Garcia of Creative Loafing Calls Himself a Whore
Why Le Wayne Garcia calls his Creative Loafing column “Political Whore” poses no puzzle for parlor psychology whizzes such as I. Reading Uncle Freud’s self-help books filled in gaps in my intuition about why people act as they do.
I spent a whole summer on my grandma’s Georgia farm when I was in high school during which I did nothing but pick cotton and read the entire Freud oeuvre from soup to nuts. At summer’s end, I had not only my cotton-picking money from grandma but also a morganatic marriage from lore gained from my reading Uncle Freud. I had read my way to a toehold in the psychobabble craft that entitled me to hang up my shingle. So I never hesitate to weigh in on what makes people tick. Who would demur with my bona fides?
Remember when Samuel Beckett says in Waiting for Godot that men are born astride the grave?
Bingo. That’s the key to Wayne’s “whore” fetish. Uncle Sigmund offers insight into Le Garcia’s revealing column title in “The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Sexual Life.”
We have in Wayne’s “Political Whore” instant diagnosis of his problem: Wayne’s afraid of women. Male terror of women was the roadblock in the 60’s to us women’s passing the ERA. The guys got spooked because they thought women already had enough astride-the-grave power as it was and shuddered to think of the consequences for the patriarchy of men’s consenting to ladies’ having more.
If you want more telling detail about Beckett’s metaphor, faites attention: The grave of which the fellows stand astride is the female vagina—scary phenomenon that explains all the Dempsey Dumpsters of pornography churned out to denigrate women’s sexuality so as to vitiate male pornography scaredy cats’ fear of being astride the grave in Beckettsian metaphoric terror.
Pornography allows men to regard women’s sexuality with contempt and to fool themselves that they are not scared of it. Then they go and give themselves away by naming their columns “Political Whore.” It’s analogous to the “Baby- baby-don’t- get-hooked-on-me” stance of over-the-hill bikers with Viagra commercials in the background’s blowing their cover.
So Wayne blazons his psychological affliction in his column title out in front of God and everybody. It didn’t take me but about the time required to pick a sack of cotton and put a few rocks in it to cheat grandma to figure out Wayne’s problem.
Were Wayne’s male-security quotient as robust as his gym-scale reading, he would call his column “Political Warlock.”
Blatant allusion to women’s degraded whore status in which men can buy sex and hence control it as Wayne’s “Political Whore” security blanket trumpets is one thing: a man’s fear of the danger of women’s bloodsucking sexual power over him is another, closer to the bone of male psychological angst. Wayne might as well wear a placard saying, “I’m scared of girls.”
That “whore” invocation is Wayne’s whistling-past-the-graveyard’s talisman against his fear of women. He could have revealed even more defensive fright had he used “Political Ho” instead of the more formal “Political Whore.” That restraint means Wayne, poor devil, has not reached bottom yet of his female terror pathology.
I recommend group therapy and Halcyon to Wayne. He should also up his intake of Vitamin E and, budget permitting, take the waters at Baden-Baden.
Wayne would do well to sign up for grammar-punctuation therapy for its psychological therapeutic value (see below for proof of Wayne’s runaway grammar-punctuation malaise), not to mention his professional advancement. The New York Times has advertised for a recovering astride-the-grave writer from an outback alternative publication in which astride-the-grave males occupy all the jobs except that of gofer, which is x-chromosome in Wayne’s Creative Loafing bailiwick , where Beckett’s Syndrome runs rampant. A girl gofer makes the astride-the-grave boys feel superior and able to forget for a time their being astride the grave.
These observations are not fantastic; they come from solid science. Check with the CDC.
Neither Uncle Freud nor even Jung--late-blooming smart aleck who came up with the “collective-unconscious” racket and then stuck his tongue out at his master, Freud--ever discovered the grammar aspect of the astride-the-grave malady. That’s my contribution. I added my bit to the NFL starting line-up of Vienna psychiatrists’ advice to the lovelorn on the subject of comma pathology—a sneaky aspect of the astride-the-grave disease that nobody but one from the Other Side—me-- could spot and delineate.
I expect to win a Nobel laureate for this contribution since the Nobel guys think I am y-chromosome from my first name. George Elliot knows what I am talking about. Only seven of the 350 Nobels in science have gone to women thus far, and those women worked their way thorough school as gofers at Creative Loafing including Madame Curie. So I will be the eighth for my comma contribution to the double helix of astride-the-grave psychological mystery, my exceptional status’s being that I served no internship as gofer for Creative Loafing.
Mine thus will be the breakthrough award. Feminists who attend the ceremony in Stockholm will wear Valkyrie breast plates and Manolo Blanick stilettos in the tradition of astride-the-grave couture.
POLITICAL WHORE
BY WAYNE GARCIA
Published 10.24.07
Wayne Garcia Creative Loafing
That young lad, however, has no idea of how bad that three-quarter-page advertisement looked to a handful of businesspeople that have made a quiet crusade out of attracting more overseas flights for an airport closer to home: Tampa International.
Redundant adjective: lads are young by definition.
The Orlando airport ad was made possible, in part, through the financial support of Pinellas County's tax-supported tourism agency, Visit St. Petersburg-Clearwater. That same agency is represented on an airport advisory committee with those same upset Tampa Bay businesspeople. Tampa's airport has long struggled to achieve internationality.
These wimpy passive verbs are sequelae to Wayne’s fragile condition. When he recovers somewhat from his astride-the-grave syndrome, he will signal this advance by adopting active verbs: “The support of Pinellas County’s tax-supported tourism agency made the Orlando airport ad possible.” “The Pinellas tourism agency also serves with these upset Tampa Bay businesspeople on the same advisory committee.”
"I get all lathered up about it because I feel like we should have something more," said Bill Krusen, whose been involved in the aviation business since he was in college and was chairman of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority in the mid-1960s.
Astride-the-grave vagina terror has damaged Le Garcia's synapses, Hence, Wayne stumbles on homophones: he means “who’s,” not “whose.” The “chairman” for generic male power betrays the defensive macho linguistic dimensions of Wayne’s astride-the-grave malady. The lad is far gone, far gone.
Tampa International currently has just five nonstop to foreign destinations, the most prominent being London. A few years back it had 10.
“Currently” and “just’ are redundant adverbs that Strunk & White condemns. The “prominent” should be “prominent’s” for possessive before the gerund.
What's especially sad about how far behind Tampa International has fallen is that commercial aviation was born in Tampa Bay. Tony Jannus famously took care of that with his Benoist Flying Boat hop from St. Pete to Tampa. And 100 years ago, Tampa was a hub of commerce, with its Latin American connections, cigar manufacturing and excellent water access.
“Especially” is a redundant adverb; so is “famously.” People would not have to backtrack if Wayne would hyphenate “Benoist-Flying-boat” before “hop.” Wayne should ditch the comma after “commerce” and the one after “connections”: these cut off a restrictive adjectival prepositional phrase.
Somewhere over the century, however, Tampa Bay lost its edge as a destination. Orlando got Disney World. Tampa's close ties with Cuba were rendered moot nearly 50 years ago after Castro took over. Even Tampa's Latin population was eclipsed by Miami's, aided by the Mariel boatlift.
“However” is a redundant adverb, and Wayne has suffered a relapse into passive verbs. Edit: “Castro’s takeover of Cuba fifty years ago rendered Tampa’s close ties with Cuba moot.” “Aided by the Mariel boatlift, Miami’s Latin population eclipsed even that of Tampa’s.”
Today, if you are traveling from Latin America to the United States, you are likely to go to one of two places first: Miami or New York. Not Tampa Bay.
The progressive verb “are traveling” would be more succinct style as simple present “if you travel.” “Not Tampa Bay” is a fragment. Writers with a sure grasp of grammar and punctuation can use artful play with the rules, but Wayne does not fall into that group. He must attach the “Not Tampa Bay” as a contrasting element to the preceding sentence with a comma.
The Pinellas beaches are a big draw for foreign Disney and Universal Studios visitors who add side trips to St. Pete Beach and Clearwater to their U.S. vacations. Partnering with the Orlando airport not only makes sense but is a matter of beach tourism survival, Pinellas leaders say.
A comma should follow “visitors” for a nonrestrictive adjective clause. Wayne should complete the correlative by inserting “also” after “is”: “but is [also] a matter of beach…”
Analysis of Wayne's writing
Good: he writes a clear sentence and has a sense of structure, His tone is affable. He has a feel for a definitive ending.
Bad: Wayne overuses passive voice and redundant modifiers. The former makes a writer sound weak; the latter makes him sound desperate. One blooper on homophones such as "who's" and "whose" can neutralize a whole column by making the writer sound dumb. Wayne's style is pedestrian. His writing shows no eclat of the occasional piece of unusual diction; neither has he an ear for the music of language. He should read Tennyson to help him with the latter problem. Wayne lacks imaginative verve. He would never dare slip the surly bounds of rhetorical earth and touch the face of God. The reach of his imaginative whimsy is calling his column "Political Whore." That's stale sexism.
Teacher says this essay merits a C.
No comments:
Post a Comment