Unca Darrell

APRIL 30 / Style, usage, journalism

Cliches, Why Use Just One?

Jackie Robinson paved the way for those . . .

APRIL 26 / White House declares national day of mourning . . .

. . . for great American most singularly responsible for president's political career.

Hubert Schlafy created the teleprompter, the device that helps actors and politicians read scripts on television without looking down.

(Stephen Miller, "Inventor's Teleprompter Eased Speakers' Minds," Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2011)

At the Journal, it's Teleprompter. At Unca D, it's TelePrompTer, which was the original trade name for the device, and funnier. Prompting this question: Why not, in homage, BaRak HusSein OBaMa?

APRIL 23 / Saturday is a good day for good works

JESSICA lost custody of her son because she was addicted to drugs. She entered a recovery program, but had no job, no home, and no money. That's when . . .

APRIL 22 / "Amadeus" at the Alley

TOO MANY . . . 

APRIL 21 / Presidenting is hard

SO PRESIDENT OBAMA has stopped doing it. The next nineteen months will be 100 percent . . .

 

APRIL 20 / Is capitalism moral?

ARE HUMAN beings perfectible here on earth? Many say yes, among them Enlightenment philosophes, Marx and later generations of socialists and communists, modern liberals, and many species of romantics.

The correct answer is . . .

APRIL 16 / Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

THAT'S A WORTHY CANDIDATE to serve as the object of your charitable impulse this week. The organization fights blood and bone-marrow cancers. Go here . . .  

APRIL 15 / Some Tax Day reading . . .

. . . and weeping:

This year it will take the average taxpayer 23 hours just to fill out form 1040 -- up from 21 hours last year . . . . It now takes seven hours just to fill out the so-called 1040 EZ. 

APRIL 12 / "I believe President Obama was right"

JO ANN BARTON, "Footprints: A year of 'change'," Garrison in the News, November 11, 2010 

APRIL 8 / Why the Supreme Court was wrong . . .

. . . to say Westboro Baptist Church has a First Amendment right to picket funerals of dead soldiers.