A new lingo seems to have crept into American English mainly through TV talk show hosts, commentators and their guests who have come to use it profusely. The jargon revolves around meaningless expressions such as ‘going forward’ and ‘on the ground.’
Tonight I heard a CNN talking head ask one of her guests in a most serious tone, “….what do you think the strategy is ‘going forward?’” Campbell Brown could simply have asked, “What is the strategy?”
You might think that this is not a big deal. It’s not. But it’s a symptom of the low level of sophistication that passes for newsworthy reporting and analysis on the boob tube. The term ‘going forward’ is appended to thousands of sentences every day like kernels of corn bursting into popcorn in my stove-top Whirley-Pop. Popcorn tastes great. Useless word appendages don’t.
A second wordsmith attachment often stuck to the end of sentences by TV talking heads is the expression, ‘on the ground.’ When originally used in its derivative sense to highlight the debate over the number of soldiers that were required in Iraq, the term had import. Now, it’s seemingly thrown about on any topic having to do with military issues or with simply trying to sound credible.
We keep hearing about ‘boots on the ground.’ By golly where else would they be? Or, we might hear a well-paid TV analyst trying to add gravitas to his/her conclusion by saying something like, “John/Jane Doe is flying to Iraq next week, and will talk to Nouri al-Maliki so that he/she can get the facts ‘on the ground.’”
I hope the person dispatched to Baghdad didn’t get shot in the butt by a sniper, as he/she was walking about that beleaguered city, bending over to collect facts ‘on the ground’ in order that we uninformed citizens could understand what strategy is proposed ‘going forward.’
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