Some Serious Wordplay

Strange use of language, Chapter MMMCCCXLVII: at the BBC website, the notion of “entertainment” takes a real…um…beating. This is sort of like classifying stories about where Tiger sticks his putter as “sport.”

On a somewhat larger linguistic note, consider and debate the following question with your friends: is government better at banning things or permitting stuff? The question occurred to me this morning as I viewed the headlines from California, where the trans-fat ban goes into effect. Will this spawn a network of trans-fat speakeasies? (pssst…the password is “Freedom Fries”).

The ban should probably be left largely to its specialists, the demagogues who rule our institutional religions: the ban is practically all they know. Depending on what version you choose, 8 or 9 of the Ten Commandments are of the “shall not” persuasion. Nothing in there about not coveting thy neighbor’s supermodel, though.

A glance at the Constitution (of the United States, that is) reveals a lot more “shalls.” The “shall not’s” begin to appear in the Bill of Rights, and even these are usually about the government limiting itself, its own powers, rather than about banning any thing or practice among the people (the notorious Article XVIII was, of course, repealed, but it sure created some great movies).

So if you’d ever like to win an argument about America being a Christian nation with a right-wing theistic lunatic, you could offer linguistic proof that the Constitution is not a Christian document. There are simply not enough shall-nots in the Constitution for it to qualify as Christian.