An alert user of the social medium, Facebook, posted something brilliant:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I sure wish we had some of that green chile from Colorado.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Said no one.<\/p>\n
Ever.<\/p>\n
I spotted this post on the Facebook page of former Las Vegas and current Seattle-ite Ileana Gonzales. She said in 16 words what takes me several paragraphs to express.<\/p>\n
You may have read in past columns my unceasing praise of green chile. My youngest son, Ben, spent his summers working at Lowe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on Seventh Street. He indicated early in his tenure there that because he was the new kid on the block, at 16, one of his duties was to roast the sacks of green chile in the store parking lot.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a messy, smoky job, but something in the fruit\/vegetable from Hatch, N.M., triggers the olfactory system of the chile buyer and makes him\/her generous. Several times, a customer, intoxicated by the aroma of the chile, tipped my son. He liked that.<\/p>\n
Well, we New Mexicans take our green chile seriously, and when the state of Colorado starts to gamble with our product, well, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not proper. Officials of that state proposed providing sacks of green chile to Washington State if they won the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n
Where in Colorado can one order an even semi-palatable bowl of green chile without having imported it from New Mexico? Where in Colorado can one even get served a bowl of hearty green chile stew, without having it watered down and doctored up or somehow made so bland that it resembles soup?<\/p>\n
We applaud inter-state competitions, but let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a real homegrown product that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being wagered. The Internet is full of suggested gifts from Washington, including Washington salmon. Facebook users are suggesting Denver provide Colorado bison. And others suggest a supply of marijuana from the loser to the winner.<\/p>\n
However, by coincidence, the two states with Super Bowl teams just recently voted to allow the sale and use of marijuana \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with some conditions.<\/p>\n
Let those states decide. But leave New Mexico green chile out of it. Offer Seattle a case of Rocky Mountain Oysters instead.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
A scolding is in the offing, but I try never to chide people without throwing in a mini grammar lesson.<\/p>\n
You are familiar with the case in which New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie got thoroughly railed for a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mistakes were made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d incident that tied up traffic in a big way.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
The issue seems to be that Christie asked his across-the-bridge fellow politician, Mayor Mark Sokolich, of Fort Lee in New Jersey for an endorsement in Christie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s run for governor.<\/p>\n
Failing to get that from the mayor who belongs to the opposite party, the governor is now accused of creating a major traffic jam on the George Washington Bridge, one of the U.S.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s busiest. That was to embarrass the mayor.<\/p>\n
Since then, the New Jersey governor has been subjected to the how-much-did-he-know? and when-did-he-know-it? treatment. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when Christie found it convenient to invoke the mistakes-were-made excuse.<\/p>\n
Here comes the grammar lesson:<\/p>\n
Notice how the mistakes simply appeared. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as if the governor were out for a stroll and a legion of mistakes just happened. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as flimsy as, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The figurine fell all by itself, all of a sudden, honest!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
You see, like many people in need of vindication, Christie used the passive voice. This grammatical term refers to the shifting of the action. For example, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I ordered the closing down of the lanes on the bridge,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the active voice. The sentence tells correctly that someone did something, in this case, ordered the closing of three of the five lanes.<\/p>\n
But the passive voice \u00e2\u20ac\u201d which by its very nature is weak and flabby \u00e2\u20ac\u201d shifts the action. Instead of a person directing something, the action apparently takes on a life of its own. Notice how often we use it: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The football is caught,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the baseball was dropped,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the motorist was stopped,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The baby was conceived.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The language has a perfectly fine use for the passive voice, even with its weakness and flab. It is used (did you catch my own use of the passive voice?) when one doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who did what. Therefore, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s common to read, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A bank was robbed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a car was stolen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mistakes were made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s responsible for the action.<\/p>\n
Sportscasters rely on the passive voice to cover their inability to immediately identify players. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the ball is caught\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the opportunity to sort out the players and give proper credit.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s return to Gov. Christie. By no means is he the author of the passive voice; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had many predecessors. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned that the passive voice favors anonymity and generally excludes the names of the culprits.<\/p>\n
So, Christie has implied to millions that somehow, he was innocent, out for a stroll, when suddenly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mistakes were made.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
How much more honorable it would be if the Christies of the world \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfessed up to their misdeeds instead suggesting that mistakes are like flu viruses that swoop down to inflict innocent politicians.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Last week we included a high-fallutin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 term for a Christmas carol, submitted by John Geffroy, asking readers to guess the true title for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Observed: Genetrix Osculating Hibernal Gift-giver.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rita Eichelberger of Las Vegas was the first to identify it as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Claus.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
What was the big to-do about Ground Hog Day? For my part, I had bacon on the morning of Feb. 2, a ham sandwich for lunch and a pork chop at dinner.<\/p>\n
But ground hog? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think most people would care for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An alert user of the social medium, Facebook, posted something brilliant: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I sure wish we had some of that green chile from Colorado.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Said no one. Ever. I spotted this post on the Facebook page of former Las Vegas and current Seattle-ite Ileana Gonzales. She said in 16 words what takes me several paragraphs to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1181,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1180\/revisions\/1181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}