Opinion : \'Noman\' is not an island: We must stand together against lame political clichés

        Do you ever stop to think about all of the nonsensical things that people say on a daily basis?

     Things like:

     "No man is an island."

     That's not true. I looked it up. Noman is NOT an island. It's a street in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. Karachi is a port city that comes to a point at the water's edge, near where the Gulf of Oman meets the Persian Gulf, and it is in a corner of Pakistan that is surrounded on three sides by water. So you would be accurate in saying that Noman is a path to a peninsula. But Noman is not an island.     

Among my favorite pet peeves are phrases that people customarily use that are totally incorrect.     

     Such as "touching base."
     "I want to touch bases with you," said an annoying boss of years gone by.

     I wanted to explain to him that when two people literally touch base in the way in which he used the phrase, one of them is called out. Touching bases together is something that teammates NEVER do in baseball.

     Here's another one: "That kid has his shoes on the wrong feet."

     While it is true that little kids at times will put the right foot in the left shoe and the right shoe on the left foot, that kid's shoes are NOT on the wrong feet. They are his shoes; they are on his feet. It would, therefore, be incorrect to say that the shoes are on the wrong feet. The correct way to describe this dilemma is to say: "That kid has his feet in the wrong shoes."      A former Iowa basketball coach once complimented his team's performance by saying, "Tonight, they really stepped up to the plate." Hey, if your basketball players are stepping up to the plate, you might want to get another coaching manual. His teams did lose a lot of games; perhaps his players were too busy trying to find the plate to see the hoop.

       Many people fill our ears with meaningless phrases, and then wonder why we aren't understanding what they are trying to say. I once walked past a meeting where the boss said, "We need to push the envelope and think outside the box." Yawn.

      A few years ago, I wrote a column about how to give a speech while saying almost nothing. I had to laugh a few months later, when Iowa Gov. Chet Culver's first speech actually included some of the phrases I had used. Surely, I thought, he knows better than that. He didn't.

      Since we are approaching the Iowa caucuses, and will soon be up to our ears in politicians (cliché intentional), I thought maybe it's a good time to share with you my "Nothing" speech:

      "My fellow Americans  (And my lady Americans, also, lest we fail to be proactively inclusive in our quest for the common ground that will lead us to the bridge to the future):

         "The time is come, (pause for applause)... indeed, it is time which, we see right now, standing like a respected old coach before us today, beckoning us to embrace the future by daily focusing our here-and-now efforts on the days to come. (Chet Culver actually said "now is our time" in his first speech. Look it up.)

      "Let everyone of us say -- in our own hearts, in a way that each of us finds most appealing -- 'I will do my best to be my best, every moment of every day of the rest of my life,' because as we all know, the rest of our lives begins tonight, right here... (pause for applause)… right now...

     "It is time for us to boldly go where we need to go (and where no man has gone before!), boldly reach for the stars, boldly face our fears and say, unto them (pause) ....I ain't scared!!!!!!!!!

     "Our dreams are out there, if we will just reach for them... if we will climb the mountains in our path, swim the oceans that separate us from what we can be, and build bridges across the rivers that divide us from the future we and our children deserve...

      "My opponent.... my opponent.. disagrees. He has chosen the long-ago rejected paths of the past (pause for applause) ... he has failed to adopt a forward-looking approach to the challenges of our day...his mission statement seems to be, "Vote for me because I say things are bad".....(pause for boos) ... his policies, as we know.. are the policies and politics of failure, fear and misfortune...

     "But I say.... we can do better because we are doing better..... we are working harder and reaching higher for our dreams and stooping lower to help those who are downtrodden than we have ever done in our history -- in the history of these great United... States... of (pause for applause).. AMERICA!!!!!!!  (pause for even more applause).... the GREATEST (pause) ....NATION.... (pause).. on the face of the EARTH (Long pause)....      "Never before have we stood at such a place in history... never again will we hear the opportunities of today knocking on our door... my question to you, tonight, is this: Will you open the door, or will you let opportunity walk away, uninvited, unappreciated, unwanted???     

     "I say NO! (pause)... I know I speak for every single one of us (pause) in this great hall (pause) in this great city (pause) in this great state (pause) in this, the GREATEST of nations (long pause) when I say It's time for us to put a sign on our door that says  "Opportunity lives here" (pause) Opportunity for all !!!!!!!!!! (long pause for raucous applause)...      "Tomorrow....tomorrow.. when you head for your home, in your great states (pause)..all over this great country (pause) remember my words tonight.. remember the vision we shared, the hope we embraced, the tomorrow of our destiny that awaits us... AND.. IF.. (pause) if the vision I shared tonight is YOUR vision (pause)... I can tell by your response (pause) that it is.. then go home and invite your neighbors, your friends, your relatives, you colleagues, to walk with us on this path to tomorrow, this road that leads from our dreams to our successes... and show them the hope, the faith, and the love we share.. show them the way…"

     Ok, so you get the idea. In fact, you've probably heard a great deal of nothing from many candidates over the years.

     I just wish the people in my line of work were as good as pointing out when a politician is saying nothing as I tried to be at saying it myself.      Noman is not an island.

     But sometimes, when this man is surrounded by so many people who utter such nonsense, he wishes he were.

     PS: Those of you who were offended by the four letter word I used above, consider this: My wife/colleague and I debated for a long time whether our headline should say "sports don't come first" or "sports does not come first" until it occurred to me that the only way to write it that did not lead to debate was to say that "sports AIN'T first."