A few days ago I spent some time with the loon fam­i­ly I wrote about last week. The par­ents called out twice, to help the two chicks find them in the chop­py waves, which prompt­ed the thought that my exas­per­a­tion with news cov­er­age, and the world in gen­er­al, is direct­ly relat­ed to the exces­sive use of point­less words.

Kin­da, sort of, you know, obvi­ous­ly, I mean, and often a com­bi­na­tion of two or more of those, clut­ter the utter­ances of pun­dits, experts, news­mak­ers and ordi­nary peo­ple being asked their opinions.
Inter­vie­wees are sup­posed to be afford­ed air time because they know what they’re talk­ing about.
Kin­da and sort of are bet-hedgers.
Obvi­ous­ly is talk­ing down to the audi­ence. If some­thing is obvi­ous, it can be pre­sumed we know it and don’t need our time wast­ed by repetition.
Dit­to you know.
Unless it’s a pre­lude to re-answer­ing a ques­tion in a clear­er way, or cor­rect­ing an error in the orig­i­nal answer, I mean prompts the ques­tion: “If you don’t mean it, why are you about to say it?”
The phrase is almost annoy­ing as peo­ple who are always super hap­py, excit­ed, dis­ap­point­ed and on and on…
They’re on a par with those who say “like” when the word doesn’t fit. I allow jour­nal­ists two and inter­views three, then hit the off button.
Vague and exces­sive, as opposed to crisp and clear infor­ma­tion, is a waste of time.
Just ask a loon par­ent…because when the fish are small, they don’t have time to waste wait­ing for the chicks to answer the loon equiv­a­lent of a “lunch is served” call.
Speak­ing clear­ly, with­out point­less words, is the fun­da­men­tal of com­mu­ni­cat­ing ideas and credibility.
It’s how the great broad­cast­ers of radio and pre-swal­lowed-by-greedy-merg­ers-TV earned trust and ded­i­cat­ed audiences.
                   SIMPLIFICATION IS AN ART
No less than a Shake­speare char­ac­ter not­ed that “brevi­ty is the soul of wit”.
Laps­ing into the jar­gon of the moment doesn’t equate with clever, it dimin­ish­es the val­ue of infor­ma­tion and cer­ti­fies a pauci­ty of intellect.
Peo­ple whose sec­ond or third lan­guage is Eng­lish often seem much more capa­ble, and cer­tain­ly cre­ative, when it comes to sim­ple and descriptive.
A Greek friend told me proud­ly that his wife kept their home “spark­less”, by which he meant spot­less and sparkling. Praise indeed, and only one word needed.
A Lebanese dri­ver for CBS News with an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to read and defuse poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions, described check­points manned by gun­men whose atti­tudes and intel­li­gence lev­els might range from unpre­dictable to cer­ti­fi­ably homi­ci­dal (and no “kin­da” or “sor­ta” about it),  as “no trob­lem”…a (vague­ly) reas­sur­ing com­bi­na­tion of  “no trou­ble” and “no prob­lem”.
Cock­ney rhyming slang, on the oth­er hand, uses two or three word phras­es, which flu­ent speak­ers often turn back into one.
A sim­ple exam­ple: “I was on my way out for a pig’s when the trou­ble called on the dog and want­ed bangers for new ten to twos and her Bar­net and boat race done.”
Trans­la­tion: pig’s ear — pint of beer, Trou­ble and strife — wife, dog and bone — phone,  ten to twos — shoes , bangers and mash — cash, Bar­net Fair– hair, boat race — face.
One won­ders how AI would han­dle that.
Announc­ing  a new “super­in­tel­li­gence” his engi­neers are work­ing on, Mark Zucker­berg claimed it will play a role that “…empow­ers peo­ple to be more cre­ative, devel­op cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ties, con­nect with each oth­er, and lead more ful­fill­ing lives.”
Thus pro­nounced the cre­ator of the world’s most wide­ly used forum for prac­ti­tion­ers of ill-con­sid­ered pro­nounce­ments and excess verbiage.
                        ON A HIGHER LEVEL
Worse still are words used by those who ought to know when they are mis­lead­ing, or plain wrong.
The last half of a head­line on a sto­ry about U.S. spe­cial envoy Steve Witkoff going to vis­it an “aid dis­tri­b­u­tion site” in Gaza  read: “…Envoy Plans to See Hunger Cri­sis Firsthand”.
The reporter and head­line writer knew (or ought to have, giv­en the num­ber of words pub­lished about Israeli restric­tions on access to Gaza) that Witkoff was going on what jour­nal­ists call a “dog and pony show”.
He would not, and in the end did not, see or speak to, a sin­gle hun­gry Pales­tin­ian, or any­one not approved by the Israelis, nor expe­ri­ence Gaza’s dai­ly lot of “warn­ing shots”, air strikes, tank fire or drone attacks.
Days after the Unit­ed States hit Cana­da with high­er tar­iffs, Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney said he would speak with U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump “when it makes sense.”
“Sense” and “Trump” not being words that go togeth­er, to fill what might be a long wait, I’d like to sug­gest Mr Car­ney could send Trump a pic­ture (gold framed of course) of a loon.
Whether His Trump­ness would see it as equat­ing him with the icon­ic sta­tus we afford the bird, or the pejo­ra­tive use of the bird’s name, it’s per­ilous­ly (or clev­er­ly) close to the alleged Cana­di­an trait of being passive-aggressive.
And no words wasted.
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