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Today's Cliche

One of the dangers of a career in daily journalism is becoming inured to absurdity. Part of one's duties is to write down what people say and then reprint their words without really thinking about what was said.

No apologies. You try getting a coherent thought out of a champagne-drenched World Series hero on deadline, or parsing George Bush's sentences for that matter. The story must get done, and that means a certain amount of stenography enters the process.

Now that I'm on the shelf, words that I transcribed thousands of times hit me differently. One phrase sure did last night.

On Washington Week in Review, one of the sonorous, tedious reporters on the panel said, "The Democrats have to worry about overconfidence."

We'll leave aside the fact it'd be easier to find people who think I'm overly handsome than an overconfident Democrat. The point is, "worry about overconfidence," a phrase I've heard a thousand football coaches utter, makes no sense. It's a logical contradiction, an absurdity on its face.

A sports team or political party can lose a contest due to overconfidence. But they can't be overconfident and worry simultaneously. Overconfidence means you have no worries. To worry about overconfidence banishes it by definition. Bill Belichick is always worried. Hence, he's never overconfident.

What the talking head meant to say is, of course, Democrats have to worry about OTHER Democrats getting overconfident. Presumably, the accurate phrase took up too much valuable air time needed for another PBS pledge drive.

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:17 AM