{"id":3850,"date":"2012-10-16T06:46:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T11:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3850"},"modified":"2012-10-16T06:48:17","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T11:48:17","slug":"impersonal-expressions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3850","title":{"rendered":"Impersonal expressions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new debate tonight. Here is a remark from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1012\/82327.html?hp=t3_3\">Politico<\/a>&nbsp;on the last one that almost perfectly captures the post-truth media environment.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It is clear that Biden&#39;s substantive high points &mdash; and there were several places where he took clear command of the debate on issues ranging from entitlements to taxes &mdash; <strong>will be partly shadowed<\/strong> by his nonstop succession of incredulous smiles, sneers, taunts and guffaws that were apparently intended to show self-confidence and fighting spirit but struck many viewers as undignified and rude.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&quot;will be partly overshadowed&quot; is needlessly impersonal.&nbsp; The author might better have written: &quot;Biden won the debate on substance, but I&#39;m annoyed by his facial expressions, so I am going to deduct points from him.&nbsp; But I&#39;m going to make this&nbsp;a third person passive construction (sorry, I don&#39;t know the technical name), so it doesn&#39;t look like me who&#39;s doing it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/blogs\/politics\/out-on-the-weekend-101212\">Charles Pierce<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new debate tonight. Here is a remark from Politico&nbsp;on the last one that almost perfectly captures the post-truth media environment. It is clear that Biden&#39;s substantive high points &mdash; and there were several places where he took clear command of the debate on issues ranging from entitlements to taxes &mdash; will be partly shadowed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3850\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Impersonal expressions<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1482,1481,1470],"class_list":["post-3850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-passive-constructions","tag-politico","tag-post-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3850"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3852,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3850\/revisions\/3852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}