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The daily news, whether brought to our eyes and ears by radio, television, newsprint, or by way of the Internet has become more than merely a transport of actual events from doer to recipient. The story being told must new be exaggerated all out of proportion. This is necessary because unless it is made to appear as an earthdhaking or vital happening it will no the given any attention, by me, by you, or be anyone else in today's jaded world.
One local TV newscaster I have finally stopped watching seems unable to express anything of any quantity without using the hyperbolic term tons -- tons of phone calls, tons of people, tons of objections.
Even the everyday people I run into day after day use exaggeration in their speech more often than one would imagine.
Here are some examples:
I’ve told you a million times
I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
I have a million things to do.
I had a ton of homework.
He's as skinny as a toothpick.
They ran like greased lightning.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
He's older than the hills.
I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
I have a million things to do.
I had a ton of homework.
He's as skinny as a toothpick.
They ran like greased lightning.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
He's older than the hills.
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WORD FOR TODAY
hyperbole [hy-PUHR-buhl-ee]
noun
- obvious and intentional exaggeration.
- an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”
Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.
Hyperboles are exaggerations to create emphasis or effect. As a literary device, hyperbole is often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. An example of hyperbole is: "The bag weighed a ton." Hyperbole makes the point that the bag was very heavy, though it probably doesn't actually weigh a ton.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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HISTORICAL CLIP
On March 4, 1966, the John Lennon comment "We're more popular than Jesus." first appeared in the London Evening Standard. In England, no one took much notice, perhaps because of a fundamental difference in religious outlook between Britain and America. But whatever the reason, it was only after the American press got hold of his words some five months later that the John Lennon comment erupted into a scandal that brought a semi-official end to the giddy phenomenon known as Beatlemania.
In their original context, Lennon's remarks were clearly meant not as a boast, but as a sardonic commentary on the waning importance of religion. "Christianity will go," Lennon said. "It will vanish and shrink....We're more popular than Jesus now."
A handful of Bible Belt disc jockeys took over, declaring Lennon's remarks blasphemous and vowing an "eternal" ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future.
"When they started burning our records... that was a real shock," said John Lennon years later. "I couldn't go away knowing I'd created another little piece of hate in the world. So I apologized."
At a press conference in Chicago, John explained: "I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I'm sorry I said it, really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. From what I've read, or observed, Christianity just seems to be shrinking, to be losing contact."
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Mark Twain, in Roughing It wrote:
“The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.
The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life.”
The above piece has nothing to do with anything else in today's entry. Not overtly, anyway. But I liked it when I read it and felt like including it. And this is my blog so I can do what I want to do with it.
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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Born Mar. 4, 1958
Age: 54 years old
Age: 54 years old
Patricia Helen Heaton is an American actress and producer. She is best known for portraying Debra Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 to 2005, for which she won two Emmy Awards. Since September 2009, she has starred as Frances "Frankie" Heck on the ABC sitcom The Middle.
Born Mar. 4, 1954
Age: 58 years old
Age: 58 years old
Adrian George Zmed is an American television personality and film actor noted for the roles of "Johnny Nogerelli" in Grease 2 and "Officer Vince Romano" in the T.J. Hooker television series.
Born Mar. 4, 1938
Age: 74 years old
Age: 74 years old
Paula Prentiss is an American actress well known for her film roles in Where the Boys Are, Man's Favorite Sport?, The Stepford Wives, What's New Pussycat?, The Black Marble, and The Parallax View and her starring role in the television situation comedy He and She.
Born March 4, 1888
Died March 31, 1931
Died March 31, 1931
Knute Kenneth Rockne was an American football player and coach, both at the University of Notre Dame. He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." A Norwegian American, he was educated as a chemist at the University of Notre Dame. He popularized the forward pass and made Notre Dame a major factor in collegiate football.
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Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.
--Eliza Cook
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