Nobody Asked Me, But …

Once again, I thank the late and authentically great New York sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, who from time to time, wrote a column filled with witty and random one-liners he called, "Nobody Asked Me, But ..."

For the past 30 years, Michigan's Lake Superior State University has been publishing its annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and Uselessness.

This year's candidates for retirement included the much overused "awesome" and the press trick of merging celebrity couples' two individual names into one fabricated word. Example: Mr. and Mrs. Tom (Katie Holmes) Cruise become "TomKat."

My nominees for eviction would start with network sportscasters and their addiction to the following: "At the end of the day ... they came to play." Why else would they come? And, "bottom line," as in, "Bottom-line, the team that makes fewer mistakes today will win."

Others I would banish are the tired and meaningless, "Have a good one," along with the pompous phrase, "That being said ..."

There are no degrees of uniqueness. Something is either unique or it isn't. So nothing and nobody can be "totally" or "completely" unique. Antisocial or rude behavior is never explained by the cliched rationalization that this uncivil individual "has issues."

Unless George W. Bush can somehow turn things around and win the confidence of Republicans as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill in his Iraq policy, it's almost inevitable that in short order he will have the worst relations with them of any Southern president since Jefferson Davis.

Watching all the ambition on display in Washington following the last election, as self-important public officials endlessly maneuver for more power and prestige, reminds me of the story about President Lincoln and the most relentlessly opportunistic job-seeker of his era.

Late one night, the opportunist knocked on the White House door barely hours after the collector of revenue of the port of Baltimore had unexpectedly died, leaving the lucrative post vacant. He asked Mr. Lincoln directly, "Can I take his place?" to which Honest Abe answered, "If it's OK with the undertaker, it's OK with me."

Alice McDermott, in her pitch-perfect novel, "After This," makes you grateful that in the 15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press.

Larry King may still be the franchise at CNN, but in the important matter of reviewing movies, he has never met a film he did not like and that was not Oscar material. When Larry called 2006's No. 1 disaster film, the fatally flawed remake of Robert Penn Warrren's "All the King's Men," "A masterpiece," he truly gave a new meaning to the term "undeserved hype."

My favorite Washington, D.C., TV news anchorman is ABC's Gordon Peterson, who one night when required to give one more meaningless, prime-time promo for the station's late-night newscast read it this way: "Astronauts back on the moon, fire in Bethesda, Redskins in trouble," before adding on his own, "Verbs at 11:00."

As one of Washington's political fund-raisers observed after the 2006 election, "Change is good ... but large bills are better."

Almost hourly, Arizona Sen. John McCain is accused by some morally superior pressie or pol of trimming or changing or backpedaling. Well, tell me what other 2008 presidential candidate when asked by an Iowa voter what his priorities would be would answer, as McCain did: "I would make sure we don't torture prisoners. I would close Guantanamo Bay."

Does that noisy duck in the insurance company TV spot drive you crazy, too?

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS