Monday, October 11, 2010

FROM THE ALOTT5MA LINGUISTICS DESK: If you're a sports journalist, you can't just fling around adjectives willy-nilly like a fun-loving gunslinger. Accuracy matters. So let's be clear:
  • An "inappropriate" picture would be if Brett Favre had sent images of a vacation spot to which he wanted to take someone who wasn't interested in traveling with him. 
  • A "racy" picture would involve Brett Favre clad in a bathrobe or wrapped in a towel with an insinuating grin on his face.
Kudos, then, to the journalists who properly called them "graphic" pictures, "explicit" pictures or, in the case of Orlando Sentinel, "pornographic" pictures.  Because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes it's a middle-aged dude's penis that no one wanted to see.