The “M Word” Is BAD!!!!!

Occasionally, when you write at an awesome place like I do here at Red State you get to opine about a subject you know a lot about or a person you know well. Let me tell you, I hit the jackpot here!!!

As was reported in various places last week, including here at Red State, Brooke Baldwin from CNN was aghast that anyone would consider saying mob behavior was in actuality being performed by a…….mob.

Matt Lewis from the Daily Beast had the unlucky fortune to actually know the meaning of the word and use it correctly in a sentence on Brooke’s show last week.

I have had the pleasure of being the producer of Matt’s long-running podcast Matt Lewis And The News for over 5 years. I have had countless conversations with him and heard hundreds of interviews of people on his show and know the man takes his craft seriously. He knows how to correctly use words, so this whole incident of being hushed on T.V. was amusing, to say the least, on the redefinition of terms front.

I thought we had moved on.

Nope.

On Steven Colbert’s show, Brooke doubled down when the host brought this up saying that she was not going to allow “Talking Points” to be used on her show. Matt did not agree.

With all due respect, I don’t do ‘talking points.’ https://t.co/m9gZgDrlFW

— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) October 17, 2018

Talking Points? You can say a lot about Matt but he has never been accused of being a talking point reader and that is pretty unique in Washington D.C.

The actual exchange between Colbert and Baldwin is interesting via Mediate

To Colbert, Baldwin claimed she didn’t want to police language, but was merely doing her job “irking” both sides.

“Listen, like, I don’t want to be the word police, and that was not my intention,” said Baldwin. “But I also believe in calling out talking points? And to hear him bring that up, I had to, I had to say something and, honestly, at the end of my day— like I’m sure you check your Twitter, too— and if I have irked the left and the right, then I’ve done my job.”

Thankfully, Brooke is not the word police because she missed by a country mile what was being said on her and show and, as actually brought up in the Mediate piece, she was the first person to mention the word M-O-B, not Matt.

Lewis was spot on in his analysis of angry people screaming and yelling, kicking at walls and doors when they damn well know better. That is an M-O-B. Maybe we could negotiate the term down to M-O-B Mentality to make the nonword wanna be police agree.

Using words correctly is not a throwaway talking point to those who write and think for a living, it is what they do. We should have more people doing that and less talking point readers looking at teleprompters to let them know what they think and trying to influence how we do.

In case you missed my other post on a different subject Cherokee Nation To Elizabeth Warren…CUT IT OUT Paleface and my podcast Bourbon On The Rocks check it out and follow me on the twitters at IRISHDUKE2