Not judging anything

Last night The Daily Show and The Colbert Report teamed up for a live election night special: Indecision 2008: America's Choice (see it here on Hulu).

However, at the beginning Stephen Colbert thought "America's Choice" was too weak, and came up with his own title for it:


And although the ridiculous stream of words flowed quickly across the screen, I noticed something immediately that distracted me.
"Judgement Day."

In case it doesn't jump out to you, in American English it's generally considered correct to spell it "judgment"--dropping the "e" off of "judge" before appending the "ment" to it. (The British still spell it with the middle "e," but I doubt Colbert's graphics people would be paying intentional tribute that, even though they are our allies now. Without shaking off their empirical shackles a couple centuries ago, we wouldn't be having the event that inspired the special, so it seems inappropriate given the nature of the show.)

But my point is not to vilify a simple lack of running a spell check (and it's likely that the graphics program used lacks spell checking capability). My point, as always, is that my brain cannot stop noticing. And that detracts from my enjoyment in ways that people with (shall we say) a less discerning mindset presumably do not experience; they laugh at the joke without pause.

And most important: Because they didn't notice in the first place, they feel no compulsion to note it on their blogs.

Lucky bastards.

So, if someone could please sneak up on me and hit me in the back of the head with a blunt object--just enough to knock this awareness of how words are spelled, not enough to make me seem like a good Republican vice presidential nominee or someone who'd vote for Proposition 8--I'd appreciate it. (Please don't let me hear you coming, or else I'll almost certainly flinch and that might ruin everything, leaving me with only a concussion and full cognition.) I mean, I'd like to still be able to understand the rest of The Daily Show, without having my viewing options reduced to merely Fox & Friends.

After that, I'll be able to watch TV and read the internet, all without being encumbered with useless knowledge regarding the arbitrary quirks of how our language has been tweaked by whoever* the hell it is that decides how words are supposed to be spelled (even if the country from which that language originated still spells them a different way) and the distracting consequences of that knowledge, which is my right as an American.

(If you could, please hum a few bars of "God Bless America" to yourself to help accentuate that last paragraph. Thanks.)

I'd say maybe it's just me, but that's stupid; of course it's just me. That's my point. I'm tired of it being just me.

No matter what the election results might imply, elitism is the bailiwick of the unhappy. And I'm willing to give a bit of happiness a try.

Someone can knock me slightly senseless. We can do this.

Yes we can.

~

Let's make it simple: In the Thoughts on This section below, please just indicate on a scale of 1 - 10 how much of an asshole I am.

~

* Addendum on November 8, 2008:
An astute reader noted in the Thoughts on This that in the sentence indicated with the asterisk above the term "whomever" should have been used. And that's true. At least I think so. I have used "whomever" in all these posts before; clearly on more than one occasion I have exhibited some awareness of the distinction.

However, now that I think about it, I think that in the moment I was typing that line I was overcome by the spirit of Colbert. And by that I mean I unconsciously adapted "truthiness" for grammatical purposes, and went with what felt right.

For that reason, I shall leave it as is, with apologies to those who are aware of the rules of usage for "whomever" and come across it. Undoubtedly that will cause them to be distracted by it in much the same way I was distracted when watching the show. Therefore, I recommend any such readers rate me high on the asshole scale in the Thoughts on This.

More important than that: This self-revelation about why I did what I did granted me insight into what happened on the show. When those who prepared the graphic in question included "judgement" it wasn't so much that they sought to acknowledge any variation in how it can be spelled. They felt that the "e" was the way to go, and they went with it.

That doesn't change whether the common spelling in American English is "judgment"--and in the Blogger editor it flags the alternate "judgement" as misspelled, as is also the case with the Microsoft Office dictionary for "English (U.S.)" so I'm having to ignore those little red underlines as I type this--nor does it alter my reaction to seeing that spelling on an American TV show, but it does explain how the graphic was completely consistent with the Colbert philosophy.

With any luck, continued viewing of his program will have the same mental effect as the blow to the head mentioned in the original post. I can only hope.

And now is a time for hope.

(Let's continue to not dwell on this starting sentences with conjunctions I've been doing rampantly, okay?)