Lil White Lies: How to Blow Up Blowing It (!)

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I’ve called Bryan White the Word Warden…..I’ve joked about his always having to have “more cowbell”—I’ve written about his “monolithic certitude”—but this one really takes the cake. Well, it just keeps confirming everything, in one orgy of narcissistic, unbending, not-so sublime bloviations.  I’m sure Bryan's aware of what happens when someone submits posts on Facebook; he’s “sharing” them.

Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsiblities: ...

This Statement of Rights and Responsibilities ("Statement") derives from the Facebook Principles, and governs our relationship with users and others who interact with Facebook. By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement.  ...

Sharing Your Content and Information

...

2.  When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that you are allowing everyone, including people off of Facebook, to access and use that information, and to associate it with you (i.e., your name and profile picture).

When writing opinion letters to the editor of a newspaper in anticipation of their possibly being published, I assume that most all of them will tell you that your letter becomes its property and “may be edited”—

All submissions become the property of The Flint Journal; submissions may be edited and may be published or otherwise re-used in any medium.

So recently PolitiFact issued one of its occasional “mailbag” pieces, publishing comments from its Facebook fans and e-mailers, and entitled it “PolitiFact blew it again!” in what appeared to be a partial quote of a Facebook comment posted by Bryan. Of course, when he saw this he immediately went ape sh*t crazy over the fact that PolitiFact had “grafted an exclamation point on the end.”

His Sublime Bloviations post of November 19 tried to make the (federal) case that PolitiFact had “breach[ed]…the principles of objective journalism”…oh no, even worse, they committed a “[notable] transgression.” PolitiFact “failed” at being objective because it made Bryan look like a “unhinged loon” when he was actually explaining in a “non-yelling, matter of fact” manner (in that particular comment), how, in economics, Ponzi schemes did not have a fraudulent element.

Well, send the word police over right now to bring Angie Drobnic Nolan in for questioning on suspicion of “sinister non-objective intent with minor incompetence.” How dare she put that exclamation point on the end to SO greatly change the meaning. What a sacrilege!

How often do people say “you blew it” or “you blew it again,” exclamation point or not? Is it a common phrase, something repeated often? In a title like this, what would be the appropriate punctuation? Would it look better with a period? Probably not.

So, does Bryan quote people and add exclamation points?  Yes, he does (recently):

Not just an exclamation point, but a SMILEY FACE!

Does lifting Jon Lovitz' infamous catch phrase use the exclamation point correctly?  Does it change the meaning....is Bryan yelling here?  On Wikipedia, an exclamation point is inserted after the Yeah instead of a comma as Bryan has done.  So is Wikipedia yelling "Yeah"?

But most of all, does the use of an exclamation point truly make it non-objective, or is this just another one of Bryan’s “pointless” (pardon the pun) subjective opinions, stated as if we were all in court and he was our prosecutor, and his so-called facts were the only ones that counted?

Advice to PolitiFact:  Next time, just for giggles, put a hundred exclamation points after anything you quote from Bryan White.  And I'm seriously considering another category on this blog, called "Nano Nano" or "Oh man Oh Nano" or "Nano Moments" (maybe my next poll?) since this is just another "nano" size thing Bryan is trying to make a federal case of.