Over at Secret Society of List Addicts, some traditional stuff this dude can’t imagine rocking at her wedding.
NTKOG #189: The kind of self-absorbed nitpicker who, when she has a problem with a huge corporation or mega-famous dude, fires off a red-hot letter of critique.
I am: told this is how Ralph Nader got his start.
I am not: one of those people who thinks that her opinion matters. Which is probably fair, considering I’m generally concerned with issues that no one in their right mind pays attention to.
The Scene: The writers room of my favorite show, House, where week after week the writers team up to craft one of the most compelling and swoon-worthy intellectual male leads in cultural memory. With one small problem. A few times a season, the esteemed Dr. House abuses the phrase, “begs the question,” using it to mean simply, “raises the question.” This never fails to raise my blood pressure for reasons that — look, if you get ‘em, you get ‘em, and if you don’t, you’re probably a happier person than I.
Nutshell: “begging the question” is a logical fallacy in which a statement is assumed to be true with no evidence other than the claim itself. Like: “Getting touchy about ‘begs the question’ is annoying because it irritates the frig out of people.” For more information, you can check out this awesome website dedicated to ending BTQ abuse.
I'd like to imagine this picture is Greg House giving a big middle finger to the writers who put inaccurate words in his mouth.
Although in most universes, I would be content merely to stew over this lexical abuse, hey, I’m not that kind of girl. Which is why, in a few days, Producer/Writer David Shore’s assistant can look forward to opening, skimming, and throwing away this little missive:
Mr. David Shore
Executive producer, “House”
Twentieth Century Fox Television
10201 W. Pico Blvd.; Bld. 89, Rm. 230
Los Angeles 90035Re: Begging the question on “House, MD”
Dear Mr. Shore:
I am a passionate fan of your show, “House, MD.” You and your team of writers have created, in Gregory House, one of the most enduring characters in modern entertainment, and I admire your creativity and ongoing brilliance more than words can say.
That said, I worry that the writers might be doing the esteemed Dr. House one small disservice. During several episodes, Dr. House has used the phrase “begs the question” to mean “raises the question.” As you are a lawyer yourself, I’m sure you can appreciate the problem with the construction: begging the question is a specific type of logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself. Although it is often used as such, the phrase is not synonymous with the more literal “raise the question”.
I apologize for the presumption of writing a letter over so small a point, but the phase “begs the question” is misused so much in our society that its incorrect usage has started to overshadow its proper meaning. When popular television programming echoes these common mistakes, we run the risk of permanently losing the real meaning of phrases to faddish misunderstandings.
It also seems unlikely to me that a character as educated as Dr. House would frequently err with the use of a phrase that is the bugaboo of over-educated logic fans the world round. And even if he had once made this error, surely a long relationship with a constitutional lawyer would have cured him!
I applaud “House, MD” as one of the most intellectual and quick-witted shows currently on air, and look forward to many future seasons of your fantastic program.
Respectfully,
[TKOG]
The Verdict: Well hoo-ah, boys, that’ll show ‘em! Seriously, is there any feeling quite as American as being the kind of entitled crackpot who sends dudes a letter of complaint over a non-issue? And yet. And yet. Writing it felt really good. Makes me want to spend some time contemplating political issues I feel strongly about and bang out a little correspondence to an elected representative, whose job it actually is to read my crazy letters.
Do you guys ever send letters to dudes? Wish you did? Come on, air some grievances.
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
The timing of this post for me is amazing. For 44 years, not one letter. However, after reading an article published in More magazine about one woman’s (5’10″, 145lbs) experience at the Biggest Loser Ranch in Utah, I want to know their reason for irresponsible publishing.
More was published for women over 40, a magazine that has insight into issues that face women over 20 or 30 so why would they publish a story about a skinny person at a ranch where morbidly obese people go not to feel discriminated.
Ugh….errghhhh…..
There is much more to this rant.
Btw, love your letter.
Awesome. This is one of my HUGE pet peeves. (Up there with “If I would have…”. NO! It’s “If I HAD, then I would have…UGH.)
And no one ever uses begs the question correctly. It needs to be dropped.
Oh I do! Often you can get free stuff out of it too. I’ve written Pizza Hut about their amazing food but crappy restaurants, Dominos for bashing Papa Johns in a commercial, Healthy Choice for difficult to open packaging, Honey Bunches of Oats for being amazing, and Subway asking that they put in a drive thru.
Thanks for striking a blow on behalf of all us OCD folks who cringe when even people as smart as House beg FOR a question instead of begging the question.
Now you’ve raised the question, it bugs the h*ll out of me when people say things like “the bugs literally decimated half my crops”. What they are saying by saying that is that the bugs destroyed 5% (1 20th part) of their crops, not, as they fondly imagine, half their crops.
Decimation was a diciplinary process in the ancient Roman armies, where 1 man in every 10 was executed, usually by his comrades.
Totally feel that, although I’d say the problem in that example is more with the misuse of “literally” (which, man, seriously irks me) than the abuse of decimated. Although I might just be defending my own habit of using “decimate” impressionistically, even though I know its literal meaning. But its literal meaning has almost no application these days, and it’s too powerful-sounding a word to lose!
It’s both points for me; both the misuse of “literally”, and that they clearly don’t know the meaning of decimated! I’ll admit to mis-using it as a synonym for destroyed because it sounds cool, but no way would I say “literally decimated” unless I was trying to make a 10% loss sound like lots more!
Didn’t know the history of that word
Thanks :)
Any time; I am a veritable mine of useless data and trivia! The sort of person you want to have on your team in general knowledge quizzes.
Have you read “World War Z”? Something similar happens to them as a measure of discipline.
Not yet, but I’ll take any recommendations of stuff I’ve not read from a TKOG poster as at least time to fire a browser window at Amazon.
i remember as an philosophy undergraduate, misusing “begs the question” would turn every professor into a raging monster
“Actually”. Possibly the most overused word today. Bobby Flay is one of the biggest offenders.
“I’m actually going to put the peppers into the pot”
how about, “I’m going to put the peppers into the pot”
“We’re going to the movies actually”
“He’s a friend of mine actually”
and on and on and on and on
Dude. I use “Begs the Question” wrong all the time and didn’t even know it! I probably use lots of phrases wrong.. but I’m not the world’s best doctor on tv so I’m assuming that no one cares. I’m glad you told them though!
I… I think I love you for this.
i just learned something new! i love house, but didn’t know that phrase had such connotations. when something bugs me or makes me happy, i definitely write letters to those of authority. i think it is so important to voice our dismay or encouragement. xo!
You have been very polite in your “hot-red” letter, well done!
I’ve never written letters to complain… don’t know why, maybe I simply told myself “whatever”!
Uhm, I am obsessed with writing letters. I love complaining. Eventually getting something back in the mail, too, is so fun. I complained about PF Changs once, and got a 40 dollar giftcard in the mail. Maybe you’re barking up the wrong tree with this letter? Or maybe they’ll mail you House himself..
DUDE! Don’t toy with my fragile, Hugh-Laurie-fawning heart! Oooh, but what if they sent me a glossy headshot of the divine Mr. Laurie?!
I am no joke sitting here at my desk swooning a little bit. Like, I can feel myself blushing. Just from thinking about Hugh Laurie. Gosh.
My biggest pet peeve is when people use “who” and “whom” incorrectly, as well as “you’re” and “your” or ANYONE who uses apostrophes incorrectly. Seriously. It’s not that hard (see what I did there?). If you have any artistic talent in you, I think you should team up with this guy: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
Oh man, I love that comic! A++ link!
When I was 19, I decided to force myself to use who/whom correctly all the time. And just to madden dudes who care about that sort of thing, I also decided to split “whom” from prepositional phrases so I could keep them ending sentences with. This leads to much hilariously fractured grammar along the lines of : “Did you hear whom he’s going to the mall with?!” I find this very amusing.
Anyway, one of the great tragedies of my life (and current job) is that many people find scathingly correct grammar off-putting at best and downright hostile at worst. All day at work, I force myself to say “who” instead of “whom” and “good” instead of “well”. Oh the atrocities we commit just to fit in the norm.
Anyway, while we’re talking grammatical annoyances: I can’t stand it when people misuse “myself”! Which is about seven times as often as people properly use “myself”. I always want to whisper to people, “Pssssst! Myself is almost never the word you mean!”
NEVER lower yourself!! That’s how you lose your grammar (or how society overall loses it!) I never let myself use improper grammar on purpose (sometimes it slips out, though). Even when texting. I also hate it when people use “he/she” and “him/her” along with “me/myself” wrong. It should be simple, but it’s not.
If you liked that comic, you’ll love this one: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon I LOVE The Oatmeal!
I tried to comment simply “I <3 ;s" but it was "too short," so I'll spell it out: I love semicolons. That's a great comic about them. I think that illustrator did the scathingly apt review of Twilight too.
The worst, though, is people saying whom when they mean who. It’s like they’re trying to be grammatical but just not.
As Winston Churchill (yes that one) once wrote on a cabinet briefing paper, on finding that it contained a split infinitive, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put!”
Great link.
I was not a great student (just look how I write), So I love reading NTKOG for my entertainment and education!!
Timely! I was just thinking about how I’m not usually the complaint-letter sort, but the other week, the dude at Trader Joe’s told me that he couldn’t sell me a bottle of Pinot Gris with only a passport as identification. Did I have a driver’s license? No, I didn’t, I don’t drive. He called his manager over, who confirmed that indeed, it is store policy (in Jersey; I’ve never had a problem in New York) to refuse to accept my perfectly valid government-issued ID, the kind that federal authorities rely on to regulate international travel as sufficient enough proof of my age (26) to sell me an $8 bottle of white wine.
So, yes…I’m thinking I might write a letter.
Holy frig! It’s a passport! You can’t fake one of those puppies! That’s ludicrous.
That kind of reminds me of the time I was in an airport, buying a $5 bag of gummy worms (god bless capitalism) and the man behind the counter refused to sell it to me because my signature had rubbed off the back of my debit card. When I stared incredulously, he said: “It doesn’t have your signature! I have no proof that you are who you say you are.”
Uh, dude. We’re in an airport. I have every form of photo ID known to man on my person at this very moment. Jerk-off.
Actually, you can fake passports..
This is true; it’s harder to fake the latest biometric and/or RFID ones for passport control/Immigration Dept purposes, but most places don’t have the specialist kit to read those and it’s not hard at all to fake them if you’re just relying on photo and date of birth.
One of my professors in college was a former cop, so he would carry around his cop id badge (complete with shield and thumbprint). One time he was at the airport and they wouldn’t accept it as a valid form of id. He went back and conducted an experiment on them. He contacted some gangbangers he knew from his cop days and got a fake id and passed through 3 security checkpoints at the same airport. Security these days.
Which proves what I have always thought about airport “security”; it is there more to fool the ignorant than to actually detect terrorists, drugs couriers and the like.
Get a state id? They look the same as a driver’s license and they’re the same size so you won’t have to carry around a larger-than-wallet-sized passport.
That’s an absurd policy. Was this a Trader Joe’s in Arizona?
Dear, you are a BRAT. Of course you are ALWAYS correct, but never-the-less do you really care what Dr. House says? Producers are used to intellectual snits–not that you are dear, but you know what I mean. And, I’m sure that Mr. Shore is very bright himself. Perhaps he knew the wording in the script was incorrect, but thought he had better choose his battles carefully with his director and writers. On the other hand, I do wish the incurable but soon to be curable disease did not manifest itself at exactly 25 minutes past the hour in each House episode. P.S. Is this not a repeat topic of sorts? Feel free to correct my grammar as I only attended a public university.
Dude! Loved the letter!
Except I think you used the word ‘phase’ instead of ‘phrase’ by accident in the 3rd paragraph… I only picked it up because whenever I pull someone up about grammar I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS make a mistake. And then I feel like a dick.
But mad props for actually sending a letter of complaint. I hope they pay attention!
I wrote a couple letters to the newspaper when I was younger because articles in the entertainment section annoyed me. They poorly reviewed an Interpol concert that I attended and loved, and then they named an album incorrectly when putting it on a “best of” list, which is ironic. They actually got published, too, so it felt like I accomplished something.
And on the topic of “literally,” I laughed so hard in 500 Days of Summer during this dialogue:
Tom: She took a giant shit on my face. Literally.
Alison: Literally?
Tom: Well, no, not literally. That’s disgusting.
Sorry to post so much but I was rewatching an old Proj Runway and TIM GUNN said “This begs the question.” No! Tim! How could you. I’d expect this from my other style guru Ms. Claudia Kishi, but not you!
Personal pet peeves include “totally” or “partially” destroyed (kinda like the whole decimated discussion above), and using the word millennium when discussing the change from 1999 to 2000. Confusing over/under and more than/less than also set my teeth on edge.
When I was watching the latest episode of House in which he uses BTQ incorrectly, I thought of you. Apparently, so did you, and you thought: “write an awesome letter, me,” and did. Well done.
It’s unfortunate because, while the writers on House are clearly smart, they’re not as smart as they portray House to be. Naturally, some things are going to slip through the cracks, and even if no one reads the letter, I’m glad they got a fair warning.
I’ll admit to ignorance on the beg the question issue. But I am also extremely picky about other little things. I have never seen House (mostly because if I start watching it, I’m sure I’ll like it, and that’s one more thing to watch), but I think your letter is awesome. Brava.