The Ballad of East and West
The recent imbroglio about NBA referee Tim Donaghy led to me reading another classic example of a frustrating yet common tendency of journalists (and others): using literary phrases to mean exactly the opposite of what they mean in the original. Here we have from J.A. Adande:
If any fan base is predisposed to believing games could be fixed, that an official with dubious motives could manipulate the outcome, it's the NBA's. There have been too many questionable calls over the years, too many swallowed whistles at critical times, mixed with too few repercussions from the league offices.
So instead of, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" we had, "I knew it."
The fuller quote from Casablanca is of course more telling:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
Captain Renault: [aloud] Everybody out at once!
The worse thing is that there are perfectly appropriate ways to use the quote, just not the way that Mr. Adande did. If the story were written about the NFL, which publishes lines more enthusiastically and tailors its frequent injury reports to gamblers' needs so well, then the analogy would fit quite perfectly, considering how much of the NFL's popularity (and revenues) are related to gambling.
The sportswriting trade does seem full of those who wish to show that they are professionals with real writing skills; a similar sort of envy comes around with the occasional puerile attempt at inserting political analysis or commentary of popular events in sports stories or columns. Not everyone can pull off Bill Simmons's style, and even he grows wearisome. However, the problem is certainly not confined to sportswriters endeavoring to demonstrate their literary chops.
One of the most commonly abuses is quoting "Good fences make good neighbors," and attributing the quote and the sentiment therein to Robert Frost. The proverb probably predates his Mending Wall from 1914, but in the poem it is used ironically. (Or perhaps not; the narrator clearly has little sympathy with the saying, used by his neighbor, but Frost himself admitted that perhaps both men were him. One can deepen the irony by arguing that the narrator sets up his own walls, just as his neighbor, or argue that despite (or because?) both do that such walls are necessary. It is a nice poem.)
However, I believe the most common to be the first line from Ruyard Kipling's poem The Ballad of East and West. "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," they say, commenting while linking, e.g., to articles brought to us by the Mainnichi Shinbun's WaiWai. Yet the full introductory stanza, repeated at the end of the poem, is:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat,
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
Of course, this is a problem with irony, or with selective quotation. Context is important.
If any fan base is predisposed to believing games could be fixed, that an official with dubious motives could manipulate the outcome, it's the NBA's. There have been too many questionable calls over the years, too many swallowed whistles at critical times, mixed with too few repercussions from the league offices.
So instead of, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" we had, "I knew it."
The fuller quote from Casablanca is of course more telling:
Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds?
Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.
Captain Renault: [aloud] Everybody out at once!
The worse thing is that there are perfectly appropriate ways to use the quote, just not the way that Mr. Adande did. If the story were written about the NFL, which publishes lines more enthusiastically and tailors its frequent injury reports to gamblers' needs so well, then the analogy would fit quite perfectly, considering how much of the NFL's popularity (and revenues) are related to gambling.
The sportswriting trade does seem full of those who wish to show that they are professionals with real writing skills; a similar sort of envy comes around with the occasional puerile attempt at inserting political analysis or commentary of popular events in sports stories or columns. Not everyone can pull off Bill Simmons's style, and even he grows wearisome. However, the problem is certainly not confined to sportswriters endeavoring to demonstrate their literary chops.
One of the most commonly abuses is quoting "Good fences make good neighbors," and attributing the quote and the sentiment therein to Robert Frost. The proverb probably predates his Mending Wall from 1914, but in the poem it is used ironically. (Or perhaps not; the narrator clearly has little sympathy with the saying, used by his neighbor, but Frost himself admitted that perhaps both men were him. One can deepen the irony by arguing that the narrator sets up his own walls, just as his neighbor, or argue that despite (or because?) both do that such walls are necessary. It is a nice poem.)
However, I believe the most common to be the first line from Ruyard Kipling's poem The Ballad of East and West. "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," they say, commenting while linking, e.g., to articles brought to us by the Mainnichi Shinbun's WaiWai. Yet the full introductory stanza, repeated at the end of the poem, is:
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat,
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
Of course, this is a problem with irony, or with selective quotation. Context is important.