Dumbing Down

For many years now I've had a girl-crush on Robin Meade from CNN. Sure, my affection for her dimmed a bit after I found out how much she likes country music, but I continue to watch her every morning - or at least until the kid gets up and I'm forced to turn on Noggin. Now, though, Headline News is calling itself HLN and I'm finding myself feeling awfully irritated about it. Why, Robin, why?

Years ago, I pointed out to my husband, who persists in calling a touchdown a "TD," that touchdown and TD both have two syllables. Hence, it takes the same amount of time to say it either way. Same story with HLN and Headline News. I just hate shortcuts that aren't shortcuts. When someone tries to get me to take a driving "shortcut" to a destination, my standard response is, "Do I have to make more than three turns? Because if I do, it's not a shortcut."

Not long ago, I was watching one of my favorite programs, "DogTown" on the National Geographic channel, and made another discovery. They are now calling it "NatGeoTV." That's right, we're too busy to say "National Geographic." I keep picturing some board meeting at National Geographic headquarters where an executive pipes up with, "Listen, these kids with their texting and their iPods - they don't have time for all those syllables!"

Finally, I was putting some leftovers in the "fridgelator" and noticed that my husband left an opened can of Mountain Dew on the top shelf. Only, the can doesn't bear the words "Mountain Dew" on the label. Nay, it says "MTN DEW."

I pushed the can aside and noticed that my jaw had tightened. Maybe it is the English major in me that is so opposed to this dumbing down, this abbreviating everything to death. At work, I receive instant messages from co-workers that say things like "thx" and "pls." "Thanks for not wasting all those vowels on me!" I often write back, only half joking. I love language. I receive Merriam-Webster's "Word of the Day" in my in-box daily and read it with glee. Yes, I am the sort who trots out words like "apothecary" instead of "drugstore" because really - which is more fun to say? I download NPR's "A Way With Words" and listen to it faithfully every week. It makes me happy to know that there are other people out there who wince when someone says, "Drive careful."

That is not to say my grammar is perfect. I still remember Mrs. Bathgate yelling at me when I struggled with sentence diagramming in ninth grade GT English class. She threatened to move me to - gasp! - regular English if I didn't get my act together. So, while you won't hear me using "irregardless" and pretending it's a word, I don't claim to be an expert in the language either. I guess I'm just not willing to throw in the towel (and the vowels), nor to stop trying to preserve the integrity of the language I love.

Comedian Brian Regan has a very funny bit about Pop Tarts. He notes that a box of Pop Tarts contains both microwave and toaster directions. He sagely observes that, "if you don't have time to toast your Pop Tart, you might want to loosen up your schedule a little bit." Similarly, if you don't have time to type "please" with all of its intended letters intact . . .