The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
NOTE: The excerpt below is from the 1/12/00 BOTW archives.
Great Moments in Higher Education
From a San Francisco Chronicle article on Leon Panetta’s nomination as director of central intelligence:
“Leon certainly has management and organizational experience up the wazoo, and clearly he knows how to run an organization,” said Barbara O’Connor, professor of political communication at Cal State Sacramento. But Feinstein is “chair of the committee . . . the rules are the rules. You have to get along with the senior elected officials of your own party, and she’s one. And they require face time. Had they briefed her adequately . . . she wouldn’t have been surprised,” she said.
“Up the wazoo”? “The rules are the rules”? “Face time”? If professors of political communication routinely employ vulgarisms, tautologies and clichés, we can only imagine how bad tomorrow’s practitioners will be at it.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
