Trial proves Michael Jackson is no Shakespeare, but both dabbled in the double negative

Michael Jackson, whose best-selling Thriller album employs lyrics with a dubious double negative, finds himself in good company with William Shakespeare, who used the same technique in his plays.

He may have been the King of Pop and a popular lyricist, but entertainer Michael Jackson was no Shakespeare in everyday speech.

In trial evidence yesterday, the prosecution against physician Conrad Murray played an audio tape of a drug-dazed Michael Jackson slurring a double negative, a grammatical faux pas.

If you can make sense of the mumbling without a transcription, you may hear Jackson saying slowly, “When people leave this show, when people leave my show, I want them to say, ‘I’ve never seen nothing like this in my life. Go. Go. I’ve never seen nothing like this. Go. It’s amazing.’”

Murray, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter of the wildly popular singer, saw the tape used as prosecution evidence against him. Prosecutors claimed that Murray, as Jackson’s personal doctor, knew about Jackson’s drug problem and abetted the abuse.

Meanwhile Pretty Road Press is using the voice mail recording as evidence of Jackson’s infraction against Standard English. By employing a double negative – “I’ve never seen nothing like this in my life” – Jackson communicated the opposite of his intended meaning, as in, “Yes, I have seen something like this before.”

He should have said, “I have never seen anything like this in my life” or “I have seen nothing like this in my life.”

Inexperienced writers, amateurs writing memoirs, and Facebook status scribes make this mistake often. They would do well to remember that two negatives used together make a positive – almost like a mathematical equation.

Perhaps Jackson never saw a rerun of the 1960 television episode of Leave It to Beaver, wherein script writers cleverly inserted a grammar lesson on double negatives. House mom June Cleaver asks her elder son, “Wally, I wonder if you’d mind going to the supermarket for me?”

“Well, I guess I could. I’m not hardly doing anything,” Wally says.

Being the paragon of housekeeping and child rearing, June retorts, “Wally, you never use not and hardly together. Either you’re not doing anything, or you’re hardly doing anything.”

Then Wally admits, “Oh. I wasn’t sure, so I stuck ’em both in.”

The truth is that Wally and Michael Jackson are in good company. The playwright William Shakespeare is guilty of abutting two negatives in his sentences. However, in Shakespeare’s era contemporary English considered the double negative as an emphatic.  So in his dialogue for the Messaline castaway known as Viola in the Twelfth Night, Shakespeare boldly wrote, “Nor never none Shall mistress of it be, save I alone.”

That was around 1600. Today emphatic opposition to the double negative is espoused by all English language inspectors general, from H.L. Mencken in 1921 to the Grammar Girl as recent as 2009.

Some words considered “negative” disguise themselves, like the word hardly that confused Wally Cleaver. Similar chameleons include scarcely and barely, while the obvious negative words shout out their pessimism: not, none, nothing, nowhere, neither, nobody, and no one.

The word ain’t forms the foundation for some of the most infamous double negative constructions. Almost always its use is colloquial.  Though substandard English, ain’t proudly delivers 245 million Google hits.

Theodore Bernstein, who was assistant managing editor of the New York Times (when newspapering was journalism), wrote in his book The Careful Writer, “The writer who doesn’t know that ain’t is illiterate has no business writing. The word is not used, of course, in written language except when dialogue is being reproduced, and the writer’s ear will tell him how to use it when.”

Because ain’t represents common street language, the word finds its way into art and culture. That explains in good measure some of the 245 million Google references and You Tube tributes with a corresponding collection of double negatives.

Michael Jackson converted his street-speech double negatives to the lyrics for the best-selling tune Thriller, plopping in a double negative when he wrote, “There ain’t no second chance against the thing with forty eyes, girl.” There are 39,600 Thriller hits on You Tube, and, thus, thousands and thousands of double negatives trying to become Standard English.

On the You Tube website, you won’t have any trouble finding Hillary Clinton as presidential candidate quoting a double negative when she recites lyrics from the Rev. Dr. James Cleveland: “I don’t feel no ways tired. I’ve come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.”

We excuse the gospel singer Cleveland as well as Michael Jackson for their double negatives when, in the name of art, they reflect and comment upon the linguistic roots of their audiences. Cleveland and Jackson precede plenty of other recording artists who have employed the double negative, to wit, Ain’t No Sunshine, sung by Bill Withers, and Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, sung by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

Literature reflects the times and culture of when it is written, so it is impossible for writing not to manifest a few double negatives as dialogue and description.

But as writers we must know the difference between improper usage and descriptive reporting. Careful writers and speakers will never double up their negatives when they are writing serious prose.  So we will bless Michael Jackson for his Thriller lyrics, but indict him for his application of a double negative in the standard speech that constituted his phone message. Perhaps we can blame the anesthetic propofol for his lapse in judgment.

The guinea pig was touched by whom? A kindergarten lesson in passive voice

The guinea pig named Hot Fudge Sundae is a temptation to kindergarteners. (Photo by Pretty Road Press Syndicate, © 2011).

Hot Fudge Sundae is the name of a friendly two-pound guinea pig living in a kindergarten classroom. He flaunts vanilla, caramel, and fudge colors on his body and is tempting to touch.

He could be fondled to death by 30 five-year-olds if the teacher let these youngsters’ hands go free, so there are rules. Usually only the class’s daily helper gets to touch Hot Fudge Sundae, who is a living experiment in life science, a prop for young illustrators, and a prompt for writing instruction. Occasional exceptions to the touching rule are allowed when they are in the best interest of a budding mind.

One day the kindergarten teacher strategically placed Hot Fudge Sundae on a table. He modeled politely in his shallow bucket. Unaware of the pedagogy involved, children created their own rebus by writing the pronoun I, drawing an eye, and creating a portrait of Hot Fudge Sundae. Translation: “I see Hot Fudge Sundae.”

Julian, a thriving and rambunctious youngster, had barely committed his rebus to paper when he found himself captivated by Hot Fudge Sundae’s colorful charms. He touched the harmless rodent, who offered a purring sound back when his hair was ruffled.

The incident did not sit well with Regina, who is like the young version of Tina Fey described in the book Bossypants. Regina had to bring Julian’s alleged infraction to the attention of Mrs. Davidson, the teacher.

“Mrs. Davidson,” exclaimed Regina, “Julian is touching Hot Fudge Sundae.”

“OK,” the teacher said,” reminding Regina that the teacher was watching Julian and would take action if necessary.

“But, Mrs. Davidson, Julian is touching Hot Fudge Sundae,” Regina complained anew , but to no avail.

Rebuffed twice, Regina made a further appeal to the teacher’s aide and was reminded — in suitable polite kindergarten language — that she need not tattle on her classmate.

Exasperated by Julian’s blatant transgressions, Regina quickly calculated the odds of justice going in Julian’s favor and was forced to consider new tactics. Eyes open wide, she said, “Mrs. Davidson, Mrs. Davidson, Hot Fudge Sundae got touched.”

In that instant, five-year-old Regina earned membership in the Passive Voice Club, joining great Washington political figures who have adeptly shifted voice to avoid assigning blame. No longer was Julian culpable; touching became the controversy.

On this eventful day in kindergarten, mistakes were made, and Regina found a way to telegraph the blunder while making her teacher chuckle.

Who would have thought that a five-year-old could be so clever as to use her language to avoid being branded a “snitch?” But crafty she was, proving to politicians the value of hiding behind words and teaching writers that use of the passive voice leads to ambiguity.

President Richard Nixon and his press secretary Ron Ziegler practically registered a patent on passive voice in the 1970s. They were infamous for their passive “mistakes-were-made” explanation of Watergate.

 “A quick search of presidential statements shows that every recent U.S. president has used that [passive voice] phrase in one form or another to acknowledge errors in policy, judgment, or action,” according to CBS News, reporting on the statements of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales when he was under scrutiny for the firing of several United States attorneys.

President Ronald Reagan also uttered an infamous “mistakes-were-made” line, but, in fairness to context, he explicitly prefaced those words in his 1987 State of the Union Address by saying, “I took a risk with regard to our action in Iran. It did not work, and for that I assume full responsibility.”

Why are writers and speakers so quick to depend upon the passive voice?

“When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feeling of self-worth,” argue psychologists Carole Tavris and Elliott Aronson in their book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). “And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility. . . .”

For book writers and journalists, the passive voice is best employed as a rare and deliberate tactic to emphasize the predicate over the subject. However, the passive voice is not a tool to be spurned.

Linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum argues that the passive voice enjoys a legitimate role in writing. He delivers a heterodox rant upon the revered Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White, claiming the pair makes overly broad indictments of the passive voice’s role in English. Our take from Pullum is that we should use the passive voice appropriately and judiciously.

Mr. Pullum and Mr. Ziegler, no doubt, would have loved Regina’s construction because it genuinely delivered the manipulative effect she wanted: for her, the no-touching rule was sacrosanct.

Pretty Road Press nominates Regina to be the youngest member of the Passive Voice Hall of Fame.

 Editor’s Note: As in the classic television series Dragnet, the names in this kindergarten story have been changed to protect the innocent, including the intrepid Hot Fudge Sundae.

Surely a good tomato can be found somewhere, especially for a Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Hamburger

This tomato is too perfect to be served on a Carl's Jr. hamburger. Only poor quality tomatoes will be served on the Six Dollar Burger, according to a poorly drafted sign on the menu board.

If you bought a $6 hamburger from Carl’s Jr., congratulations on being in an exclusive club – the fraternity of customers who paid for the right to let a poor quality tomato sit atop their patty. If you paid for a lesser product, then you were spared from any inferior produce at all.

At least that’s what the yellow laminated sign told us: “Due to poor quality and limited availability, tomatoes will only be served on $6 Burgers.”

Those of us in the writing trade cringed at the pedestrian construction on the yellow sign blazoned on drive-through menu boards at Car's Jr.

You may be in the category of people who think there is nothing wrong with the yellow sign because you understood what the burger joint was trying to tell you: “Good tomatoes are in short supply, so were putting them only on our premium product.” But there are those of us in the writing trade who cringed at the pedestrian construction blazoned on drive-through menu boards.

“Poor quality” is trying to modify “tomato,” so obviously bad tomatoes are being put on our burgers.

The words on the sign are so poorly crafted that we could conceive of all kinds of scenarios regarding tomatoes and hamburgers. The most obvious is that Carl’s Jr. buyers searched the wholesale produce markets for red, sweet, firm, fleshy tomatoes and found them exceedingly rare. Luckily for them, they ran across a lot of nominees to the Tomato Paste Hall of Fame and redirected these inferior fruits to the buns of their gourmet customers.

“Thank you for that poor quality tomato on our $6 burger,” we wanted to say back to the sign. “We know good quality tomatoes are in short supply. Glad you sliced a rotten one our way.”

It was a homemade sign to be sure, but the signs popped up with great authority throughout Northern California earlier this year. Perhaps they were crafted in a divisional office of Carl’s Jr., far away from the prying eyes of the Carl Karcher Enterprises’ corporate marketing division, the public relations division, and the estate of Carl Nicholas Karcher himself.

Really, the sign’s poorly written.  There’s the implied connection between the “poor quality tomato” and the “$6 burger.” There’s the verb phrase split by only. There’s the misdemeanor usage of “due to.” There’s the flamboyant capital B in burger (maybe the reason for the capitalization is that burger joints revere their products, but, then, we’re in the book business and we don’t capitalize book). And there’s the rudely constructed “Sorry for the inconvenience,” which sounds as if it were uttered by an irritated, disrespectful teenage son to his nagging mom.

OK, we’ll back track and forgive the creator of the best charbroiled burger on the West Coast for its capital B on burger.  The Original Six Dollar Burger® is, in fact, a trademarked brand name. However, we are guessing that the brand police at CKE’s Carpinteria headquarters in California may have frowned on the abbreviated “$6 Burger” reference on the laser-made tomato apology. After all the registration symbol – “®”  – was missing.

Having shown some grammatical mercy, we cannot in good conscience forgive the misuse of “due to.” The word “due” is an adjective, and adjectives walk alongside nouns. We realize we favor conventional and traditional grammatical construction in these matters. Valley girls and texters have no problem using “due to” at the beginning of a sentence. In contrast, those of you who are authors and want to be published would be well served to remember these two simple tricks:

• Due to, properly used, usually follows a verb of being such as “was.” Example: “The poor quality of tomatoes was due to a lengthy period of rain in Mexico.”
• If you can substitute the phrase “caused by” in place of “due to,” then you are likely to be safe in using “due to” in your sentence.

On the Carl’s Jr. sign, it would make no sense to say, “Caused by poor quality and limited availability, tomatoes will only be served on $6 burgers.”

Case closed. We’re ready to eat. But first, we have to get a napkin to mop up the inevitable messy spills due to the juices flowing from the Original Six Dollar Burger®– and its pathetic tomato.

Be Bold:Tell the Hyphen to Take a Walk; Use It for Clarity and Avoid Hyphenitis

The venerable British prime minister Winston Churchill once said, “One must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible.”

So here are three quick tips to help you avoid the blemish.

1. Don’t use a hyphen after words ending in ly, as in newly elected senator or highly decorated soldier.
2. When two nouns go walking, the hyphen should take a walk (in the other direction), as in father figure, book lover, and meat eater.
3. Avoid hyphens with prefixes, examples being antiwar, multilingual, semipro, and rebuild.

Of course, exceptions always present themselves. Use common sense to ensure your writing is clear to readers. If you are writing about regional electrical cooperatives, you can’t write coop, because a coop is for chickens. Use co-op. There is a life and death difference between a man-eating shark and a man eating shark.