A Parent Appearing Apparent

I love this:

With the swearing in of the new Cabinet – as [Kenya's Daily Nation] put it – the Kibaki-Odinga unity “...appeared apparent...” I was girding my loins to attack it immediately on the spot, but other more urgent issues came up.

In addition, moreover, it happened to occur to my mind that, perhaps maybe, I duly owed the writer some more thoughtful consideration. It was probably likely that, if I tried to make an effort to enter the young juvenile’s mind, I might understand him adequately enough.

But it seems evident that repeated reiteration is an incorrigibly permanent feature of our newsrooms. It seems apparent that, as writers, our scribes simply cannot be able to see that appearances are not what they look like.

It's from my father's weekly grammar column, in which he sometimes injects politics, but is primarily used to lambaste instruct his colleagues in the art of wielding English: definitions, word usage and sentence construction. Redundancies are the topic today (yes, that statement may be redundant, but someone will ask). I don't doubt that I may have committed some of the same sorts of errors, but I still find this op-ed particularly funny.

My diplomatic abilities appear to be genetically acquired.

The politics:

The Kibaki-Odinga unity is a phenomenon of such material objects. Nobody else can see it exactly for what it is. For outsiders, it only appears or seems. Some think of it as mere make-believe. They do not accept it as a reality.

But the Nation reporter was two-minded about it. On the one hand, it was apparent because it was real.

But, on the other, its “apparentness” seemed like that of the will-o’-the-wisp – which was why it appeared apparent.

Kenya Crisis

Kenya: The Basics

Comments

[Peggy U]

What did that say?