Grey Power fails English
Has anyone seen the Grey Power automobile insurance commercials recently showing on Canadian television? A smarmy male introduces an incompetent screaming ninny (usually female, but more recently male) who is behind the wheel of a vehicle by saying, “You don’t drive like her (sic).”
What he means to say is this: “You don’t drive like she does.”
Well, all right, I admit that I don’t know what the announcer really means to say, since he can’t speak English. He appears to be babbling some form of grade-school fractured english, most notably spoken by those of us who cut a lot of classes and who thought we were the brainiacs.
I queried Grey Power on the use of “their” English, and here’s what I received in return (paraphrased for simplicity, of course):
English teachers are not in agreement on the subject.
English and its usage is constantly changing.
At least that was grammatically correct.
If appealing to the lowest common grammatical denominator is good for business, then I say more power to Grey Power! As for me, I’ll continue to amuse myself with a company and its advertiser who doesn’t know how to use English, and to question how their written agreements might be drawn up.
“If you drive like him/her does, and never aks us no questions, they’ll be shure to have no claims, EVAR! Shut up.”
After all, English is in a constant state of flux.
Testing 1, 2, 3…
At San Diego International Airport, tests are run by passengers whom local TSA managers ask to carry a fake bomb, said screener Cris Soulia, an official in a screeners union. “It’s nobody we would ever expect,” Soulia said. — USATODAY.com, Thomas Frank
Link here.
And what’s this about a screener’s union? What happens when they work to rule?
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