That’s it. I am literally never going to listen to the radio, watch TV or read news stories on the Internet ever again. Literally. I am literally going to gouge out my eyeballs with a ballpoint pen. Literally.
NBC Dateline segment Follow the Money, 5/2/10 (rerun, originally aired Nov. 2009):
SGT. JAMES PEREZ OF FAIRFIELD, CT: She’s so close. She could almost see the money. She can smell it, she can taste it in her bank account.
CHRIS HANSEN: The scammers managed to get Shireen to be emotionally invested here.
SGT. PEREZ: Right. They’re literally pulling the puppet strings.
No, Sergeant, the Nigerian email scammers are figuratively pulling the puppet strings, that’s your point. They did not literally have strings tied around Shireen’s joints controlling her arm, leg and head movements.
Next up, NPR’s All Things Considered segment on the government’s Minerals Management Agency (5/11/10), which sells leases for oil and gas production.
For the exploding Gulf rig the agency gave BP a Categorical Exclusion, “which means there is no public review, no scientific analysis, no discussion of alternatives…it’s literally a rubber stamp process,” said Bill Snapes, Chief Counsel for Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
No, Bill, it’s figuratively a rubber stamp process, that’s your point. I don’t think the MMA literally inked CATEGORICAL EXCLUSION – APPROVED onto a series of BP’s mimeographed lease documents with a big rubber stamp.
And lastly, this AP story about “Crude” documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger being ordered to hand over footage regarding a long-running legal case against Chevron in Equador (5/7/10):
Chevron lawyer Randy Mastro…said it was not a case about the First Amendment. “It’s a case about a lawyer who decided he wanted to star in a movie,” he said. “It is literally candid camera.”
No, Randy, it’s figuratively Candid Camera, that’s your point. Was the lawyer in the documentary shown shooting a TV show hosted by a Funt and featuring actors pulling good-natured practical jokes on unsuspecting dupes? No, Randy, he wasn’t.
[pictures via amazon.com, sentinelprint.com and seattleweekly.com]