check your dictionary, spencer. "miscreant" is not a synonym for "juvenile delinquent," as you apparently assume, and which earns your sophomoric scribbles a D- in english composition.

that musharrif is the object of more frequent random assassination attempts is far from amusing, and the people who want him dead are far from infantile -- which not only tends to make the US relationship with bin laden's host country more ominous still, but also renders your remarks ludicrous.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

miscreant

SYLLABICATION: mis·cre·ant
PRONUNCIATION: mskr-nt
NOUN:
1. An evildoer; a villain. 2. An infidel; a heretic.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English miscreaunt, heretic, from Old French mescreant, present participle of mescroire, to disbelieve : mes-, wrongly, not; see mis–1 + croire, to believe (from Latin crdere; see kerd- in Appendix I).
OTHER FORMS: miscre·ant —ADJECTIVE

Someone pissed in tek's cereal this morning?

Both grammar police and concern troll in one package?

Spencer does a wonderful job keeping us informed and if he occasionally attempts to inject humor into this very serious world, then back off and let him. No need to be exact and somber all the time and no one's perfect.

You're welcome, Jake.

And as for you, turner, assassination attempts are never, ever, amusing.

Perhaps Ackerman has done some passable work in the past, but this (possibly chemically addled?) attempt is pathetically puerile and thoroughly eradicated Ackerman's credibility with me.

What? I am supposed to respect a reporter unfamiliar with the meaning of "miscreants?" People daily use it to describe the Cheney/Bush White House, and I assure you they are not talking about the Bush Twins' latest naughtiness.

and btw, go troll up your own darkest orifice, turner, because you are apparently ignorant of the accepted vernacular use of "troll" in the blogosphere. It means someone making willfully contrarian remarks, such as defending Scooter Libby's integrity in comments appended to a post on the ethical dubiousness of commuting an employee's prison sentence in what appears to be a further instance of obstructing justice.

Small wonder you like Ackerman. Neither one of you has the vocabulary skills to score above 300 on the SATs.

and fyi, vociferous online critical remarks such as mine this morning are what are known as "flames." Grammar, otoh, has to do with punctuation, use of correct verb tenses and the like -- none of which did I comment upon in Ackerman's reprehensible parody of reporting.

teknozen

Photos taken from an overlooking building showed a large gun on a tripod pointed skyward and a machine-gun next to a satellite dish and a plastic water tank on the roof of the two-story building.

...............................

Aziz, who is Ghazi's brother, was caught Wednesday as he tried to escape the complex disguised in a woman's top-to-toe burqa and high-heeled shoes.

...........................

U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday that Musharraf was working hard to address extremism and to build a moderate Islamic state in Pakistan.

"I certainly don't see anything in the current set of circumstances that changes our overall evaluation about him or about the government," Casey said.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/06/asia/AS-GEN-Pakistan-Musharraf.php

Yawn... go the hell home and enjoy the weekend... nothing to see here, move on....

Dear turner,

I have been hard on you here today. Please allow me to make amends by offering some helpful pointers on punctuation. You also need improvement in reading comprehension, but that is largely a matter of practice, and there is little I can offer there beyond encouragement to keep trying.

Yeah, forgive me O' Wise One as you certainly are no troll (by anyone's definition) as evidenced by the above quotes.

Please allow me:

Yeah, ["Yeah" is extraneous and of negligible stylist value.]forgive me [Insert comma before name of person being addressed] O' [Apostrophes generally indicate ownership, as in "Jane's pencil," or omitted letters, for example, "can't" in lieu of "cannot", as in "can't punctuate for beans, either." Conceivably a comma could be inserted here rather than an apostrophe, but most authorities would find it superfluous, given the context. Additionally, for clarity, "O" as a greeting or invocation is usually confined to the beginning, rather than the middle of a sentence where it would not be capitalized and therefore confusing.] Wise One [Insert comma following name of person being addressed. However, only proper names are capitalized, that is "John Doe" but not "pea brain," "bloody fool," or similar descriptives.] as [Delete "as" because it is wordy and grandiose when used as a conjunction (words such as "and," and "or") in this context. It is preferable to simply end the first sentence here. Alternately, if you prefer, a semicolon in place of the conjunction would be an intelligent and entirely acceptable choice.] you certainly are no troll (by anyone's definition) [Commas, rather than parentheses, are the correct punctuation here for this qualifying subordinate phrase] as evidenced by the above quotes.

Whew! What a mess! The syntax is similarly challenged, but I am getting really bored with this.

In short, the sentence should read:

O, wise one, forgive me; you certainly are no troll, by anyone's definition, as evidenced by the above quotes.

Have you looked into GED classes in your area? Because you clearly need some study to pass the English section. Or if this is an ESL situation, please accept my apologies, as well as my compliments on your progress in a non-native tongue. If you continue to work hard, you should be fluent in no time at all.

Regards,
tek

wow, I just popped in to make a (hopefully humorous) observation and got a reminder not to assume I know the meaning of a word from the context in which it is habitually used by others.

In our society, the term "miscreant" is frequently used in the context of juvenile offenses - I'm not defending the usage, but constant exposure to it seeps into one's internal dictionary. (I shall never, under any circumstances, cave to the maddening overuse of the word "impact" as a verb where the proper usage would be, e.g., "have an impact upon" - cringeworthy...) I imagine that the Pakistani culture has not abandoned precision of language to the extent that we have in the US.

That said, while the author may have deserved a tweak for the language imprecision and the sardonic treatment of the subject matter, tek seems to come down rather hard.

Oh, my original comment, which is really only relevant given the "juvenile" mis-definition, and which tek will surely find terribly irreverent:

Well, take away the military regalia, replace the beret with a bald pate, and in that photo Musharraf is a ringer for Mr. Wilson raging at Dennis the Menace.

Thank you, BK & Jane for your levelheaded comments.

Annoyingly enough, Ackerman's "miscreant" piece has re-emerged in my mind several times today as I groped to comprehend why I reacted so strongly to it.

One assumes the TPM crew to be writing for an educated audience, and while miscreant may have a similar archaic feel as "egregious" or "heinous," it is very much in the tradition of the English employed by the framers of the American Constitution (a subject rather on my mind of late), and I very consciously chose to quote from the AMERICAN Heritage dictionary, rather than the Oxford ENGLISH dictionary, for a current, working definition of miscreant.

I confess that sloppy writing -- in a context where one has become accustomed to good work -- offends my sensibilities severely. However, in an insomniac moment tonight, I realized that it was more than the grossly distasteful mélange of misapprehended vocabulary and belittling a bungled assassination attempt that induced me to recognize how profoundly offensive Ackerman's piece is.

This is Ackerman's "macaca moment," and the implicit racism of his remarks rates stern censure -- if not from me, one hopes his editors are sufficiently sensitive and insightful to recognize how far out of line he strayed.

It is a racial stereotype that South Asians talk funny, and furthermore that government officials in Pakistan and India are silly wankers incapable of our superior North American insight into the reality of any given situation.

Ackerman brought to mind not only high school (or younger) acquaintances who found it hilarious to imitate the speech rhythms of South Asian immigrants, but also latter-day American imperialists abroad who find perverse satisfaction in endless laments about how the uncomprehending local natives persist in behaving irrationally. Even more grotesque are our current colonialists who find endless entertainment in anecdotes about how ridiculously the natives fracture the English language. (Nevermind that the modern colonialists' lack all but the most fundamental commands in the local tongue.)

Ackerman would appear to have revealed his true colors as yet another (presumably white) North American so accustomed to taking his/our superiority for granted that he is incapable of viewing world events except through racist and imperialist blinders.

Admittedly, the attempt on Musharrif's aircraft had its farcical aspects. However, very recent would-be terrorist attacks in both Britain and the United States have scarcely lacked for elements of absurdity. This is not at all to say that the peril to the general population from the literally millions of pissed-off have-nots in this world is to be by any means discounted. This is deadly serious stuff.

Ackerman thus makes a fool of himself on three counts:
1) He thinks he is too clever to need to check a dictionary;
2) He high-handedly dismisses an assassination attempt on a foreign head of state as adolescent high jinx;
and
3) His smarmy and smug disdain for the language of a foreign official reveals a streak of covert racism both ugly and invidious.

As to my knocking turner down a couple of notches, that person is a twit and needs to think twice before he jumps in the deep end of the pool.