Some of my Best Friends are Light-Skinned Negroes

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in the stink for being quoted as saying Barack Obama is a light-skinned black who doesn't (usually) use a "Negro" dialect. Obama accepted Reid's apology, saying the leader had used "inartful" language in praising him. True enough, but Reid also used inartful language in his statement apologizing for his inartful language, saying:

"I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments."

Offending "any and all"? No comma after the parenthetical "especially African-Americans"? Apologizing for offending them for his comments? You'd think the Senate Majority Leader would have someone on staff who can put together a sentence saying "I'm sorry" without waterboarding the English language.

Incidentally, Reid's quote that launched the brouhaha comes from the new book, Game Change, a behind-the-scenes tell-all about the '08 election that I spent a couple of hours driving through a downpour to get my greedy mitts on. Settling in with it last night, I came across this line on Page 20:

Clinton's decision to forego the 2004 race would prove fateful.

 At first I was disappointed. Obviously, the authors had not read my recent blog entry on forego/forgo confusion. Then I remembered that the book had gone to press long before I posted that, so I suppose I'll have to give them a pass.

Foregone Conclusions

The local Tri-City News weekly paper features a regular editorial showdown where a foaming-at-the-mouth right wing columnist faces off against a woolly-headed liberal rival on a news topic of recent interest. Every time I read it I'm reminded of the Dan Ackroyd/Jane Curtin "Point-Counterpoint" segments ("Jane, you ignorant slut...") from the early "Saturday Night Live" days.

In any case, there was no newsprint battle of the predictable viewpoints last week. The point-counterpoint space in that issue (which I am just catching up on now) bears this introductory editor's note:

Following a tradition started several years ago, columnists Terry O"Neill and Mary Woo Sims are foregoing their usual format for this, their final column before Christmas, to write a combined column on things they agree on.

A debateless debate? Boring. Besides that, however, we have a word choice mix-up here. "Foregoing" means preceding ("the foregoing performance by the lobotomized Ben Affleck gave me gas"). The word needed here is forgoing, which means to do without ("for the sake of my intestinal health, I will be forgoing any future performances by the execrable Ben Affleck"). Choosing the right one is easy when you recall that foregoing refers to things that have gone before.