And now for one of my pet peeves.

ONe of the things that drives me most crazy about the way that the mainstream media phrases everything is their overuse of the world 'tragedy.' Tragedy, if you look it up in the dictionary, is primarily a literary form--it is a form of drama in which a seemingly strong lead character is destroyed by some sort of hidden (or not so hidden) flaw. Tragic heroes are ones like Oedipus or Hamlet--they have some problem, not directly visible at first, that destroys them. This creates obvious dramatic tension that is heavily dependent on irony.

That is why I am driven absolutely batshit crazy when every fucking newsanchor in the world decides to use 'tragic' as a blanket term whenever even the most minor negative thing happens. Very few things in the real world are actually 'tragic', yet I have to constantly hear how every fucking event from Hurricane Katrina, to the September 11 attacks to these Virginia Tech attacks are 'tragic.'

And ironically, the one major news event that is truly tragic is never described as such. That would be the collapse of the Bush Presidency--his supposed strength in 2002, his aggressive support for invading Iraq and his "strong" anti-terror credentials is the very issue that has pushed his approval ratings into the high thirties or the low twenties. Yet I hear noone describe this collapse as 'tragic.'

That word has no meaning any more. I wish people would stop using it.