Edwards still reluctant to be subject of affair

John Edwards may have confessed to a “serious error in judgment,” but a close look at his word choice suggests he’s still shirking blame. In his Nightline interview, Edwards repeatedly constructed sentences in which he is the implicit but unnamed subject.

For example, the former North Carolina senator told Bob Woodruff: “I think that my family is entitled to every detail. They’ve been told every detail.” Using the preferable active voice, Edwards would have taken ownership of the information, saying, “I told my family every detail.”

He later used the present perfect participle in a wussy reference to the affair he committed: “And the fact that she is with me after this having happened is a testament to the kind of woman and the kind of human being she is.”

The active voice your high-school English teacher urged you to use would be: “And the fact that she is still with me after I did this is a testament…”

To describe “this” — a glossed-over pronoun for affair — “having happened” poises Edwards as the hostage of an outside crime, as if someone held a gun to his head and insisted he have sex with Rielle Hunter.

Even when Edwards identified himself in a sentence, his language implied an out-of-body sensation. For instance, he told Woodruff: “There is a deep and abiding love that exists between Elizabeth and myself.”

Myself is a reflexive pronoun. It only works when you are the object of an action and when you appear as the subject of the same sentence. For example: “I see myself in the mirror” or “I treated myself to a pedicure.”

There is nothing reflexive about the love between husband and wife; Edwards should’ve said there is an abiding love “between Elizabeth and me.” Although, Edwards does appear to love himself, and that love affair evidently spawned one with Hunter.

Quick hits

* When jurors rejected an assault charge against her, Victoria Osteen’s relief seems to have clouded her linguistic acumen. “All I can say is that I’m grateful, and I just thank everybody that supported me,” she gushed. The problem? Who is for people and named pets. That is for unnamed animals and objects. Not exactly an effective way to express respect and appreciation.

* The principal of Gloucester High School, home of the alleged pregnancy pact, claims the town’s mayor “publicly slandered” his reputation. To slander, by definition, is to do public damage. If it remains private, there is no charge to be made.

* President Bush told Bob Costas his “reaction” to the revocation of Joey Cheek’s visa. A reaction is a sudden, spontaneous response to a stimulus, such as shrieking or fainting. It is not a synonym for response or opinion.

* Lisa Marie Presley thinks she endures a disproportionate amount of media scrutiny. “It’s like there is a campaign to demean me,” she told Marie Claire. Like cannot be used as a conjunction, which joins two clauses, each containing verbs. Presley should have said, “It’s as if” or “It’s as though.” Like only works when it links to a subject without a verb, such as: “Lisa is complaining like a diva.”