Oh, yeah, that’s right. So a couple of disgusting people who wouldn’t have a future as a men’s room attendant or a waitress at a Vegas strip club can “do their thing” on a red carpet. Somewhere in the world.

I feel so sorry for that kid.

I’ve been traveling lately. I notice more tattoos in Arizona and New Mexico than I saw in San Francisco, and often on people 40+ years-old.

Walk in any urban area and you will see much worse, although not as explicit.

I really don’t give a fig for what Merriam-Webster says. It’s never been authoritative; none of them are as informed as the completed 1933 Edition of the OED. The 1971 reprint is even better as it includes errata, and a few new words. I am fortunate to have the 1971 Reprint in compact form, just two very thick and heavy volumes, and you need a x64 magnifier to read the print, but oh well. (This is known as the Compact OED. It was produced from microfiche, I think, of the original.)

And in any case, as we are so often told, the Dictionary purports to be descriptive not prescriptive: It tries to tell us how word are or were used, not how they should be used.

(It’s much better, of course, to take them as both reporting on usage and setting the rules for it, assuming the dictionary is reliable; because in that way, everyone in a discussion can start from the same place. Used properly and with comfortable familiarity, its use can greatly ease communication and even more importantly, aid in clear thought.

Let me point out that just because people have used a given word in an unfortunate and sometimes contradictory matter over the space of, say, 500 years, does not make that use legitimate. There are still people who literally believe in witches, too, but that doesn’t mean witches exist. (Except in my house. I hear them whistling around at night, in the dark….)

Construction — BE – TWEEN — suggests that Neo’s rules, and the rule I learned, is correct. Between certainly suggests, and ought to be consistently used, to denote a relationship or connection of some sort, of two elements; AMONG where there are more than two.

. . .
And for the love of heaven, don’t be bullied by the PC crowd into giving up Standard English!

HE is, in one meaning, the pronoun of UNSPECIFIED gender; in another, the pronoun referring to the male. They are conceptually quite distinct, hence in fact are homonyms.

It is in no way disrespectful of or demeaning toward us girls to write things like, “When a person goes out on a rainy day he often takes an umbrella.” If that upsets one, one is acknowledging that one is of the Victim Class, and by now, that one is ignorant besides.

I see Learned Professors, especially in Law and in Philosophy, stooping to pretend that “she” is a pronoun of unspecified gender also.

It’s not only grating; it makes the writer look silly, ignorant, and craven, all at once.

And it makes those of us who can read, want to throw the book or article you-know-where.

And I’m 80% sure that Demi and her, um, “handler” thought that she’d get plenty of delicious attention with that cover, and was handsome enough to carry it off. Ditto for Vanity Fair.

But acknowledging the existence of all the parts of the human body, including the indelicate ones, and then becoming so familiar with them as part of the mental as well as the social scenery, has been a project since at least the ’50s, and probably before. Really, the entire 20th century and right up to today has been involved in trying to break free of the restraints of the Victorians (never mind the culture changes that occurred over Queen Victoria’s 60-year reign); in particular, in manners and morality.

(I imagine part of this is the normal inter-generational cultural rebellion, and of course it was a big theme of the Marxists, from whom the New Left got it. Important issues, like should you close the door to the loo, or is that too bourgois?)

I’ve often thought that in the second half of the 20th at least (I was born in 1943) people were far more obsessed with s*e*x than the Victorians ever were. “Sir, do you know how many children I have?” asked the Queen….

And part of that is accepting that preggers is preggers, and that beauty and meaning can be found in the condition. As well as pride shared by the about-to-be parents; and Hope.

OR, of course, the whole thing can be put on for shock value and to get attention, and to show how very avant we all are.

Personally, when the Young Miss was in that somewhat unfinished state, we still wore Maternity Dresses and Maternity Blouses.

Sometimes we were still wearing them ten years later.

Don’t encourage them! At least the bottom is covered up by her pants.