All Over Again . . . And Again . . . And Again

JW,

Today’s sentiment is simple: Screw you, Yogi Berra.

That’s right, one of the most beloved imbeciles of all time has finally chapped my ass a smidge too red. His weapon? “De ja vu all over again,” a loathsome bit of malapropistic nonsense that jumped from the ESPN studio to the college classroom a few years ago and has now shown up in the online column of Stanley Fish (!) writing for the New York Times (!!). Believe me, I like fake wryness as much as the next guy, but there’s a limit to what one man can Berra. As my mother used to say, the first time’s funny, the second time’s silly, and the third time’s a spanking.

Here’s the thing about stupid phrases. Sure, they’re good for irony, but abuse them and they revert to stupid. The sophisticate’s task is constant vigilance, lest the expression reach its tipping point without his knowing it. With apologies to Fish, I’m pretty sure we’re there.

Consider, for example, my Google search, which shows roughly 15 million hits for “de ja vu” and 2 trillion for “de ja vu all over again”! (Okay, it’s half a million, but that’s still a big number. Damn big.) An actual phenomenon that spans languages and cultures is only thirty times more popular than a made-up piece of idiocy! It should be a thousand!

Won’t you join me in boycotting any television program, column, or person who uses this phrase ever again? It’ll be a loss, I know, but not an unbearable one. After all, Yogi got one thing right. If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.

-GM

GM,

For me, such a boycott would reduce my television watching--for a few days at least--to Comedy Central. And considering its affinity for one-season wonders (see Michael & Michael, Con, and The Naked Trucker and T-Bone Show), I would be forced to limit my viewing "pleasure" to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and South Park reruns. If ESPN and ESPN2 actually thought the third time was worthy of a spanking, then you wouldn't be the only one with a beet-red posterior. Chris Berman, Dick Vitale, Stuart Scott, Josh Elliot, Trey Wingo--the list of people who use this phrase goes on and on, and I have reason to believe Berman and Vitale actually fail to understand the joke. The redundancy of "De ja vu all over again" differs slightly from that of John Clayton and Magic Johnson's beloved "and also too" to start a sentence, and it's not quite as overplayed as the sarcastic, Wingo-crafted (I think) "And oh, by the way" or "This just in." It does, however, strike a certain nerve, especially when it's so overdone.

This is why ESPN2's First Take, while miserable from a standpoint of quality sports programming, is actually brilliant for those who enjoy watching Jay Crawford and Dana Jacobson attempt to overcome the awkwardness of what I can only assume is their own writing. And if you think the word "practice" can even be mentioned on that show without an Allen Iverson impression, you clearly haven't watched. Some people just don't understand that a joke depreciates in value. Try telling that to the "That's what she said" crowd. I was attempting (and failing) to convince people that joke had worn thin two and a half years ago!

GM, I would love to jump on your bandwagon and say "No more!" to mindless cliches and trite humor, but I already have to scroll through the Guide whenever I want to watch an NFL game on NBC, an NBA game on TNT, or any college football game that's not on ESPN because I simply don't know the channel numbers. My dependence on ESPN exceeds my irritation with it. Speaking of dependence and ESPN irritation, do you remember SportsCenter anchor Fred Hickman? He was actually the worst sports anchor I've ever seen outside of a student broadcast. Here's an incredibly interesting story about the guy: http://deadspin.com/5100372/the-curious-case-of-fred-hickman.

-JW