Future tension
The writers’ strike has got me down.
Make no mistake, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been executing their respective shows admirably without their writing staffs. But when Stewart found this nugget from Bush’s Mideast trip last week, my heart sank a bit, dreaming of what the writers might’ve come up with:
“There’s no doubt in my mind when history was written, the final page will say, ‘Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world.’”
The tenses in that one sentence are f--ked enough that Jacob Weisberg might have to revive his Bushisms series for one final glory lap. And when writing the final page of history, they won’t be able to avoid using the passive voice?
Either way, unless the strike is settled, very little of history (or anything else) will be written ... at least with a laugh track.
I’ve heard my wife talking to our 5-year-old about him being “finished with” tasks as, “Are you done your milk?” Now he’s beginning to ask similarly worded questions himself, sans the word “with.” Isn’t that grammatically incorrect? I plan on showing her your response only if I’m right, but feel free to let me know either way.
Grammatically speaking, why would you need the “with”? After “to be,” “to do” is the most basic verb there is, and often the first one you learn when studying foreign languages. Really simple verbs take really simple direct objects; not only is the “with” unnecessary, it’s superfluous.
Well, kinda. The simplest (and therefore best) way to write the sentence is, “You finished your milk,” with “finished” as the verb and “milk” as the direct object. But when that even simpler “to be” is the verb, as in “Are you done your milk?,” “done” becomes not a verb but an adjective. Which of course makes “milk” ... oh, who cares? If it’s an adverb or an object or a freaking conjunction, what effect does it have on the sentence and its meaning?
Eliminating the “with” is a simpler, cleaner and therefore preferable way to say it. Now you don’t have to worry about not showing the answer to your wife, since it’s in print for all to see.
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