If we were a phrase…

If you hate one thing this year, make it not George Bush, your parents’ rules, or Sarah Michelle Gellar. Make it not the destruction of the ozone, MTV movies, or trucker hats. Make it the phrase infecting our culture, the parasite eating away at our psyches and our intelligence quotients, the omnipresent non-statement that is the phrase ‘vaguely reminiscent.’ This phrase is vaguely reminiscent of other phrases that almost have meaning. This phrase is a manifestation of our culture’s political correctness or timidity or desire to please both sides of every issue. We are all that is ‘vaguely reminiscent’. It is wordy and ‘vaguely’ educated-sounding, while avoiding the nuisance of actually saying anything, ever. It buys time. It allows a change of subjects without actually having to think of a relationship between them. It is the phrase of the politician. It is the phrase of the movie reviewer. It is the phrase of the reader of classic literature who has no idea what he’s talking about.
There are other things I could rant about. Movies that begin with alarm clocks. The commonly held belief that ‘supposively’ is a word. When previews falsely insert exclamation points into every blurb quoted. Volvo-owners by day, Neo-punks by night. Apostrophe abuse. But the rage inspired in me by these examples is only vaguely reminiscent of the tangible loss of faith in humanity, staining my taste buds like sulfur, when I hear the phrase ‘vaguely reminiscent’. We need some substance, people! Our bones are being eaten away by our calorie-free sodas and action-free sentiments and meaning-free “opinions”. To use Bruce Weber of The New York Times’ inspired words, “vaguely reminiscent” is, like many neo-intellectual mass culture staples, “so overpowering in its empty profundity that virtually everyone can pretend to understand it.”