... or, in this case, bad speaking.
The following sentence appeared in a June 16, 2009, piece by the Associated Press fashion writer Samantha Critchell:
Noting her "meteoric rise as a fashion icon," CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg said [Michelle] Obama had "a unique look that balances the duality of her lives" in her roles as trusted adviser to her husband, President Barack Obama, and busy mother to their two daughters.
The CFDA is the Council of Fashion Designers of America, an organization that has apparently so exhausted itself in designing fashion that it has no energy left to speak clearly.
In the sixteen words attributed to her, Diane von Furstenberg commits four verbal fouls. First, "meteoric rise" is a cliché, i.e., an overused expression used as a crutch by the mentally inert. Second, it is a stupid cliché, as meteors do not rise but fall (a meteoric trait pointed out so often that to proceed in ignorance of it is to flaunt one's disconnectedness from intelligent writing or speech). Third, she refers to Michelle Obama's "lives" as if the First Lady were a cat. The remote possibility that reincarnation may be true aside, one life is all any of us have. Fourth, von Furstenberg refers to the "duality of [Obama's] lives," as if each of her lives has two parts. (If to go forth and multiply is to obey a divine command, is going forth and subdividing a sin?)
Somehow, von Furstenberg managed to use unique--one of our most abused words--correctly. She didn't modify it with a very or a most the way most people would who are as verbally challenged as she is. Maybe she was feeling run down.
The conclusion: clothing fashions are determined by idiots.
Who'd've thunk it?
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