“Is this the “true self” speaking, or spinning out some subtle humor (that the miffed King appears not to be in on)?”

These are just two examples of the poor construction in your writing. There are many other examples of incorrect usage in this post, but your misuse of prepositions is the most egregious and revealing.

For someone pontificating about language and its usage, you have very poor grammar. The entire premise of this post is suspect when you write so badly yourself. If you can’t properly parse your own writing, how can you presume to analyze and critique the language of others?

William Safire would be appalled.

Agreed.

Besides, Jerry is correct in the second film: his show was iconic and he left at the top. Major newspapers ran long stories about it at the time. It’s sort of odd Larry King would ask if he’d been cancelled, as though he didn’t know. It was probably just some interview talk, stating something he knew as a question, and clearly Jerry’s just having some opportune fun with faux outrage.

>some subtle humor (that the

>miffed King appears not to

>be in on)?

King didn’t seem miffed at all. Rather, he seemed non-plussed that Seinfeld didn’t pick up on his own attempt at humor. But apparently it was too subtle for Seinfeld. King’s “you canceled them” schtick was clearly an intentional reference to George Costanza’s classic “YOU can’t break up with ME, I’M breaking up with YOU.”

On the other hand, Seinfeld was either miffed or going for a not-subtle-at-all laugh.

If the point is to show what an “obnoxious character” Jerry is to Larry, where Jerry takes a vicious shot at Larry’s age and senility, then watch the unsanitized version.

And you wonder why everyone hates lawyers?

Having watched both Seinfeld and Larry David sitcoms, I fail to understand why anyone with any character judgement at all doesnt understand that both only portray themselves on screen.

The OTHER characters may be acting, but those two are actually only doing situational hyperbolic responses.

That was the genius of Seinfeld’s and, to some extent, David’s sitcoms.

And which is why none of their opinions on anything OTHER than show-biz -as it pertains to them- should carry more weight than a basket of sand.

Good call on Grimmelman bringing to mind the opinion exceptions– these are very good to know.

One grammatical point, when you say “James Grimmelman notes,” it’s fair to use the present tense, since it’s quite current, but it’s not like he’s commenting on Seinfeld here. He noted in the recent past, in a separate context, in an academic paper, to be published… in the future. (Is that the past impendent tense?)

Obviously, Seinfeld should have been been aware that the proper defense to his wife’s book was that it wasn’t word-for-word plagiarism, it wasn’t a copyrighted idea, and thus the basic defense would be “great minds think alike” (or whatever the proper legal term is here), and thus, couldn’t he have spun an observational crack along these lines:

“You know Dave, did you ever notice works of art always come in pairs? There’s a network on this dial — I worked there for a few years– and they have a show being broadcast at the same time, where the host begins with a monologue, and jokes with his bandleader, and has guests. You should have your lawyers watch it sometime. And you’ve let them get away with it all these years!”

“But Jerry, you see they don’t have ‘Will it Float’. Right, Paul?”

“Right Dave!”

But then again, as my old classmate Dave Itzkoff wrote, in his profile of Seinfeld for the Times, “In person he can be affable, but he doesn’t hide a certain earned arrogance.”