C. J. Cares

C. J. has gone Bill Safire on us. At the end of a January column, “Verbal Assault”—her new feature flagging celebrities for bad spoken grammar—debuted. And she has no plans to stop.

Language scold seems to be an unlikely role for the Star Tribune writer, she of the passive voice and tortured syntax. “I do not consider myself an expert on grammar,” she admits. “I cannot, for the life of me, diagram a sentence, and I’m also confused about the lie/lay situation.” But, she says, she knows bad language when she hears it. Her targets have included U of M president Robert Bruininks and Oprah. C. J.’s rulings are frequently backed up by her “Panel of Amazing Grammar Experts,” a rotating group of pedants that includes her college journalism prof.

Verbal Assault originated when C. J.’s editor, Howard Sinker, suggested a “quote of the day.” “It sounded boring,” she says. But Verbal Assault is popular. In fact,  grammar gotchas are now included in a lot of C. J.’s e-mails. “People are always writing in to tell me about mistakes by local newspeople. It’s so easy—that’s what kills me.”

One could question why someone whose prose has the benefit of multiple editors would target people who are speaking live or unscripted on television, but Verbal Assault’s primary purpose is not necessarily the betterment of our discourse.

It’s to give C. J. the opportunity to write about people other than Fancy Ray and Dennis Douda. “I don’t care about Frank Vascellaro,” she notes. “I want to write about Matt Lauer.”

Verbal Assault does have its drawbacks. According to C. J., it gives people “some insight” into what she watches on TV (a mix of NBC News, American Idol, and PTI)—a problem for the secretive and suspicious columnist, but she says it’s worth it. “The late Reverend David Tyler Coates considered me the ‘conscience of the community,’ ” she says. “I’m no fuddy-duddy. But I don’t understand why we’re so lax about the way we talk. I care about the English language.”