by Ray Newman, radio and television commentator, attorney, educator, author

Sunday, December 11, 2011

THE "EST" SUPERLATIVE

Parade magazine headline referred to Matt Damon as "the sexiest family man alive".  The missing words to the headline are "In my illogical unintelligent opinion"...thr "I" being the writer of the writer of the headline.

Why illogical and unintelligent?  Two primary reasons:

 1.  The writer did not meet each of the billion or more family mean alive on the planet to be qualified to give Mr. Damon that ranking
 2.  There is no one objective standard to be used for "sexiest".  Different people of the same ethnicity, different people of different ethnicity, cultures, ages, etc. would define "sexiest" in grossly different ways...from "makes me want to hug him" to "makes me want to jump into bed with him".to "makes me want to ---" (you fill it in).

We humans have a compulsion to label something or someone as biggest/ best/strongest/fastest INin the world, virtually always without reference to the two flaws mentioned above.  Logically, you can't even refer to the Olympic gold medal winner in the 100 yard dash as "the fastest human alive" (which is what he is always called).  At best, he may have been the fastest runner in that race on that day.  The actual fastest human alive may not have competed that day.     Secondly, even the guy who won the race may not be the fastest.  He may have won because he ran a smarter race and in fact may have been the slowest runner in the race, if capacity for speed is what "fastest" means.  And further, why is 100 yards the right distance...what about the guy who won the mile race?...the marathon?

Muhammad Ali may indeed have been right when he referred to himself as "the greatest".  But like Ali, the misguided use of "est" must now be retired.

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