John Kelly's Commons: March 15, 2009 - March 21, 2009
BritNews RoundUp: 'Run Away!' Edition
It takes a lot to close a pub in England. It's like trying to close a church. Which is sort of fitting since the suspicious object that forced police to close a pub in East London yesterday turned out to...
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John Kelly
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March 20, 2009; 11:00 AM ET |
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D@#% It, Janet: An Uplifting Case of Mistaken Identity
It's not easy being a PR person. I know. I was one. (At least part of one. In my first job after college I had to occasionally write press releases and call reporters.) Still, I cringe whenever I see an...
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John Kelly
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March 20, 2009; 9:00 AM ET |
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Reunited--And It Feels So Good
For a column on Valentine's Day I found a once-in-a-lifetime couple: two young Washingtonians who had known each other as children, vowed to get married, then lost touch for close to 20 years. They found each other again and will...
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John Kelly
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March 19, 2009; 10:30 AM ET |
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Job Jargon: You're Better Off Unemployed
Yesterday I blogged about the entertainingly overblown language that so many government and business people use. As luck would have it, this morning someone sent me a job listing that perfectly illustrates what I was talking about. The job is...
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John Kelly
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March 19, 2009; 9:00 AM ET |
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GovSpeak: Gobbled Up in Gobbledygook
The Declaration of Independence was very clear about what it meant. Since then, it's been pretty much downhill for government prose. Who could forget "revenue enhancement" as a synonym for "tax"? Modern business-speak is just as bad. We talk of...
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John Kelly
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March 18, 2009; 9:40 AM ET |
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Happy St. Patrick's Day
I'm a very bad Irish American. My father was a Kelly. My mother was a Spillane. And yet I have no idea where in Ireland we came from. We visited Eire last year and while I found it quite lovely...
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John Kelly
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March 17, 2009; 11:30 AM ET |
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All the News That's Fit to Reprint
From time to time I get letters or e-mails that read, "Thanks so much for your column. The news in the rest of the paper is so depressing." Sometimes the readers thank me for my happy stories. Sometimes they say...
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John Kelly
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March 17, 2009; 9:00 AM ET |
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Where in Washington?
You people continually amaze me. I thought I threw two pretty hard challenges at you, first with the Kennedy-Warren and then with the Cairo Apartments. You guys are so good that I won't even bother to provide a clue to...
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John Kelly
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March 16, 2009; 11:30 AM ET |
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What Are You Looking At?
There's a healthy little debate going on over at Michael Ruane's story on whether certain iconic Washington landmarks need signs. Not exactly an enlightened debate, but a healthy one. Here are a couple of the comments: Sorry you don't...
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John Kelly
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March 16, 2009; 9:30 AM ET |
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