There’s been a murder or some fatal accident and a senior
police officer is giving a statement to the press. He looks like an animated
mannequin dressed in starch and plastic, dripping shiny buttons. In fact, he
looks so artificially smart that he could be trying to impersonate a West Point cadet being presented to the colonel’s mother
after the passing out parade. He gives the statement in predictably subdued
tones, the like of which seem transparently unfamiliar to him, and then finishes
with the final sentence:
Our thoughts are with
the victim’s family at this sad time.
They say it every time, and if I were a member of the attending press I would want to
raise my hand at that point and ask him:
‘If you truly feel the sadness of the time, couldn’t you
come up with an alternative to the same sad old cliché that everybody else
uses? Only it doesn’t really ring true, you see.’
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