BOB GARFIELD

WARNING: POLITICAL ADVERTISING CAN LEGALLY DISTORT THE TRUTH.

[Commenting on negative campaigning:] On the eve of the first Tuesday in November, once again we are faced with the ugly paradox of 30-second-spot democracy: to prove they are worthy of governing us in all that we hold dear, America's politicians must behave in a way that proves they aren't.

What happens when you combine blogs, Google and millions of dissatisfied customers? An e-mob.

I can hardly believe that I even know this, but I am aware that Noah Webster's original dictionary, apart from being the first truly American lexicography, was a kind of line in the sand. It claimed a very discrete, American form of the English language, explicitly to compare it to the English of our erstwhile colonial masters who had been operating under Dr. Johnson's dictionary rules for well over a century.

Advertising is not a rifle; it is a shotgun, and any campaign featuring outdoor boards of a cartoon animal inevitably will catch children in its spray.

Chain letters are the postal equivalent of intestinal flu: you get it and pass it along to your friends.

WARNING: POLITICAL ADVERTISING CAN LEGALLY DISTORT THE TRUTH.

[Commenting on negative campaigning:] On the eve of the first Tuesday in November, once again we are faced with the ugly paradox of 30-second-spot democracy: to prove they are worthy of governing us in all that we hold dear, America's politicians must behave in a way that proves they aren't.

Advertising is not a rifle; it is a shotgun, and any campaign featuring outdoor boards of a cartoon animal inevitably will catch children in its spray.

Chain letters are the postal equivalent of intestinal flu: you get it and pass it along to your friends.

What happens when you combine blogs, Google and millions of dissatisfied customers? An e-mob.

I can hardly believe that I even know this, but I am aware that Noah Webster's original dictionary, apart from being the first truly American lexicography, was a kind of line in the sand. It claimed a very discrete, American form of the English language, explicitly to compare it to the English of our erstwhile colonial masters who had been operating under Dr. Johnson's dictionary rules for well over a century.