Look, Stop Saying “Look!”

Pres. Obama started it back in 2008. He would start an answer to a question with “look,” as in, “Look, a nuclear North Korea is unacceptable.” Now everybody’s doing it and doing it to excess. The other night, one of our brilliant congressmen said it three times in a paragraph. When I hear a politician do that, it says to me that they are in fact saying, “Look, focus, you distracted idiot. I’m not going to screw around with you. I’m completely out of patience with your nonsense!”

It’s a stall, of course. What it has become is an attempt to sound authoritative while the mind races with thoughts like, “Oh my God. What can I say that won’t get me in trouble? I can’t give an honest answer. It’ll ruin my career. Stall! I’ll dish out some bullshit. That’ll shut ‘em up.”

A more honest answer would be, “Um, I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do. Look, what do you want from me? If I tell you the truth, I’ll never be elected to office again.”