In its report of an interview following President Obama's State of the Union Address in which NY1's Michael Scotto asked Representative Michael Grimm (R-NY) to discuss the ongoing investigations into the financing of his 2010 congressional campaign, the Times noted that Mr. Grimm "threatened to toss Mr. Scotto over the balcony, employing an obscene adjective to characterize the balcony." In fact the adjective, which was "fucking", did not in any way characterize the balcony, which was neither fucking at the moment nor normally used as a venue (by analogy with "dining room", "smoking alcove", etc.) for that purpose; Mr. Grimm used the adjective as a pure term of affect to convey his personal feelings about the balcony, which are those of a warm regard.
Moreover, when Mr. Grimm proposed to break Mr. Scotto in half "like a boy" he did not mean to suggest that this procedure is more properly or conventionally applied to boys than to other persons, merely that the methodology for breaking boys in half is the one he would choose.
Moreover, when Mr. Grimm proposed to break Mr. Scotto in half "like a boy" he did not mean to suggest that this procedure is more properly or conventionally applied to boys than to other persons, merely that the methodology for breaking boys in half is the one he would choose.
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| The novelist William Burroughs sawing himself in half. Image by Oliver Harris. |
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