[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="140" caption="Dick May, as seen on his Seeing Greene blog site."][/caption]Dick May's Seeing Greene came out with a new blog entry on Friday, February 18, that serves up another fine lecture on the semantics of news prose and how simple uses of metaphor, simile, and allusion can shift the meaning of a story... and how all our non-fiction reading is rippled by untruths... even if only the use of grammatical tricks to make large entities, such as nations or political parties, appear the same as individuals. "Related to personation’s de-personalizing effect is intimidation. Personation promotes a brand of metaphysics that not only is goofy, but also is conducive to personal paralysis," May writes. "Since so much of history is made not by people but by big, extra-human, super-human willful entities, surely it would be presumptuous for us Lilliputians to entertain thoughts about exerting influence. Personation works, cumulatively, against feelings of personal responsibility and personal efficacy. Blended with personation’s de-personalizing and intimidating effects, in more than a few cases, is political spin. Journalists (as well as pundits and advertisers) use Personation as a tool of special advocacy. Intentionally or not, they use Personation so as to excuse, praise and damn." As for any local news, we'll be waiting for Dick's next entry...