Calling All Linguists: What Did Jerry Say?
If two negatives make a positive, how many positives does it take to make a negative? Or how many conditional statements make one definitive declaration?
A Tennessean story by Staff Writer and NFL/Titans beat writer Jim Wyatt about the on-again / off-again, almost there / widely separated negotiations for future services of suspended Titans bad boy Adam “Pacman” Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, was quoted as saying something to the effect of…
I can say with a high degree of certainty that this thing probably may or may not come about.
How do you spell doublespeak? How about posturing?
Jerry Jones’ actual words and the full article can be found here.
9 Comments so far
Jerry Jones is one of the least interesting people the press pays undue attention to.
From Tom Landry, the man we loved, to Jerry Jones, the man we love to hate. Isn’t that what modern media is all about…negative attention is better than good deeds?
“How many positives does it take to make a negative?”
Three.
A denial from the left/right wing times two answers.
I know without any doubt that I have no clue what he is saying most of the time.
No matter how many positives you take, they’ll never make a negative (number).
May,
You are the only person who is correct. No number of positives can make a negative. It’s mathematically impossible.
I think you can definitely say that it’s almost impossible or at least unlikely for his statement to be disproved.
Jerry Jones.
Pacman Jones.
Burnin’ up the lines
Of bondsmen’s phones.
First of all, Bonnie is right: the descent from Landry and Schramm to Jones and Jimmy Johnson? Barry Switzer??? those first few years was a hard, hard thing to watch. (Full disclosure: I still have a shrine to Roger Staubach.) And Jones’ attraction to bad boys and loud-mouths would have an explanation if he were a woman cruising the bars; as the owner of a football team, though . . .
At least one could laugh at Bud Adams (the Oilers’ owner (does he still own the Titans?), an 80-year-old man still dyeing his hair red and far far more money than sense. Jones knows he knows exactly what he’s doing, and that’s the unnerving part. He’s a walking tautology.
Here in Germany, we have a word “doch” which means either ‘certainly’ or else ‘certainly not!’ depending on context. Beat that!