WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE AND WHEREFORE

I know it's bad form to follow a post criticizing The Stupid, with one poor about poor grammar, but the two are closely related and really, since when has bad form ever stopped me?  I was in my car the other day when I heard a Visa commercial that epitomized exactly what I'd been railing about with The Stupid. The commercial, in short, is about Romeo and Juliet, only in this case there's no Romeo. 

Juliet calls out "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" and receives no response.  Now, despite being one of literature's most romantic characters it would appear Juliet was a bit of a shrew, because when Romeo doesn't answer she repeats in a tone of voice clearly meant to imply that suicide or not he won't be getting a kiss goodnight, "Romeo? Wherefore art thou?"  Apparently this is also taking part in a forest because now you can hear Juliet stomping through the Bush so maybe they've moved the play from Verona to the Australian Outback, I don't know, but after ignoring her the first two times, she's clearly lost patience with the man who'd she'd rather die than live without and growls, "Romeo!"

At this point the annoyingly saccharine announcer dude who's been doing these "Priceless" commercials since what feels like the Clinton Administration comes on and says something along the lines of; "Maglite flashlight $25.  Always being able to find your Romeo? Priceless."  Now ignoring the fact that anyone who pays for love with a credit card probably won't stay Governor of New York all that long, this commercial is still stupid.  Do you know why?  Of course you do, still, I'll tell you.  It's because 'Wherefore' doesn't mean 'where?', it means 'why?' 'As in where is the reason for?'  This is something you learn in ninth grade.  It's not possible that the people who wrote this commercial didn't know what 'wherefore meant'.  It's just not!  They knew what it meant and they said, screw it, most people are stupid and think it means 'where'.

Visa commercial writer people, I hate you.

Still, they aren't the only ones.  Microsoft, the home of nerds the world over is guilty of pandering too.  You'd think a company that for decades has treated the term 'user friendly' the way David Hasselhoff treats O'Douls (Congratulations David you've finally made it into the blog, you should know, I was going to use Lindsey Lohan, but I decided you were the more pathetic fall-down drunk. You should be proud of this moment. Call your mom, just remember, you can't actually talk to her through your watch.).
Now, in their rush to compete with Apple, Microsoft is chasing after The Stupid, touting their user friendliness and, it would seem, dropping any and all pretense that their machine requires a modicum of intelligence.  The print ad is for Microsoft 7 (apparently in pandering to The Stupid they also decided it was best to use as simple a name as possible, really? Vista was too big a word?), it's a billboard which reads: "I asked for less clicks, I got less clicks."  Something sounds wrong right?  I'll tell you what's wrong it's FEWER clicks.  Look I can explain why this is wrong, or you can take my word for it.  I sugesst you take my word before I devolve into a letcure about adjective noun agreement. Just know this, the good people at Microsoft, the people who invented the little green squigly line that pops up under less when I typed 'less clicks' in this friggin' post know it's fewer, they know and they said screw it, less sounds more populist. 
 
Now I ask you, who's left to pander to us?  Quick, someone get me my Visa card!