Why the chicken crossed the road

As explained by...

The Bible
And God came down from the heavens, and He said unto the chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Jesse Jackson
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.

Baltimore Police Department
Give us five minutes with the chicken and we'll find out.

Richard Nixon
The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road. I don't know any chickens. I have never known any chickens.

Ernest Hemingway
To die in the rain.

Martin Luther King Jr.
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Grandpa Simpson
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Aristotle
It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.

Karl Marx
It was an historical inevitability.

Bashir Assad
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Ronald Reagan
What chicken?

Machiavelli
The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end result of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

Sigmund Freud
The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates
I am about to release Chicken Coop 10, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. And Explorer is an inextricable part of the operating system.

Albert Einstein
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

Bill Clinton
I did not cross the road with that chicken. However, I did ask Vernon Jordan to find the chicken a job in New York.

Walt
Because the chicken lacks any reasoning or decision-making capabilities, it seems unlikely that the chicken's action was spurred by any particular motivation.

Crusade for good English

Where is William Safire when we need him so desperately? Alas, he shuffled off the mortal coil back in 2009, and, since no-one has stepped up to the plate, perhaps Walt and Ed. can at least get into the on-deck circle.

Wherever Mr. Safire is, I hope he can't read that introduction. He was a long-time political columnist for the New York Times and the author of "On Language" in the New York Times Magazine. That column dealt with popular etymology, new or unusual usages, and other language-related topics, including the avoidance of overwrought and overused clichés.

Walt has a long-standing love affair with the English language, and was a great admirer of Mr. Safire's efforts to promote good (and witty) usage. A collection of his columns appeared in book form as On Language (Times Books, 1981) and has a place of honour in Walt's working library.

It's good, in a way, that William Safire is not alive today to see what has become of the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Churchill. Or great American writers and speakers like John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley Jr. Safire must have seen the dumbing-down of the language coming. Not just our language but our entire culture. Perhaps he was glad enough to leave the West to its decline.

Since the advent of "electronic communication", e-mail -- no-one writes proper letters any more -- and "text talk", the English language is not just in decline, but in free-fall. There are a few brave souls who, like King Cnut [careful... Ed.] are trying to stem the tide of illiteracy that threatens to inundate us. Over the next couple of weeks, Walt and Ed. will post some of their writings, with the aim of encouraging our dear readers to write (and speak) better, and eschew "English for dummies",

We begin with a link to "Neil Pasricha’s ‘awesome’ blog helped destroy language", by the Toronto Star's Heather Mallick. In this piece, Ms Mallick inveighs against "linguistic bleaching", which she calls a crime. She refers to the misuse of words in a way that drains them of meaning. Words like "awesome", which is used so often now that it has become awful... and not in the old sense of "full of awe". Please read and heed.

A big thank-you (note the hyphen) to Agents 6 and 17 for pushing us to do this.