All your quotes are belong to us

Do you stereotype? Of course you do. We all do. Here's one way I do it: I assume people who use the phrase "type thing" are not very bright. At least not bright enough to hide their true meaning with more supple wording.

I know, I know. It's not fair. Stereotyping never is. But when the customer service person says, "It's a policy type thing," I hear, "I don't actually know what our policy is and I don't know how to handle this situation. Also, I'm unimaginative and lack initiative. Please don't ask to speak to my manager."

Likewise, when your IT support dude says, "It's a weird glitch-type thing," you know he means, "Whoa, I've never seen this in Windows XP before. I have no idea what to do next." Dude, just say so. We're cool.

And when Sarah Palin's father says the following, I know what he really means is, "Sarah doesn't like brown people."

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to [Scott] Conroy and [Shushannah] Walshe [authors of Sarah From Alaska]. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”

This blog is scrupulously apolitical. So trust me, it's not a snooty, liberal elite type thing. It's a calls 'em like I sees 'em type thing.

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Hoops type thing at St. John's tomorrow. We tip off at 8:00 a.m. Let me know if you will or will not be there.