Goatberg Game: 15 uses of personal pronoun in this week’s column


In his latest Wall Street Journal “Personal Technology” column, which is ostensibly about two laptops, egomaniacal gadget columnist Walt Mossberg uses “I” or “my” or “me” a total of 15 times, and they’re all unnecessary. At least half of these could have been excised with a simple press of the “delete” key and the sentence would not have changed at all. The other uses could also have been eliminated but would have required some reworking of the sentence.

Fifteen incidents is not even close to setting a new record, but still and all this is a stellar performance and we’re glad to see Goatberg back in top form after his nosedive last week. Molodetz, tovarish!

FWIW, this week’s “Personal Technology” column is not entirely about Walt. It’s also a review of two new tiny notebooks from Lenovo and Asus. Neither company solicited Walt’s input during the design stage, which is a shame, because now Walt doesn’t like either of them.

In contrast, Walt played a very big role in helping us design the 3G iPhone, and from what he’s told us so far, he lurves the review unit we sent him. Like he wants to marry it and have babies with it. That’s what he said in his email to me. I told him if he puts that line in his review I will let him come up on stage at MacWorld, which is something he’s been bugging me to let him do for years now. It’s like the number one item on his list of things to do in life. He was like, “Master, are you serious? I could be on stage? Right there beside you? Don’t toy with me, I beg you.”

I told him, “Walt, let’s wait and see what your review looks like. You know what we’re expecting from you. Katie will write up the actual language and send it to you. Then the ball’s in your court.”

What I’m really going to do is get him to write that line and then tell him I changed my mind and he can’t come on stage after all. But please don’t tell Walt that. I want it to be a surprise.