Dear Entertainment Press: "amazing" is not a synonym for "good"

Cafe Society
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and it would be such a delight if you could embrace that fact.

By way of example, the Grammy performances. Off the top of my head, exactly ONE could easily qualify as an “amazing” performance: Pink doing trapeze moves while singing beautifully.

Every other performance that night fell somewhere between “horrible” (Taylor Swift) and “excellent” (pick your favorite). Here are some other adjectives you might want to think about the next time you find yourself wanting to label Lady Gaga and Elton John singing a duet as “amazing”:

Rousing
Entertaining
Exciting
Fun
Thrilling
Terrific
Top-notch
and so forth. Consider the wonder that is a thesaurus. Better yet, consider the wonder that is an electronic thesaurus. Chances are, you have at least one on your computer, probably more than one. And there are several excellent ones available online.

Stop being so lazy and diluting the English language into mush. I’ve learned to accept the very sad fact that a powerful word like “awesome” has devolved into meaning “neato”, and I think that’s plenty for one lifetime.

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Often when I hear entertainment reporters using words like “amazing,” “astonishing,” “unbelievable,” or “unique” I find myself agreeing with them.

Although I realize it’s a kind of dumbing down of the language, I prefer to think of it as code speak for, “I think this is utter crap but I’d get fired for saying that, since the studios/sponsors have lavished a fortune promoting this hack. Instead, I’ll call it ‘amazing’ and we’ll keep it between ourselves.”