I think you’ve got a point there; I agree with “Authorised by…” messages where the candidate themselves isn’t actually in the ad (Think the “You don’t change horses in mid-stream” ads from Wag The Dog), but it seems a bit daft to have Senator Noteworthy doing a spiel on how, if elected El Presidente, he will give everyone a free kitten or puppy, and then finish with a statement to the effect that he- the person who’s been on the front page of every paper in the country for months and appears on CNN every time he opens a bottle of soft drink- is Senator Noteworthy and he approves the message he’s just spoken.
Here in Australia all Government ads have an “Authorised By (State/Commonwealth) Government, (Capital City)” thing at the end, along with the names of anyone who actually spoke in the ad. I like the accountability aspect of it but I really don’t see how having “Spoken by F. Bloggs and J. Smith” adds any useful information to the proceeedings.
Yeah, I was gonna say. Unless the candidate is from Pittsburgh, where the dishes need done and the dog needs walked, it should be “I approve OF this message.”
But go figure, my bad, anymore people talk like this and I could care less.
That’s silly, Rilchiam. To “approve” something means to vet it and declare it acceptable. To “approve of” something means to have some vague good feeling about it. Like most prescriptivist claims, this one is wide off the mark.