Four London Blasts Kill 40, Injure 700
Attacks kill 33 in London, Blair breaks off summit
Four London Blasts Kill 37, Injure 700

-three “Top Stories” headlines taken from the same page of a single news site this afternoon

This morning I was indulging in an occasional weakness, listening to talk radio at work. I normally do this when things have gotten desperately boring and I feel like hearing someone implicate Saddam Hussein in the death of Terry Schiavo, but today I was just looking to feel a little more connected to the world outside my cubicle than usual.

While making the admittedly grave mistake of listening to Bill O’Reilly’s vacation replacement, I heard the host bring his spin-free listeners up to date on the situation in London. He mentioned that one of the bombs was clearly the work of an Arab suicide bomber before adding, “Of course, no one actually knows any of this for certain, so keep in mind that this is dynamic information.”

“Dynamic information” has now been added to my new Phrase of the Week collection.

Dynamic Information: news that may change due to fact reporting that has been spontaneously imagined, up to (but not including) blaming current events on pixies and leprechauns. This phenomenon was previously known as “incorrect” or “not” information.

In the midst of this morning’s dynamic information, I vividly remembered the morning ten years ago when I emerged from my History of the Eastern Orthodox Church class just in time to see the smoldering ruins of the Oklahoma City federal building on the co-opted “video jukebox” screens in our dorm cafeteria. As I sat down with my eggs, I heard reporter Connie Chung (who as a woman and a minority had doubtless faced no end of prejudice on her way to the CBS news desk) intone, “In an attack that has Middle Eastern terrorism written all over it….”

“Please, oh please,” I silently begged my God, “let it be a white guy.”

Previous Phrases of the Week:

“brand identity,” “priestcraft”