Probably Only Funny to Me

Speaking of reading about entertainment (see below), I have a huge pet peeve. It is when people refer to a person working in a clandestine capacity for the CIA as a “CIA agent”. They aren’t. They are CIA officers. They can be called “operatives” in today’s parlance (which the media like to say), but an “agent” is the person you turn out like a hooker on the other end of the deal.

This comes up after I read this article about George Clooney, where is says he hurt himself “when filming Syriana, a political thriller based on the memoirs of Robert Baer, a former CIA agent who was tortured on assignment in the Middle East.” That seems to indicate that Clooney was a Middle Easterner whom the CIA had gotten to flip on his homeland for loot or idealogical reasons. That doesn’t seem likely to me.

Here is the part I found funny:

Close associates claim doctors dismissed Clooney’s complaints until spinal fluid started leaking from his nose. Since then he has had numerous operations on the dura mater membrane.

What is funny about that? Not the injury, numerous operations, or horrific thought of spinal fluid leaking out of his nose. That’s horrifying. Not, what is funny to me is the fact that we have a membrane called “dura mater”, which is Latin for “tough mother”. That sounds like some shit Samuel L. would say if he were Roman.

~ by kinshay on 2005-10-23.