Well, I hate to say I told you so, but.
Actually, NO-ONE hates to say that. Everyone loves it, with a few possible exceptions.
Like, ‘I hate to say I told you so, but pressing that red button on the jet/space shuttle dashboard was a bad idea’.
Even then, the admonition is more likely to be ‘didn’t I tell you not to press that red button/pull that pin/swing a punch at that hormonally freakish gorilla impersonator, etc.’ (And rhetoric is central here as well, given that we both KNOW you told me not to do the life/dignity imperilling thing I’ve just done.)
Although at least this is an age old device.
I’ve noticed, in my own pedantic curmudegeonly way, a bit of slippage in other forms of social linguistic smugness and rudeness. (Although it’s not the rudeness I mind, more the vapid ‘my denial makes it not true’ mindset).
I seem to remember that, once upon a golden non-existent halcyon age of linguistic exactitude, people would seek to mitigate a rude comment by prefacing it with something along the lines of, “I don’t wish to appear rude but…[insert gratuitous insult, preferably with a bit of creative compound swearing here]“
More recently this seems to have lapsed into, “I’m not being rude but..”
No, you ARE being rude.
This is not unlike politicians and other mendacious rhetorical fucktards saying they ‘utterly refute’ a comment when all they mean is that they deny it. (The other side of the same coin is represented by the mewling, greeting imbeciles pleading, “But I want this SOOOO much” as they get booted off whichever talent free freak show they’re competing on this week. ‘I want- therefore it must be so’)
It’s as if sheer force of will can morph a blatant insult into a socially valid criticism or a flat denial into a reasoned counterargument.
The qualifiers might be inadequate but at least they acknowledge that somewhere, beneath a fatuous statement that someone feels they have to make, is a degree of awareness- and forewarning- that it might be just the slightest bit irritating.
On which retrograde note, I’m ever so slightly pleased to be able to point out that I told you so-(it really doesn’t matter all that much), but it appears that ukuleles are on the way up.
November 4, 2007 at 1:29 am
Yes its a bit of a “with respect” kind of statement.
And about that red button thing. Check the list here.