On John Cougar's first-ever hit, from 1979, the Hoosier poet mewls about how he needs "a lover that won't drive me crazy." Nee Mellencamp even further clarifies that that obscure object of desire would be "some girl," so we're definitely talking about a human here. You know what that means, Johnny? You need a lover WHO won't drive you crazy!
That kind of slipshod grammar would never fly here at OPC.
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Have you not noticed this problem everywhere? Any minute of any day, on TV news or TV fiction, you'll hear someone toss out the "that" structure, as though people are objects. It's on a par with the horrific "This involved the senator and I" error. Which grates so very much.
I've actually complained to people I know at the all-news networks. (I am the exact opposite of proud to have admitted that just now.)
although, ironically, "Hurt So Good" should not be called "Hurt So Well."
as Dietrich on Barney Miller would say, "yeah, well, irregardless."
It's kind of a shame that we have to refer to "Hurt So Good" at all.
I'd argue that "Hurt So Good," as a phrase, is correct. You don't say "That feels well," do you? (Actually, I know people who do, in a desperate attempt to sound educated.)
So I stand by that horrible, horrible song.
Yes, "Hurts [sic] So Good" is correct, under the same principle that leads us to say, "I feel bad," rather than "I feel badly," as some folks trying to sound sophisticated would have it.
In another life, I worked as an architect for a very well-established guy who'd gone to Pratt but had very little actual education. And, in a hail-Mary to seem sophisticated, he would always look at a finished project and declare, "This looks well."
Something inside me died.
Died.
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