It Goes Without Saying, Or Does It?

"It goes without saying that. . ." I don't know how many times I have heard that expression. The most recent was just a few hours ago in a newscast. It's an idiotic expression because the speaker always follows it up with saying whatever "it" is.

When the expression comes up I find myself wanting to scream, "It would have gone without saying, but you blew it! You've said it now. So, it didn't get to go without saying."

The idiocy of such statements is that the speaker makes a liar of him/herself even as he/she speaks. Somehow, the fact of that escapes the person. Why is that? Don't people listen to themselves?

Just a few minutes after that report went off, I was listening to yet another newscaster use the phrase, "Needless to say, . . ." Yes, he went on to say exactly the thing he just told us was needless to speak about. I don't know about you, but I don't tune into news reports with the intention of listening to people babbling on about things they think are not necessary to say.

Do we really mean it when we say, "it goes without saying," or "needless to say"? If not, we need to drop such phrases from our speech. If we do mean them, then we need to know when to shut up and not say. Needless to say, all this goes without saying, or it would have if I had just kept it to myself.

That's Wade's two cents.

Wade Houston
September 12, 2007