More with me finding humor in places I really probably shouldn’t.

difrancoApparently, a bunch of people got offended by Ani DiFranco appearing in Inc. magazine “wearing a t-shirt that appears to read, ‘I had an abortion.’”

Personally, I think everyone is just jumping to conclusions. The shirt is partially obscured, and while it’s certainly possible that ‘abortion’ is the word in question, that’s certainly not the only possibility.

Now, assuming the shirt is gramatically correct, the word in question does need to begin with a vowel, as “an” is used immediately beforehand. Now, I have no idea what Ani’s sexual orientation is, but she could simply be using the shirt to brag about having a sex life, as whether it be penile, digital, or a strap-on, “insertion” is a perfectly good possibility.

Or, perhaps she recently expounded upon her stance on one point or another, and had an “assertion”.

If she’d just gotten back from the gym, she might have had an “exertion”.

If we drop the assumption that the shirt used the English language correctly, more possibilities appear. For instance, if someone had misquoted her in a previous article, she might be wearing the shirt to subtly complain about having had a “distortion” in a prior interview.

And while I’m finding it difficult to figure out how to work “proportion” into our scenario, it’s another option. Perhaps a little dadaist wierdness is all this is.

In any case, it seems to be a fair amount of controversy over a shirt when we can’t even be entirely sure what the message on the shirt says.

[See also: Lost in linguistic labrynths | Dangerous Feet and Good Diction | Like | The Purity of the English Language | A link for dad ]

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