The last overused phrase
Permit me to take the contrarian view in today's debate over the attempted trademarking of the phrase "Last Best Place."
A Las Vegas businessman has applied for eight trademarks covering various uses of the phrase. William Kittredge, who actually put the words together back in 1988, is adamantly opposed to the notion of someone else restricting the use of a phrase he coined.
That's certainly Kittredge's right, but damn it, doesn't *somebody* need to do some restricting? This has to be the horribly overused and vapid construction currently blighting the English language. (OK, so I exaggerate slightly.) All sorts of two-bit real estate developments get stuck with this label. An Ohio clothing company uses it. What on earth could be last, or best, about Big Sky?
There's a beautiful poetry to the phrase, and a romanticism that probably fit the anthology of Montana literature that Kittredge was trying to title when he put the words together. But "the last best place" has come to be adopted by precisely the forces that are squeezing the last out of what was once Montana's best.
Here a Montana native threatens to boycott the resort behind the trademarking. But I say he's not going far enough. Seems to me folks as ornery as Montanans would want to extend the boycott to anyone using that phrase to market their resort or real estate development.
Join the discussion at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnclaytonoutreach/, or let me know your thoughts via info at johnclaytonbooks (and you can fill in the rest).
A Las Vegas businessman has applied for eight trademarks covering various uses of the phrase. William Kittredge, who actually put the words together back in 1988, is adamantly opposed to the notion of someone else restricting the use of a phrase he coined.
That's certainly Kittredge's right, but damn it, doesn't *somebody* need to do some restricting? This has to be the horribly overused and vapid construction currently blighting the English language. (OK, so I exaggerate slightly.) All sorts of two-bit real estate developments get stuck with this label. An Ohio clothing company uses it. What on earth could be last, or best, about Big Sky?
There's a beautiful poetry to the phrase, and a romanticism that probably fit the anthology of Montana literature that Kittredge was trying to title when he put the words together. But "the last best place" has come to be adopted by precisely the forces that are squeezing the last out of what was once Montana's best.
Here a Montana native threatens to boycott the resort behind the trademarking. But I say he's not going far enough. Seems to me folks as ornery as Montanans would want to extend the boycott to anyone using that phrase to market their resort or real estate development.
Join the discussion at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnclaytonoutreach/, or let me know your thoughts via info at johnclaytonbooks (and you can fill in the rest).
