Public Service

Math is hardly my strong suit. But I'm guessing that if the number of abused people were one tenth the number of abused words, you could double the total of victims assistance programs and there wouldn't be enough to handle half the cases.

Some assault stories turn out worse than others, which points out a key difference: you can't kill a word, although you certainly can beat the tar out of it.

No doubt the recently departed William Safire and professional lexicographers would have a more definitive short list of abused words in the English language. But this one, in no particular order, is mine: friend, expert and genius.

I can't think of another that takes the daily beatings endured by those three. The good news is that no two of them are likely to get hitched as a compound word any time soon, since they don't work particularly well when kept separate by a single space like some other pairings.

Like public service.

That's a good one, especially since it can mean different things to different people. After all, the more meanings that two words have when used together, the less likely you'll sound wrong in using them. Right?

When it comes to public service, probably the first meaning that would pop into anyone's head is anything that does the public a favor --- like a public service announcement that actually is more of a public service reminder, since it involves information that you already should know. Like stay in school, don't drive drunk, just say no and save the manatee.

Then there's the kind of public service that is even less likely to do the public any favors, except for the friends and families of those individuals who choose it as a career --- like politicians. Read the obituary for one and somewhere it will tell you, "after which he entered a life of public service," as though the guy had gone to the theater.

Somewhere in between the two, there may be some other kinds of public service. Like the kind that David Letterman performed recently, after he entered the theater that is the studio for his TV show. Looking out at the people in the seats and the cameras for the folks at home, the funnyman talked vaguely about his troubles --- the alleged extortion attempt, the fooling around with female staffers -- in a way that gave the audience the payoff it wanted: lots of laughs.

Better than that, though, Letterman did something for a throng that can't be measured by the Nielsen ratings that went up after his on-camera confession. That night and over the days that immediately followed, as the news media's bright light turned upon him with an intensity unknown by any bulb in a TV studio, he gave every desperate and damaged person a reason to think that as bad they have it, things could always be worse. The temperature of the soup they're in could be even higher. They could be Letterman.

If that isn't public service, I don't know what is.