Breathless!

Am I writing about Breathless Mahoney? No. I'm not.

There are some circles of the web in which they sometimes describe certain speech as "breathless". For instance, Dan Rather was breathless when he made his big goof. It seems to be the case that someone is breathless when they say something too soon, without enough thought. I can understand that, but I get the feeling too often that disagreement is mischaracterized as thoughtlessness. I agree that Rather was careless, but let's not get carried away with the out of breath metaphor.

And while we're at it, can we stop calling our opponents stupid with the phrase "reading comprehension"? That'd be nice. I know it's frustrating to be misunderstood, but this doesn't improve the very communication that's causing the problem.