Herald Sun Shmerald Sun.

Allow me a moment to be outraged at a Herald Sun headline again.

BONUS HUMBLE PIE

the headline cleverly screams. See how the first letter of each word make up the word BHP?

First issue with this: a CEO forgoing $7 million in profit has nothing to do with being humble.

I'm not going to look in the dictionary, but to me, humble means being understated, not going around telling people you have loads of money or whatever just because you do.

Second issue: if we take the phrase as a whole - that is, 'humble pie' as it's supposed to be used in context - it still makes no sense.

Is not the phrase 'eating humble pie' used when somebody makes an error, and is forced to apologise or atone for such an error? To me, the headline implies that Marius Kloppers has made a grave error in judgement, and is now atoning for it.

They further somehow make the link from his salary and bonus - which is a minute amount, when compared to the profits of BHP - to super funds taking a hit. What.

If anything, the man should be lauded, rather than made out to be in the wrong for making so much money.

I'm not sure whether the Herald Sun is supposed to be left wing or right wing, and it never really struck me as being particularly left or right (not that I ever bothered to really look into it), but I think it's fairly obvious that even if it's not left wing, it's definitely anti-right. Most of their stuff can be summarised as reading:

"How dare he make so much money when so many of us don't? Why don't all of us make millions of dollars? What did he ever do to deserve higher pay than us? It's not like he does anything anyway. Where's our free money?"

I don't really know what my point is, but it just really annoys me.

Word of the Day: Humble