Tag Archives: Commentary

Having to do with a tendency to talk, talk, talk. But hey, even a blind pig finds a truffle now and then.

Pick it up there, how about it?

keep right!There is something that approximately one in five of you could do for the rest of us, something that seems quite easy, and why wouldn’t you want to do something easy that helped many other people?  It really would  entail no downside for you at all.  It’s simply a matter of keeping up with traffic, if you could please.  Or getting out of the way.  Thanks so much.

See, I began commuting on four-lane, non-Interstate highways recently.  These roads have traffic signals rather frequently along the way, and I find myself stopped behind lines of cars several times in my 20-mile trip to work.  The really surprising thing I have noticed is how many people continue to sit still when the light turns green.  Then, once they finally get going, they allow the cars in front of them to pull even farther away while they maintain a much slower speed, and yes, as you might have guessed, they usually occupy the left lane where they do not belong.

All these people would have to do is depress their gas pedals a fraction more, and they would be right there, a reasonable distance behind the car in front of them; instead, the car in front of them disappears in the distance while they cruise along right beside the car next to them in the right lane.  Meanwhile many cars are piling up behind them, and many of the drivers inside them are becoming quite annoyed. Continue reading

National Toilet Day? Not nearly grandiose enough!

[Edit:  Dang, I missed the 19th by eleven minutes!  Oh, well.]

Today is a memorable day in human history, we’re told. The World Toilet Organization has declared it National Toilet Day.  The WTO (not that one, this one) seems to want to pull a straight face as they do so, though.  They would remind us, rather gravely, of the filth in which we would live were it not for the “porcelain convenience” to which most of us in the western world have become accustomed.  Talk about serious; organizers delivered speeches Wednesday on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol.  The U.S. is even using a shuttle mission to deliver a new toilet to the international space station. The toilet is really making headlines (did I say that?).

The straight face might betray itself with a few wry creases as the organizers state that the WTO “has been striving to elevate the status of toilets to make  them status symbols and objects of desire.”

Or maybe they are not grinning behind this facade; maybe they are sincere.  Maybe these fellas just ain’t been around that much.  But object of desire?  I mean, I have seen some smooth curves on a nicely turned out commode in my time, but I never really had any desire for them, not the way I might harbor lust for, say, my girl Scarlett Johansson [2][3]. Continue reading

The Founders – Not Godly, But Wise

Tonight’s A Prairie Home Companion impressed me as a pure and joyful celebration of the election of Barack Obama–perhaps the best expression of that joy that I have heard thus far.  In the opening minutes, Jearlyn Steele and Garrison Keilor teamed up for a rousing rendition of “America the Beautiful,” and as they sang, I found myself thinking back, impressed at the genius of our Founding Fathers.  Against some pretty steep odds, and after an uncomfortably long period of foundering, the ship of state has righted itself, but not through any random miracle or massive act of violence; it has righted itself through the foresight and devotion to reason shown by that intrepid group of 18th century philosopher-poets in their attempt to create a utopia and bequeath it to the generations yet to come.

If you need something to cheer you up, you really should hear the show, and it might be available by the time you read this.  Check HEREContinue reading

Where Is Your God Now, Libbie?

Having plumbed a new low in North Carolina politics–and, let’s face it, a low in NC, the home of Jesse Helms, is by default, a national low–Elizabeth Dole has managed to lose her senate seat, perhaps primarily by accusing her opponent, Kay Hagan, of being (gasp) an atheist.

Well, in point of fact, she lost by merely occupying her senate seat instead of actually doing anything productive for the state and nation, and by being more closely associated with her husband’s home state of Kansas than with her native state.  But still, the political ad, which New York Magazine, in their supplement entitled “Our Super-duper, Ultrasimple Election-Watching Guide,” called “the single worst ad by any candidate in 2008″ did not help her desperate cause.

This development is really kind of encouraging to one who has lived in the state for almost 40 years–not that North Carolina political ads continue to be so debased as to leave only disgust in the minds and hearts of thinking people everywhere, but that this last foray into the muck has not succeeded in bringing victory.  This stuff usually works great here!  What happened? Continue reading

Good ol’ boy network? I hardly think so

The recent anti-élite campaign jargon of the McCain-Palin camp has made use of a most annoying–but ubiquitous–malapropism.  Palin, especially, refers rather often, and rather annoyingly, to the “good ol’ boy network.”  If anything could solidify one’s status as outside of the élite, this off-target utterance would be that thing.  See, there is a world, or at least a continent, of difference between a “good old boy” and an “old boy,’ and rest assured, it is the old boys who have the network to which one really wants to belong.

You’d never be able to buy your way in to either network, however.  An “old boy” is a graduate of one of England’s “public” or independent schools, someplace like Eton College.  While good ol’ boys have quite the little network of their own, membership will cost one very little.  All one has to do is be among the fourth or fifth generation of a respectable, church-going family living in some region of the rural south, and you’re well on your way.  True, this membership will only take one only just so far.  Still, A “good ol’ boy” need not have graduated from anywhere, even an American public high school.  One need only possesses a spectrum of traits, which make one worthy of the title, rendered somewhat lovingly in one’s absence.

The term signifies one’s apparent humility, one’s apparent basic decency, as well as one’s obvious tendency to withhold any forthright opinion on any particular topic in the presence of strangers.  This is the central trait of the good ol’ boy, and one he holds in common with many of his upper-crust British cohort.  He leaves people free to hold, and even to express, the most outlandish positions on matters many and various.  He’ll never tell anyone they’re wrong; he’ll never tell people what he thinks about that topic, but you will never win him over to your line of thinking, no matter how solid your argument.  Oh, you will think he agrees with you, but you will want to be a fly on the wall when next he gets together with others of his ilk to know the truth.

Although he is a man of no apparent opinions in the presence of people he doesn’t know that well, one finds he is also a man of rigidly held, dogmatic beliefs once one gets to know him.  It is this trait, and perhaps this trait alone, which he shares in common with the old boys of Britain.  It is this trait, perhaps, that serves as a marker of his common heritage with the ruling élite of the United Kingdom.

On a related note, one has noticed how natives of tiny, overpopulated island nations have a way of taking politeness to the next level.  Look at Japan and England, for example.  I mean, they come by this trait naturally, it seems, and it is easy to see why.  How uncomfortable would it be to spend time with someone once one had established a source of disagreement with him or her?  Best, then, to keep all such disagreements from ever surfacing, to keep one’s own counsel, to state forthright opinion only among those one knows already hold the same opinion.  It only makes sense.

Jury Duty? Almost!

On Oct. 14, 2008, the Word of the Day from the Oxford English Dictionary was jury.  The OED is a little more thorough than many dictionaries in that their lexicographers not only define words, but also chart the use of those  words over time, providing copious verbatim quotations to that effect.  In this case, the story of the word jury begins in 1187 with a reference in Latin.  One might have thought the word would be somewhat older, but we apparently did not derive the entirety of our civic system from the ancients.

The OED defines the word thus:

A company of persons (orig. men) sworn to render a verdict or true answer upon some question or questions officially submitted to them; in modern times, in a court of justice, usually upon evidence delivered to them touching the issue; but in the earliest times usually upon facts or matters within their own knowledge, for which reason they were summoned from the neighborhood to which the question submitted to them related….

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Identity: What’s Race Got to Do with It?

picture of bikeIt was bound to happen, and it did, early in the campaign so that measures could be taken.  I refer, of course, to the calls from various entities that Barack Obama is “tryna ac’ white.”  I don’t know exactly what the Obama campaign did to quell this particular complaint, but it seems to have gone away as quickly as it came.

The issue makes one wonder, though.  For example, how would a person go about doing such a thing?  If he or she did so successfully, how would another person tell if he were doing it and if it were intentional?  Apparently, many people see no problem making such judgments.  Also significant, though, is whether a person can be judged too harshly for doing it in the first place.  I mean, lots of white people do it every day, apparently, and it’s hard to condemn a whole race without coming in for some condemnation yourself.

Another question occurs as a natural outgrowth of the conversation:  Assuming that certain behaviors and attitudes still can be recognized as “white” or “black” in 21st century America, why do such racial distinctions still exist after centuries of racial coexistence?  Wouldn’t you think, under normal circumstances, that a certain blending and mellowing would have taken place over the centuries?  Wouldn’t you think that whatever differences existed historically would have by this time become almost imperceptible?  That, clearly, is not the case.  Something must be going on here.  One wonders how intentional this something might be.

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OK, I Give!

St. SebastianYeah, that’s the way it is with me. Not one to be a martyr in a lost cause, I give up, already.

See, you don’t know me, but I am one of those people–one of those really disgusting people, apparently–who knows all the words and all the grammar and usage rules, but what’s the use, really? I mean, none of it seems to do anyone any good anymore, does it? It’s certainly nothing to boast about in today’s cultural milieu. One should, rather, hang one’s head in shame for knowing all those words and all those rules. Sign of a misspent youth and all that, what?

“Hey, wait,” you say. “You cocky jerk, isn’t it ‘all of the words’ and ‘all of the rules'”? Not really. Nope. And what about knows? Surely, people know things, don’t they? Well, they do, but one person knows things. This one confuses M$ Word’s grammar checker, too, so give yourself a pass. Score one for you if you marked the cliche near the end there, however.

The fact is, though, I’m tired. Having fought the good fight in an English classroom for a quarter century, I can say rather authoritatively that the fight already is over and the other side has won. The barbarians are at the gates, and we’re trapped inside the walls living in our own filth. We’re obviously correct in everything we say or write, but that doesn’t make the air smell any better in here, does it?

But, as my in-laws from Long Island say, “wadda-ya gonna do?” The forces acting to change language are just too strong. Resistance is futile, or perhaps I should say, feudal. I am going to go ahead and be ass-immolated.
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“Shooting Spree”

Whitman.jpgThis is one “convention” of journalists that could use some some serious reflection. Whenever someone shoots more than one or two victims, members of the chattering class will refer to the incident as a “shooting spree.” The phrase, ringing so close to the more common “shopping spree,” makes it sound as if someone were having just a whole lot of fun killing people.

The phrase is problematic on so many levels. It has become a particularly obnoxious cliché in the vast majority of cases, it is anything but accurate; furthermore, and more to the point, the phrase could encourage impressionable fringe characters by making the actions of a crazy person sound attractive and fun.

I don’t know which is a worse offense, frankly. I hate cliché s, I hate fuzzy, inaccurate prose, but the idea of making a destructive act of utter desperation sound like fun does not strike me as all that useful, either.
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Forward Slash?

Or even more nonsensically, forwardslash.

Where in the world has this new trend come from? I refer to the tendency of calling a “slash” a “forward slash.”

The keyboard has always had a slash character. On the “qwerty” keyboard, it’s there in the lower-right corner under the question mark. It’s a slash. It always has been, at least since Civil War days.

Now people in the media are referring to it as a “forward slash,” and the trend is growing. Why would this be? Where did all this unnecessary folderol come from? I’m thinking it has to do with the various marketing departments of many large firms and their constant efforts at idiot-proofing the world.

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