Page 84 of 92

My English is very goodly!

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The Southeast Asian character who said that in a television show that’s stuck in a dusty corner of my memory—maybe a “M*A*S*H” episode?—got away with this funny line it because (1) she wasn’t a native English speaker and (2) it was the 1970s, excuses not available to the people who write and edit our newspapers and television newscasts today.

Last week  in The Washington Post Gene Weingarten lamented the death of English at the hands of journalists, the people you might have imagined should know how to properly use the tool that has expedited our exchange of information ever since evolution stole our ability to do that task with a simple sniff.

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post.  A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the “youngest” daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their “younger” daughter.  In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the “Obama’s.”  This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy.  Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

You in the hinterlands, do not take solace imagining that the plague is restricted to Our Nation’s Capital…oh no:

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of “spading and neutering.”  The Miami Herald reported on someone who “eeks out a living” — alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house.  The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a “doggy dog world.”  The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of “prostrate cancer.”

The demise of the language has not happened in a vacuum: readers supplied Weingarten with some of the more irksome examples they have stomached:

7. “loose,” as the opposite of “win.”

8. A mute point.

9. “amount” used to describe countable objects. 

Although regrettable, the slaying of the language by those who (arguably) should know better isn’t that much of a surprise.  These are the same people who, for instance, recently accepted the explanation from golfer Erica Blasberg’s doctor that he removed the suicide note and pill bottle from the scene of her suicide to save her family embarrassment without asking why he didn’t remove the plastic bag that was tied over her head, and who showed “dramatic video” shot from on board a Coast Guard helicopter of a rescue at sea without ever explaining why the boat was still speeding across the surf!

Got an excellent example of egregious and excess execution of English?  Hit the comment button and share with the class.

Oh, happy day!

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Why, the day they start to show new episodes of television series, of course!  It’s like Christmas without the lines or the bills or the lamenting about what to get everybody on the list because there’s something for everyone.  There are new stories from old favorites, and there are new offerings you can try for free without any down payment beyond your time.

Now, if you’re a Scrooge afoot in the land of TV, just go read a book and don’t bother the rest of us.  I’m not saying it’ll all be great, or even that much of it will be worthwhile.  But right now, it’s all shiny and full of possibility.  Still, I keep these precepts in mind:

Television can teach.  It can illuminate.  Yes, it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends.  Otherwise, it is merely lights and wires in a box.  (Edward R. Murrow)

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.  (Fred Allen)

 Time for the first show–see you later.

It makes a fella proud to be a Texan

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Cinderella story, comin’ outta nowhere…when you don’t expect it but can really use the boost:

It just so happens that it was a Princeton professor’s column which reminded me today that it was a Texan who stood up and declared to the world with crystal clarity nine years ago that the United States was at war, but not against a religion or its believers:

“The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.  That’s not what Islam is all about.  Islam is peace.  These terrorists don’t represent peace.  They represent evil and war.”

I fervently hope that we all remember that, and not take the easy course of venting pain and frustration on innocents who offer a convenient target.  Quite a few leaders from across the spectrum did speak up in defense of American values last week, to their everlasting credits.

Like a small group in Amarillo did on Saturday: when one of their neighbors decided to take up the cross of Quran burning (pardon the mixed metaphor), they responded with quick show of civil ingenuity:

"Any time you burn books, that’s ignorant," Danielson said.  "For us to burn their religion is showing hate."

Protesters threw their hands on the grill Grisham planned to use to burn the Quran, someone took his lighter and Isom stole the Quran, leaving him with just lighter fluid.

The would-be book burner went on about his business, the local imam offered the address of his mosque so anyone who was interested could come on by, and that was that.  Another lazy Saturday in Texas…gotta love it.

Reality check, comedy break

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Just two quick notes on what Tunku Varadarajan cleverly calls the “belligerent unenlightenment” of a portion of the American population:

First, the former assistant manager editor at The Wall Street Journal points out that it could be worse:

I am less worried by the fact that a fifth of the inhabitants of this great country believe that Obama is Muslim than by the fact that 60 percent of them are unwilling, or unable, to accept the scientific basis of evolution….Political bias can be a fleeting sickness; profound ignorance, on the other hand, can be incurable.

And second, because it’s just too damn funny not to share, a peek at what one columnist in Great Britain (a friend from an earlier post on a different subject) has to say on the topics of 5600 foot tall mosques, spatial relationships, and trespassing at Buckingham Palace.

According to a recent poll, one in five Americans believes Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though he isn’t.  A quarter of those who believe he’s a Muslim also claimed he talks about his faith too much.  Americans aren’t dumb.  Clearly these particular Americans have either gone insane or been seriously misled.  Where are they getting their information?

Where indeed?

Just the facts, ma’am

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

Wishing a thing to be true doesn’t make it true.  Despite what you hear about the president’s birthplace and religion.

We’ve talked about this before (here and here) but we need to keep pointing it out because it won’t go away all by itself: too many people today are willfully ignorant of verifiable truths that conflict with what they wish to be true (but isn’t).  I came across a wonderful column by Timothy Egan on this last week, important less for blaming perpetrators than for identifying why this hurts us:

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy.

(snip)

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war.  And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy.  At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes.  But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

They waste a lot of time and karmic energy, for starters.

Last week I received a chain e-mail in which the original author complains that Christians and Jews are discriminated against in the new health care insurance law, which itself marks the establishment of a system, called dhimmitude, by which the Muslims who have conquered this country through jihad will collect a tax from non-Muslims and permit us to continue to live here.

Seriously.  That’s what it says.

The writer (not the forwarder) laments that he, a Christian, will face “crippling IRS liens” on his assets and jail time when—not if—he refuses to buy health insurance or pay the penalty for not buying it, while Louis Farrakhan (a random example, surely) not only won’t face penalties, he’ll have “100% of his health needs paid for” by government insurance.  And to prove it all, he directs you to page 107 of the new health care insurance law where the word “dhimmitude” appears.

Except that it doesn’t, of course; it doesn’t appear in any of the pages of the new health care insurance law.  Nor does any jail time penalty for violators of the law.  Because this chain e-mail is a product of the south end of a northbound bull.

I checked what Snopes.com had to say and found that religious groups with an IRS exemption from paying Social Security and Medicare taxes on First Amendment grounds (and which, as a result, don’t receive benefits from either of those programs) could be exempt from the requirements of the new health care insurance law.  The entry at FactCheck.org agrees, and provides the link to the government data which makes clear that no Muslims are among the groups now exempt from Social Security and Medicare, and thus would not be exempt from the new health care insurance law.

So, in four minutes I learned that (1) Muslims are not exempt from the requirement to buy health insurance, but Amish and Mennonites and others could be (I did not know that), and (2) dhimmitude isn’t really a tenet of Islam, but an “academic concept” proposed by a writer with anti-Islam ties (fourth paragraph under Full Answer).  What I couldn’t find an answer to is, did anyone really believe that the word “dhimmitude” was right there on page 107 of the new health care insurance law, so anyone who read it would know what the conquering jihadists were doing?

Almost nothing in the chain e-mail was accurate, yet thousands of people are all worked up.  Over nothing.  At least, nothing factual from the chain e-mail, except perhaps that the Amish can opt out of Social Security.  Dang ol’ Amish get all the breaks.