I'm thinking about language, manners and civility as they relate to politics. I was outside Home De-pot the other day. A Philly cheesesteak outfit has set up shop out front, and we decided to stop by. A mid-40s looking, hairy white guy in a yellow tank top walks up with his son, under ten.
"Sup, dawg?" he says to the cheesesteak guy.
[Sound of needle violently skidding off of record player]
"Good evening, Sir."
Thugged-out Hulkster wannabe orders SIX hot dogs (no, make that seven, I'll eat one on the way home), shops, returns, and 'Sup dawgs' again. The vessels in my head want to explode. I pity the boy in tow. I just read somewhere that the English language is undergoing its most significant evolution (a major overhaul, a mutation of cultural transmission and redefinition) since Shakespearean times, some 500 years ago. However, this does nothing to soothe me nor defy the terrible irony that this unseemly gent just engaged in the lowest form of street English. Why did he do it?
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SIDEBAR 1: Linguistics
Article: "Texts, e-mails and t.v. slang transforming English"
- Webpage: The Bad Linguistics Page - offers counterpoint on the premise that English is degenerating, discusses foreign language aptitudes
- Forum: From a discussion on a NYT article regarding students' declining scores
"Hell, this is a culture (from what we are being fed through music/movies/entertainment which I know is not always an accurate depiction of real life but it's what we are being shown as the way things are) that prides itself on ignorance. A culture that puts pimps, drug dealers and the 'thug life' as what is to be aspired to."
"And we wonder why the kids from this environment don't care about education."
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SIDEBAR 2: Political orientation, taboos, and the awkward, polarized disaffection we find ourselves in:
- Forum: From a discussion on the first lady of the U.S. attempting to shake an Indonesian Minister's hand, which is taboo in a Muslim country:
"I personally find it useful to think of it automotive terms. The 'left' of the political spectrum is the accelerator, the 'right' is the brake. Neither is the answer by itself, you can accelerate out of control and crash or you can never get off the brake and go nowhere."
"The majority of people in any given society just want predictability. They just want to have a job and a family and a reasonable expectation that they will still have those things tomorrow. Call them conservatives."
"Others agitate for change in pursuit of ideals. The ones who want to turn the world on its ear in order to right injustice. Those are liberals."
"The problem is that we'd never have come down out of the trees if we followed the first camp and we'd have a new government every other day if we followed the second."
/being a whole-hearted adherent to either side is stupid
Sure, but like restoring works of art, don't we want to keep the institutions in good order that keep civility intact, repudiate ignorance, and make our nation strong? How did we find ourselves reversing everything we knew to be good and true a decade ago, normalizing political correctness, and so cowardly to appease that we embarked on a national apology tour? That we forbade a 13 year-old from riding a bike to school that flew a small U.S. flag, lest we offend someone? And so on, and so forth.
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So I'm at Applebee's the next day: men eating with hats on?! (Backward baseball caps) Take your damn hats off at the dinner table. Set an example. Care. I went to a Ryan's Steakhouse buffet once, and after the lady tending the buffet got done sharing a parole story, I noticed that dad, elder son, youngest son all sat in a row like birds on a wire, each with ball caps donned and elbows on table.
Don't say, "'Sup dawg!" and expect to be taken seriously!
Moving on up the chain... if you're a president or first lady, GET YOURSELVES A PROTOCOL STAFF. The principals were not "keepin' it classy, keepin' it real" because they invited Hollywood over to the W.H. And our leaders don't belong on talk shows.
We should not tolerate Jon Steward calling our president "Dude."
Getty Images
It's a noisome, fatuous trend. Look at some notable recent fauxs pas:
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Don't make people take down the cross when you elect to speak in their offices
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Don't make the Dalai Lama walk by trash at your state visit
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Don't try to hug the Queen of England
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Don't repeatedly exclude the "God" part of the Declaration of Independence
And the worst of all:
- Obama: "
We are not a Christian nation." by John Eidsmoe (Author's final line: "America’s generosity is a response learned from our Christian heritage.")
Tell me, on
whose authority did the noble community organizer pass that dirty lie?
I don't mean to only call out the White House, but we need a return to civility, common ideals and common ground. Instead, we focus on what makes us different rather than what unifies us. Why do we pride ourselves on ignorance? Why are so many forces complicit in standing up to traditional values? Why don't people dress the way they did to ride an airplane 30+ years ago, and instead wear pajamas, flip-flops, and other underwear in public? Why do we have a
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/ website? Why are we racing to the bottom? If you dropped a stone, would you hear it hit?
