Sap, indeed

Technorati Tags: New York Times,David Brooks,President Obama,Republicans

David Brooks, over at The New York Times, has unloaded on President Obama.

Brooks claims to have been “a sap” for believing just about anything Mr. Obama has said over the past 2 1/2 years because of the specifics in the President’s new plan to cut some taxes and raise some others.

But Mr. Brooks’ sappiness really becomes obvious when, towards the end of his column he writes: “at least Republicans respect Americans enough to tell us what they really think.”

Oh, Dave, Dave, Dave.

If you believe Republicans respect the average American, you’re such a sap.

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content

2nd step in reading

Technorati Tags: Doonesbury,Censorship,Palin,Reading,JoeMcGinnis

The current brouhaha regarding the Doonesbury comic strip is a good example of distraction as a metaphor for sleight of hand.

The strip is being censored in a few newspapers for its political content. At least that’s alleged reason.

If you look at the strips in question, though, it’s easy to see that Gary Trudeau isn’t being critical of Sarah Palin so much as he’s taking some shots at Fox News and the sort of newspapery being touted as journalism by right wing news outlets.

The panels quote from Joe McGinnis’s new book, to be sure, but the punch lines are aimed directly at the journalist who’s reading the book and then spinning the quoted material in absurd terms. He is the object of ridicule, not the former 1/2 governor (see the distraction?).

The sleight of hand comes in when the censoring newspapers allege it’s the political content which merits the removal of the strip, but actually those newspapers don’t want the public to think about what the comic journalist is doing. That might call too much attention to what the papers, themselves, are doing in reporting the political news.

It’s time for the English teachers of the world to point out to their students that calling words is only the first step in reading. The second step is thinking about the content of those words.

If there were more thought in the reading process, we’d’ve learned long ago that individual politicians are transitory, but institutions are more permanent. And there’s more danger to a flawed journalism institution than there is in a single pol.

Trust, but verify. 

 

Sphere: Related Content

School Days

It’s that time of year again—the imminent commencement of K-12 conventional schooling. It’s also that time of year for the usual words of caution and wisdom from edu-nerds pontificating in various newspapers and newsmagazines.

And, as usual, the focus will be on teachers, facilities, administrations and education measurements coming out of New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota and No Child Left Behind.

And, as usual, there will be little attention given to the role played by parents, even though parents are doubtless just as important in a child’s education as any other factor under public scrutiny.

It isn’t easy being a parent. It certainly isn’t easy being a parent in this very complex society of ours.

If the society is to continue to evolve in such a way that provides a “better” living for its members, we need to focus more energy and resources on supporting the parent component of educating the young—and that might well start with a class on child-rearing responsibilities, maybe in middle school.  Lesson 1:  Don’t even think about having a child unless you’re ready to commit for the 18-year-long haul.

The state of California requires a license before a person can work as a manicurist; the state of California does not require any sort of training for rearing a child.

How much sense does that make?

Read, if you must, the editorials and commentaries about what is needed to fix our “failing” schools. If they don’t mention parents, ignore them.

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content

Plop, Plop

Technorati Tags: Ross Douthat,David Mamet,Language,New York Times,Los Angeles Times

How annoying it is when writers become so lazy that they debase the language along with their ideas.  For instance:

Ross Douthat, discussing the current Weiner foolishness, writes “In the sad case of Representative Anthony Weiner’s virtual adultery, the Internet era’s defining vice has been thrown into sharp relief. It isn’t lust or smut or infidelity, though online life encourages all three. It’s a desperate, adolescent narcissism.”

What is “desperate” about Mr. Weiner’s alleged adolescent narcissism? And just how does Mr. Douthat justify adolescent and narcissism? Has there been a diagnosis? Why can’t adults play without being labeled adolescent?  (And what could be more narcissistic than putting your writing out there for the edification of others?)

(Full disclosure:  I purchased my first convertible in 1986 at the age of 48. A colleague chuckled at my “attempt to recapture my youth.” Huh? Aren’t adults able to enjoy the pleasure of a top down ride? Who wrote those rules?)

Then there’s the recent epiphany of David Mamet into a right wing devotee of she-who-will-not-be-named, and labels NPR “National Palestinian Radio.”

Stupid, unsupported, yea unsupportable phrases indicate a lazy mind. Do they also indicate lazy editors as well as writers?

I cry bovine droppings on this sloppy writing.

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content

Pish and Piffle

Technorati Tags: Andrew Sullivan,Daily Dish,Left,Language,Politics,Culture Wars

Sometimes Andrew Sullivan is exasperating.

Take this item in today’s Daily Dish: Bronski’s Beat.

It contains these lines:

It has always seemed chilling to me that gay leftists - when pushed to say what they really believe - want to keep gays in some sort of glorious, oppressed, marginalized position, until the majority agrees with the gay left's view of human nature, and revolutionizes straight society as well. This will never happen (and in my view, shouldn't).

Until then, the gay left focuses on demonizing those gays who argue for those who want to belong to their own families as equals, serve their country or commit to one another for life. In this, in my view, the gay left mirrors the Christianist right: they insist that otherness define the minority, even though most members of that minority are born and grow up in the heart of the American family, in all its variations, and of American culture, in all its permutations. No one should be marginalized for seeking otherness. But we are fighting for it to be a choice, not a fate.

All of that because some guy named Bronski wrote a book.

I don’t know Bronski; I don’t care about Bronski; I wish him well, as I would any stranger.

Sullivan, on the other hand (whom I also don’t know except through his writing) is part of my support system—OK, he doesn’t know that nor would he care much. And I find it galling that he would take the words of one, or two or even a hundred of such writers as Bronski and call him/them “the gay left.”

No one in my cohort of friends and acquaintances fits the description of Sullivan’s “the gay left,” but virtually every one of them is gay and/or a politically left person.

Sullivan trips up on his own style when in the first paragraph he uses “gay leftist.” Usually he reserves the suffix “-ist” for such as the odious Christian extremist (Christianist) or the odious Moslem extremist (Islamist).

By the second para he has forgotten that he’s writing about extremists and has omitted the suffix. Which brings me and my friends and acquaintances into the mix. We don’t belong there.

Significant writing error, that omission.

Do you suppose he’ll apologize, Dear Gentle Reader(s)?

Even when reading Sullivan (he will go over the top on occasion), the admonition applies:

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content

Are you…

Technorati Tags: NPR,Spirituality,Religion

On NPR this morning a host asked, “Are you spiritual?”

What does that mean?  What, specifically, does spiritual  mean in that context?

Physically we aren’t spiritual. It’s corporal all the way, baby!

Does one believe in spirits? How can we?

One responds to a situation with emotion and then one might think about that particular emotion, questioning its genesis and its function.

The many degrees of sadness might somehow be emotionally akin to a contemplation which we might commonly call “spiritual.”  So, too, though, can be degrees of joy, elation.

But does that make us spiritual?

What is the “spirit” of America?  Why are cheerleaders sometimes called Spirit Teams?

Do you cogitate?

Do you believe in ghosts?

Are you spiritual?

I have emotional responses, some of which make me feel as though I had transcended something; I don’t call that spiritual.

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content

Frum-a-dumb-dumb

Technorati Tags: David Frum,Newt Gingrich,Paul Ryan,The Dish,Medicare

There isn’t much from David Frum with which I agree; this quote, lifted from Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, is one.

Writing about the Gingrich-vs-Ryan-Medicare-suggestion kerfuffle, Frum pens:

[T]he American public will not accept this kind of reform and will smash any politician who tries to force it upon them. There are ways to reduce the fiscal burden of Medicare, but telling seniors to buy their own damn healthcare is not going to be one of them. I wish it were somebody other than the Kenyan-anticolonialism-sharia law candidate making that argument, but it’s an important argument from any source.

Of course this proposal of Ryan’s is right wing social engineering. How can anyone not see that?

For once in his strange little life, Gingrich gets it right and has to apologize. Where’s the justice?

And I’m loving it.

Trust, but verify.

Sphere: Related Content