Dowd’s virtual fib.

Technorati Tags: New York Times,Maureen Dowd,President Obama,Republican Party,language

The New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd recently pulled a boner in her column.  Here’s what was printed in the on-line piece:

[Obama’s] own chuckleheaded remark: “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

And here’s the context of the quote from the President’s remarks (from the Huffington Post):

"Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. You didn't get there on your own," Obama said then. "I'm always struck by people who think, `Well, it must be because I was just so smart.' There are a lot of smart people out there. `It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.' Let me tell you something: There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

Obama cited teachers and mentors who helped "create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges."

Then, Obama teed up the line that left Republicans giddy. "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet," Obama said, returning to his thesis.

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

So, Dowd, like the Republican talking points took 14 words out of more than 100 and left her Sunday readers with the impression, the same impression the Republicans want people to have, that the President was disrespecting business entrepreneurs throughout the country.

Shame on you Ms Dowd. You work with words; you know better.

Trust, Dear Reader, but verify. Otherwise you might be telling a virtual lie.

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Translations

Technorati Tags: Translations,Religion,Context

“Tolstoy wrote…” is an opening phrase you might hear a few times in your life. As soon as you do, Dear Gentle Reader, you might pause in your listening to think, “Really?  Are you certain.”

Here are a couple of quotes from a French workbook:

“Elle a pris une decision.” (Sorry, you’ll have to imagine the accent over the e in decision.) The workbook then translates that sentence into 1) She made a decision; 2) She has made a decision; and 3) She did make a decision.

“Elle faisait..” can mean “She was doing…”, “She used to do…”, or “She did…”

Context matters; and context is a word which encompasses quite a lot, including, but not limited to the mores of the times—both of the time of the original writing and the time of the translation.

Much thought and subjective decision-making go into translations. So much so that we should be careful about placing too much confidence in what a translator finally presents.

And the more important the translated material might be to our individual and collective lives, the more cautious we should be.

For instance, religious writings should be treated with much caution. (Surely you saw that coming.)

Trust, but verify; or, in this case, read it in the original before you accept it totally.

Good luck with that.

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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.

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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. 

 

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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.

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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.

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Best phrasing of the day…

Technorati Tags: New York Times,Bob Herbert,Gun violence,Language,Politics,Political commentary

Here’s the opening para of Bob Herbert’s piece in today’s New York Times:

By all means, condemn the hateful rhetoric that has poured so much poison into our political discourse. The crazies don’t kill in a vacuum, and the vilest of our political leaders and commentators deserve to be called to account for their demagoguery and the danger that comes with it.

Here’s a nominee for best phrasing:  “The crazies don’t kill in a vacuum.”

There are a lot of commentaries holding that the rhetoric of the right wing cannot be proven to have been related to the shooting in Tucson last Saturday.  See, for instance, David Brooks in the same issue of the Times.

Point taken…if you’re looking for specific, direct-line relativity.

Herbert, though, takes the argument; there is no social vacuum in today’s world.

Trust, but verify.

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It’s a start

Technorati Tags: Islam,Egypt,Terrorism,Koran

Here, Dear Gentle Reader(s), is a link to a UND website which contains a statement by an Egyptian Muslim leader repudiating the efforts of certain Islamic extremists to use the Koran to justify killing.

Salient point:

There is no religion worthy of the name that does not regard as one of its highest values the sanctity of human life. Islam is no exception to this rule. Indeed, God has made this unequivocal in the Quran by emphasizing the gravity of the universal prohibition against murder, saying of the one who takes even one life that “it is as if he has killed all mankind.” Islam views murder as both a crime punishable by law in this world and as major sin punishable in the Afterlife as well. Prophet Mohammad said, “The first cases to be decided among the people on the Day of Judgment will be those of blood-shed.”

The Islam that we were taught in our youth is a religion that calls for peace and mercy.  The first prophetic saying that is taught to a student of Islam is, “Those who show mercy are shown mercy by the All-Merciful. Show mercy to those who are on earth and the One in the heavens will show mercy to you.” What we have learnt about Islam has been taken from the clear, pristine, and scholarly understanding of the Quran, “O people we have created you from a single male and female and divided you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

Terrorism, therefore, cannot be the outcome of any proper understanding of religion. It is rather a manifestation of the immorality of people with cruel hearts, arrogant souls, and warped logic. It is thus with great sadness and outrage that we witness the emergence of this disease in our nation with the recent bombing outside a church in Alexandria that killed tens of Egyptian citizens. There is no doubt that such barbarism needs to be denounced in the strongest of terms, and opposed at every turn.

We need more of this sort of discussion.

Trust, but verify.

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An omitted step

Technorati Tags: Thomas Friedman,Abrahamic religions,Metaphor,Modernity

Thomas Friedman, Dear Gentle Reader(s), is a provocative writer.  One can’t help but think while reading his columns, agreeing and/or disagreeing.  Today’s on-line column edition, “Long Live Lady Luck,” is a prime example.

Friedman writes about how lucky we, in the U.S., were to have escaped 5 efforts to bring, once again, death to our shores via Al Qaeda plotting.  He also writes about what we should do to stop “the savage madness .”  As usual with most of the writing found in similar arguments, Friedman chooses not to address the subject of Koranic interpretation which is used for justification for this “madness.”

Friedman writes,

When Muslim jihadists are ready to just gun down or blow up unarmed men, women and children in the midst of prayer — Muslim or Christian — it means there are no moral, cultural or religious restraints left on the Islamic fringe. It’s anything goes. And it’s becoming routine.

Then he discusses moral and cultural restraints, but not religious.

Christians believe that Jesus came to reform the Abrahamic religion of the day.  Perhaps that underlying belief makes it easier for Christians and some Jews to “modernize” their religions than it is for moderate Muslims to do the same for theirs.

Religious writings were written for a specific people at a specific time, dealing with specific problems.  We choose to believe that those writings are applicable to our own day, but to insist that the intervening years of development of human understanding of the human condition count for nothing could well be as blasphemous and arrogant an insistence as anything ever. 

Change is part of The Plan.

Writing is, in essence, metaphor.

We should remember that, we should teach that—especially if we want to address all the ways to end the “madness.”

Trust, but verify.

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It's the correct"struggle," but...

...is it the appropriate field of battle at this time?

Serving one's country in some capacity makes profound sense. There should be a universal draft for everyone upon graduation from high school or one's 18th birthday. No exceptions (of course, that is what universal means!).

The heart of America goes out to those survivors who have lost loved ones in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. The gratitude of America to those who have served and are serving is profound.

The Hubbard family in Clovis, California, has suffered two losses, and they have shared some of their feelings with us.

Here's an excerpt from an ABC News website:

When asked by reporters whether his support of the war had waned since losing two sons in the war, Jeff Hubbard said that he hoped the "people in power" were making the right decisions overseas and encouraged Americans to support the United States.
"I just hope they're right and I hope we get something accomplished out of all this after all the sacrifice we've made and the rest of the country has sacrificed," he said, choking back tears during the emotional interview. "I think the people of the nation need to support the nation because the nation is at war."

Everyone hopes the same as does Mr. Hubbard. Everyone I know agrees with him and the President that the "nation is at war;" although I think Mr. Bush's "ideological struggle" better identifies the complexity of the dangers we face in the 21st century.

The decision to involve the enemy in the Iraqi battlefields has proven to have been ill-advised. While short shrift was made of the initial foe, Mr. Hussein, the occupation has proven to have been planned inadequately. The initial call for 500,000 troops was rejected; the decision to disband the Iraqi army was foolhardy; calls for increased troop deployment were ignored until it was virtually too late.

Islamic extremism is a threat to the peace of the world. The struggle against these murderous thugs is one of life or death. The nation is at war, but this administration is fighting a 2007 war with 1967 strategy.

This is the right war; this is the wrong battlefield.

This is the correct struggle; this is an inappropriate arena.

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Agnostic? Of course!

The Greek etymology for agnostic will indicate the word meant/means "unknown, unknowable."

Not to belabor too much the point, don't all religions of the book concede that their deity is certainly "unknowable," if not "unknown?"

Doesn't it follow, then, that we are all, ultimately, agnostics?

Doesn't that then make adherents of book religions virtual blasphemers? What could be more blasphemous than to assign all too human characteristics such as jealousy and pettiness to whatever power created this limitless universe? What could be more blasphemous than to murder fellow human beings in the name of this deity?

Religions most probably originated from the needs of small families, tribes, communities to develop rules for survival. That made sense.

It still makes sense to gather as a community for safety and survival. It does not make sense to allow lore to become a justification for thuggery and murder.

This "ideological struggle" in which we are engaged is a struggle to re-cast religion into a beneficial institution for the sake of the peoples of the earth.

So far there are no such policies being discussed, much less being developed.

Before we place too much trust in religious dogma, we must seek some method for verification. An anthropomorphized godhead is not verifiable.

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