Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 42

One person’s “hate speech” is another person’s “free speech”

Let me say right off: I do not believe in the idea of hate speech. One person’s “hate speech” is another person’s “free speech.”

In that regard, the American Civil Liberties Union and I are in 100 percent agreement. More on the ACLU later.

In a previous post, I talked about Political Correctness in Historical Fiction novels. I argued that there can be no PC in a historical novel because if there is, the novel will be devoid of reality. PC is a 20th and 21st Century phenomenon. It didn’t exist in the 19th Century or any other prior century. So to purge a book set in the 18th or 19th Century of offensive expressions used in 18th or 19th Century America is to be dishonest.

A direct offshoot of PC is the concept of “Hate Speech.”  Just as with PC there are unofficial Hate Speech police out there who like nothing more than to be the final arbiters of what can and cannot be said publicly in America.

Of course, that is in complete opposition to an individual’s First Amendment right to speak freely and openly about any and all topics–be it race, gender, homosexuality, abortion, gay marriage, traditional marriage, war, or peace.

You may even criticize radical Islam–though, today, if you do, you are likely going to be accused of being a racist or Islamaphobe. That is when you will experience the PC Thought Police and their close relatives, the Hate Speech Gestapo, at their narrow-minded worst.

If you were to go back in time to 19th Century America or Europe you might be appalled at the terms used openly and without remorse to describe blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, the Irish, Italians, Catholics, Jews, Asians, etc.

That was life back then. Was it right to use those terms? Of course, today we would say “No.” But using racial, ethnic and religious slurs in the past was simply the way things were.

So if you are writing a historical novel about that period do you eliminate dozens of objectionable terms and phrases to satisfy today’s PC Thought Police and the Hate Speech Gestapo?

The answer: an emphatic NO!

If you do clean up a novel about slavery and use words like “African-American” instead of the range of hurtful expressions commonly used in the 19th Century, your book not only will lack integrity, it will be a ridiculous fabrication.

Now back to the ACLU.

Rather than paraphrasing the ACLU’s position on Hate Speech I will let that organization itself explain why it says there is no such thing as Hate Speech in a nation where speech is protected by the First Amendment of our Constitution.

The Q & A that follows is taken directly from the ACLU’s website.

Q: I just can’t understand why the ACLU defends free speech for racists, sexists, homophobes and other bigots. Why tolerate the promotion of intolerance? 

  A: Free speech rights are indivisible. Restricting the speech of one group or individual jeopardizes everyone’s rights because the same laws or regulations used to silence bigots can be used to silence you. Conversely, laws that defend free speech for bigots can be used to defend the rights of civil rights workers, anti-war protesters, lesbian and gay activists and others fighting for justice. For example, in the 1949 case of Terminiello v. Chicago, the ACLU successfully defended an ex-Catholic priest who had delivered a racist and anti-Semitic speech. The precedent set in that case became the basis for the ACLU’s successful defense of civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and ’70s. 

  The indivisibility principle was also illustrated in the case of Neo-Nazis whose right to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1979 was successfully defended by the ACLU. At the time, then ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier, whose relatives died in Hitler’s concentration camps during World War II, commented: “Keeping a few Nazis off the streets of Skokie will serve Jews poorly if it means that the freedoms to speak, publish or assemble any place in the United States are thereby weakened.” 

 

  Q: I have the impression that the ACLU spends more time and money defending the rights of bigots than supporting the victims of bigotry!!?? 

  A: Not so. Only a handful of the several thousand cases litigated by the national ACLU and its affiliates every year involves offensive speech. Most of the litigation, advocacy and public education work we do preserves or advances the constitutional rights of ordinary people. But it’s important to understand that the fraction of our work that does involve people who’ve engaged in bigoted and hurtful speech is very important: 

  Defending First Amendment rights for the enemies of civil liberties and civil rights means defending it for you and me. 

  Q: Aren’t some kinds of communication not protected under the First Amendment, like “fighting words?” 

  A: The U.S. Supreme Court did rule in 1942, in a case called Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, that intimidating speech directed at a specific individual in a face-to-face confrontation amounts to “fighting words,” and that the person engaging in such speech can be punished if “by their very utterance [the words] inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” Say, a white student stops a black student on campus and utters a racial slur. In that one-on-one confrontation, which could easily come to blows, the offending student could be disciplined under the “fighting words” doctrine for racial harassment. 

  Over the past 50 years, however, the Court hasn’t found the “fighting words” doctrine applicable in any of the hate speech cases that have come before it, since the incidents involved didn’t meet the narrow criteria stated above. Ignoring that history, the folks who advocate campus speech codes try to stretch the doctrine’s application to fit words or symbols that cause discomfort, offense or emotional pain. 

Q: What about nonverbal symbols, like swastikas and burning crosses — are they constitutionally protected? 

  A: Symbols of hate are constitutionally protected if they’re worn or displayed before a general audience in a public place — say, in a march or at a rally in a public park. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect the use of nonverbal symbols to encroach upon or desecrate, private property, such as burning a cross on someone’s lawn or spray-painting a swastika on the wall of a synagogue or dorm. 

  Q: Aren’t speech codes on college campuses an effective way to combat bias against people of color, women, and gays? 

  A: Historically, defamation laws or codes have proven ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst. For one thing, depending on how they’re interpreted and enforced, they can actually work against the interests of the people they were ostensibly created to protect. Why? Because the ultimate power to decide what speech is offensive and to whom rests with the authorities — the government or a college administration — not with those, who are the alleged victims of hate speech. 

  In Great Britain, for example, a Racial Relations Act was adopted in 1965 to outlaw racist defamation. But throughout its existence, the Act has largely been used to persecute activists of color, trade unionists, and anti-nuclear protesters, while the racists — often white members of Parliament — have gone unpunished

  Similarly, under a speech code in effect at the University of Michigan for 18 months, white students in 20 cases charged black students with offensive speech. One of the cases resulted in the punishment of a black student for using the term “white trash” in conversation with a white student. The code was struck down as unconstitutional in 1989 and, to date, the ACLU has brought successful legal challenges against speech codes at the Universities of Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 

These examples demonstrate that speech codes don’t serve the interests of persecuted groups. The First Amendment does. As one African American educator observed: “I have always felt like a minority person that we have to protect the rights of all because if we infringe on the rights of any persons, we’ll be next.” 

  Q: But don’t speech codes send a strong message to campus bigots, telling them their views are unacceptable? 

  A: Bigoted speech is symptomatic of a huge problem in our country; it is not the problem itself. Everybody, when they come to college, brings with them the values, biases, and assumptions they learned while growing up in society, so it’s unrealistic to think that punishing speech is going to rid campuses of the attitudes that gave rise to the speech in the first place. Banning bigoted speech won’t end bigotry, even if it might chill some of the crudest expressions. The mindset that produced the speech lives on and may even reassert itself in more virulent forms. 

  Speech codes, by simply deterring students from saying out loud what they will continue to think in private, merely drive biases underground where they can’t be addressed. In 1990, when Brown University expelled a student for shouting racist epithets one night on the campus, the institution accomplished nothing in the way of exposing the bankruptcy of racist ideas. 

 As a former Dean at the University of Illinois, I was often amazed at the number of people who disagreed with the ACLU’s position on Hate Speech.

 Their remedy in dealing with so-called Hate Speech was to advocate some form of punishment for the offender–firing a non-tenured instructor, expelling a student, censoring a tenured professor or administrator.

About the only thing missing, I used to think, were the dunking stools once used in Salem, Mass, or the public humiliation of the pillory and stocks on the university quadrangle.

In any case, literature and other forms of creative endeavor should never be restricted by those who believe THEY are the final arbiters of what can and cannot be said, written or shown.

If that ever happens, then our Constitution will begin with the 2d Amendment–because the First Amendment will be but a distant memory.

 

 

America: The Smash & Grab Capital of the World

Once upon a time, America was a nation of laws. Thieves and thugs were punished when they were caught, arrested, and convicted.

Those were the good ole days.

Today, we live in a nation where smash and grab thieves are invading stores at will, cleaning them out, and walking away.

And, for the most part, local police are doing nothing or very little about it.

Take a look at what has happened in just the past few days:

A group of 14 smash and grab thieves operating out of three getaway vehicles stole roughly $120,000 worth of merchandise from a Louis Vuitton store in Chicago’s Oak Brook suburb last week, according to police.In Chicago, Friday night, a gang of roughly 15 masked people conducted a smash-and-grab raid at the Neiman Marcus on the Magnificent Mile. It took only moments for them to rush into the department store, grab armloads of merchandise, and flee in three cars.Last Saturday, a Nordstrom location a few miles outside San Francisco (AKA “Pelosi-ville”) was robbed by 80 — yes, eighty — looters in ski masks. The looters, armed with crowbars and other weapons, rushed the store, grabbed armloads of goods, assaulted three employees, and fled.Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent, Burberry, and Dolce & Gabbana were all targeted in San Francisco’s posh Union Square area last Friday night and several more high-end stores in neighboring Hayward and San Jose were ransacked on Sunday.

California has no one to blame but itself. It recently made shoplifting and smash and grab more attractive by raising the amount that would trigger felony charges to $950. Since then, pharmacies, grocery stores, and other retail outlets have moved out of cities such as San Francisco as organized gangs of shoplifters brazenly take whatever they want, in bulk.

Smash and grabbers at work

This is definitely NOT the country I grew up in, but it is apparently the country that many on the left want because the vast majority of the smash and grab criminals are residents of cities run by feckless Democrats.

Oh, and it turns out about 90 percent of those criminals committing these crimes are black—but you had better not say that out loud because black lives matter more than the stores and people from whom they are stealing.

Here for example are a few of those model smash and grab citizens who have been caught by police in Chicago and San Francisco:

 

The question now is what happens to them? If the past is prologue, then I suspect nothing much will befall these exemplary representatives of their communities.

When I moved to Chicago in the early 1970s and joined the Chicago Tribune as a reporter, a man named Richard J. Daley was the mayor of Chicago. Had this kind of crime occurred in Chicago on his watch, it would have been stopped immediately. Daley, a Democrat, was NOT like feckless mayor Lori Lightweight, sometimes known as Lightfoot.

He kept a tight lid on crime within Chicago’s borders. He was not afraid to use deadly force to stop criminals. I know. I watched him send thousands of police into throngs of rioters and looters (known in today’s PC world as “protesters”) wielding truncheons and nightsticks.

I recall one such event on Chicago’s posh Gold Coast when a mob of some 400 radical Weathermen Underground was rampaging, overturning cars, and setting fire to buildings. Daley sent police vehicles barreling into the mob. Seventy or so were injured and scattered. Dozens more were arrested.

Could that happen today? Not on your life.

Today, model citizens such as those above, are likely to be out of jail without bail on their own recognizance so they can loot and rob even more stores. Mayor Daley must be whirling in his grave.

Such is America today. Criminals and thugs are praised and celebrated by the left, just like the two men who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha last year and were ultimately killed when Rittenhouse shot them in self-defense with his rifle.

Joseph Rosenbaum, one of these model “protesters” was a convicted pedophile who had raped five boys between the ages of 7 and 12. The left hailed this reprobate as a “hero” as it did Anthony Huber, who was sentenced to two years in prison for domestic violence, use of a deadly weapon, strangulation and suffocation, false imprisonment, and battery.

A third man shot by Rittenhouse but not killed was Gaige P. Grosskreutz, who was wounded in the arm after he pointed a pistol at point-blank range at Rittenhouse’s head. Grosskreutz had been arrested and charged with felony burglary, theft, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct. He is a member of the People’s Revolution Movement, a communist organization based in Milwaukee.

Looters, thieves, thugs, convicted criminals, and sociopaths. These are the people media pundits love to hold up as exemplary citizens while condoning looting, theft, drug dealing, and a plethora of other anti-social and criminal behavior.

Meanwhile, those whose stores are being pillaged, burned, and looted, “have it coming” because they may be white or Asian or some other “privileged” class of citizen.

As one BLM leader said: “We don’t consider any of this as theft or looting. We think of it as reparations.”

It’s exactly the kind of verbal dung people like MSNBC’s Joy Reid and CNN’s Don Lemon love to spew forth via their anti-white, racist harangues.

And it is also why America is now the smash and grab capital of the world.

 

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If only Kyle Rittenhouse could ask Biden and media: “Have you no sense of decency?”

I was getting ready to post today on the fully warranted Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal and then I read the column below by former Chicago Tribune colleague and columnist John Kass. John left the Tribune this past summer, the victim of “cancel culture” primarily because of a column he wrote that was critical of socialist billionaire George Soros.

The Chicago Tribune Guild accused Kass of using an anti-Semitic expression in his column about Soros—a ridiculous and unfounded charge. Kass was the lone conservative voice in a vociferous choir of mostly leftist journalists at the Chicago Tribune and was, to some, a thorn in their leftist flanks. To his credit, Kass didn’t back down and preferred to leave the Tribune rather than kowtow to the liberal mob.

                                                      John Kass

Kass joined the Tribune in 1983 and was promoted to columnist in 1997 after the death of Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Mike Royko. It was a tough act to follow, but John did an exceptional job of it for 24 years.

Today, Kass writes a popular blog https://johnkassnews.com/ and produces a podcast https://johnkassnews.com/category/podcasts/

Here is his column:

If only Kyle Rittenhouse could ask Biden and media: “Have you no sense of decency?”

By John Kass

A jury has loudly issued “not guilty” verdicts in the malignant political prosecution of Illinois teenager Kyle Rittenhouse.

And now, what next?

What happens to corporate media—and its phony social justice warrior pundits–who savaged Rittenhouse and used race, when race had nothing to do with the case? They egged on the mob that screamed for the young man’s head on a pike, and now they’re still at it even after the verdict. They got their clicks out of him, and now they expect what, exactly? That we’ll forget how they howled even before the first witness testified?

And what of the politicians, from President Joe Biden on down, who falsely and maliciously defamed the teenager as a “white supremacist” before trial, though no such evidence was ever presented. Biden and company fed him to the mob, stepping on justice for votes.

Can you sue a president for libel, even a witless meat puppet-like The Big Guy?

The thing is tragic. Two men are dead. I don’t consider him a hero. He’ll carry the stain of this forever. The kid should never have been there that night with his gun in the chaos of the riots in Kenosha. But he was there, as the governor and mayor pulled law enforcement back, leaving Kenosha’s streets to the violent.

And in America, for now, at least,  you can still defend your life when a mob tries to take it from you.

At least the jury got it right. They heard the evidence. They considered the testimony and acquitted Rittenhouse. He shot three men in self-defense, one who tried to bash his head in with a skateboard, one who tried to take his gun, and the third who pointed a gun at him. Two of them died. And again, the mayor and the governor had withdrawn law enforcement, turning the streets over to the rioters who burned buildings that some fools in media called a “mostly peaceful” protest.

The prosecution revealed itself to be purely political, rushing to charge Rittenhouse before all the facts were in.  And they failed.

If they’d succeeded, the kid who cried on the witness stand could have been sentenced to life in prison. How would he survive inside, a kid like that? He wouldn’t. A kid like that wouldn’t survive five minutes.  The media twisted and shaped the facts to suit a political narrative, and politicians who benefitted from narrative support would have moved on with their lives. And as they heaped glory on themselves, Rittenhouse, if put in state prison, would be dead or wish he were dead every minute of his life.

Kyle Rittenhouse & Lawyer: NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS!

So he’s free. I wonder if Biden and his Democrat and media allies ever read “The Ox-Bow Incident” which was made into a great classic movie in the early 1940s. It is about a posse that becomes righteous and lynches three innocent men. I suspect a few politicians and media read it, at least those who read more than their own Twitter feeds. And I’ve got to believe Biden read it, and watched the movie. He certainly was lucid enough back then to have handled it. Now, I don’t think so.

For years “The Ox-Bow Incident” was a favorite of liberal teachers and professors, who had lived through the McCarthy era and the “Red Scare,” when it was the political right making accusations and stoking anger through media. Sen. McCarthy’s political reign of terror ended as he hunted for Communists in the U.S. Army. Joseph N. Welch, the lawyer for the Army, confronted McCarthy at a public hearing with this withering question:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Things change and parallels are conveniently forgotten or ignored. Because now it is the left that goes out hunting for witches in the Armed Forces. Democrats shut their mouths and don’t dare ask the inquisitors if they’ve lost their sense of decency. Careerist generals, their fingers in the wind, have eagerly gone woke reading “White Fragility.”

Now that the jury has cleared Rittenhouse, mealy mouths pipe up and ask us to move past it all. I don’t want us to move past it. And I make a simple request: Don’t forget what politicians, prosecutors, and media have done.

If you do want to forget what happened, to make things easier for yourself, at least be honest about the cost of forgetting. Forget, move past it, and you’re inviting the next mob to grab blind Lady Justice by the hair, strip off her blindfold, and bend her to their political will. And if their politics aren’t your politics, you will pay for it. That’s where America is now, lusting for tribal justice, not blind justice.

Imagine your son or daughter in the middle of it all, or yourself or your friends, your neighbors professing innocence and being drowned out by the political barking dogs. In this case, the Kenosha jury stood up, and refused to cave to pressure. They were deliberate. They were careful. They saw that prosecutorial overreach had little in common to the reality they’d lived through in Kenosha. But the next time? Who can say? Is that what you want for America?

 

If you don’t want to forget, all you have to do is Google your favorite social justice warrior pundit and search out what they said and wrote in August of 2020, when the streets of Kenosha were on fire.

I’d recommend that you also read Miranda Devine of The New York Post. She recently compiled a list of ten debunked lies that were told about Rittenhouse. Or read Bari Weis on Substack, “The Media’s Verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse: Why so many got this story so wrong.”

The media got it wrong the way they’ve gotten other stories wrong, and for the same reasons, from media attacks on innocent Covington, Ky. teenager Nicholas Sandman, or media stubbornly pushing the false “Russia Collusion” narrative that is now completely falling apart. Will the Washington Post and the New York Times return their Pulitzer Prizes that were based on the Russia Hoax lie? They should, immediately. But they won’t.

In a recent column, I wrote that corporate, legacy media, which gave into hyper partisanship years ago, has rotted from the roots. Woke newsrooms push ideology over reason.  As Weis and I and many others who once worked in woke mainstream media newsrooms know all too well, woe to those who disagree.

In the current mainstream media world, with American cities under siege, editors outlawed the use of the word “riot.” A riot could not be called a riot lest some be offended. Other Newspeak fig leaves are offered up instead, and the people see how reality is distorted, and the disconnect added to the rot and decay of corporate media. If there is anything positive out of this, it’s that thinking Americans are abandoning the product of woke newsrooms to seek out independent media sites instead.

Weis begins her piece on Rittenhouse and the media this way:

“Here is what I thought was true about Kyle Rittenhouse during the last days of August 2020 based on mainstream media accounts: The 17-year-old was a racist vigilante. I thought he drove across state lines, to Kenosha, Wisc., with an illegally acquired semi-automatic rifle to a town to which he had no connection. I thought he went there because he knew there were Black Lives Matter protests and he wanted to start a fight. And I thought that by the end of the evening of August 25, 2020, he had done just that, killing two peaceful protestors and injuring a third.

“It turns out that account was mostly wrong.”

She argues her misperception wasn’t because of a “disinformation campaign waged by Reddit trolls or anonymous Twitter accounts,” but pushed by mainstream media and the politicians to support a political narrative.

It was a case that should never have been brought but was brought, because of politics. Kenosha’s streets were on fire after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who had allegedly sexually assaulted a woman and pulled a knife on police officers when he was shot. The BLM riots began, Biden and other Democrats rushed to curry favor with the Blake family because they had elections to win. Democrats had to blame someone for the chaos in Kenosha, and Rittenhouse was fitted for the jacket. All of it was political.

The police officer who shot Blake was exonerated. Blake was Black, but Rittenhouse and the three men he shot were white. Race wasn’t an issue in Rittenhouse, though media tried to make it so.

The prosecution saw its case fall apart when prosecution witnesses testified, including the one who admitted to pointing a loaded gun at Rittenhouse. The video shows clearly what happened. The mob attacking, trying to kill him and grab his gun.

The jury deliberated carefully for days, with great political pressure upon them. Even the jury bus was allegedly being stalked by MSNBC news. This begged the question of jury intimidation. And with all that pressure on them, the jury came to a just and responsible verdict:

Not guilty on all counts.

You might think with all the political and media lies being told, with media screeching and MSNBC resident racist and homophobe Joy Reid yammering on and on about “white tears,” that it would be difficult to sort out a truth.

Not “the” truth, but “a” truth, what those who wanted Rittenhouse to be found guilty believe as in an article of faith. It came from the lips of James Kraus, one of the prosecutors in closing argument.

He said that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have defended himself. That he had no right to defend himself. Instead,  he should have taken the beating, because, well, everybody takes a beating.

“Where is it that, when you get a couple of scrapes? Everybody takes a beating sometimes, right?” Kraus told the jury. “Sometimes you get in a scuffle, and maybe you do get hurt a little bit. That doesn’t mean you get to start plugging people with your full metal jacket AR-15 rounds.”

Everybody takes a beating?

The Rittenhouse jury doesn’t live in the Washington Media Complex bubble. They live in Wisconsin, in Kenosha. They lived through the Kenosha riots. They’d seen what had happened to their town. They’d already gone through emotional and psychological beatings. And here was a prosecutor telling them that everyone should relax and take a beating.

Kraus didn’t sound like a prosecutor who had just seen his own case blow up. Rather, he was like Henry Hill, the character in “Goodfellas” played by Ray Liotta, the gangster who also said, “Everybody takes a beating.”

Did the prosecution prepare for trial by watching gangster movies?

If you were on the street in a riot, would you take a beating, just so a prosecutor wouldn’t get upset? Would you just lie down and let them put the boots to you? I don’t think that would be a good idea. The jury didn’t think it was a good idea, either.

We’re Americans. We don’t kneel and take beatings.

What the American people want is fairness. Yes, we need the law, but we need what’s behind the law, too.  In “The Ox-Bow Incident” movie, the cowboy, Gil, played by liberal icon Henry Fonda, reads a letter from one of the innocent men that the self-righteous posse has just lynched.

It is a letter from the dead man to his wife:

“Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience?”

Is the media stoking rage and racial resentment a civilized act? No. It is an act of force, an exercise in power. There is no restraint in an activated mob. There is no conscience to it. You can’t ride the mob as if it were a horse. Once it’s lathered up, there is no directing it.

Biden and the Democrats won’t apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse. Corporate media won’t apologize. And if you asked any of them that Joseph Welch question: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” they’d look at you as if you were ill or from another planet.

But I’ll ask it again: Have you no sense of decency?

What happened to Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t decent. There is no decency in power politics and he was the target. There is no conscience in power politics. And no restraint.

And that’s what all this was all about. Power politics.

-30-

(Copyright 2021 John Kass)

 

 

 

“Has America Ever Been as Divided as it is Today?”

“Has America Ever Been as Divided as it is today?”

That was the rhetorical question a television pundit recently asked during a discussion of the nation’s current hateful political climate.

Frankly, the question surprised me. Then I looked at who asked it. She was a thirty-something talking head who had little or no historical perspective of this country.

For her, and for those who may have only vague memories of the 1960s, the answer to that question is likely “no.”

But for many of us who lived through the 1960s and early 1970s and who were on college campuses back then, the answer is a resounding “yes!”

Yes, the nation has been this deeply divided—not only this deeply divided but almost ripped in half by something called the Vietnam War, by an active, sometimes violent civil rights struggle, and by a painful generation gap that seemed all but unbridgeable.

Indeed, the social fabric of America between the years of 1961 and 1975 was about as tattered as I have ever seen it. Of course, I was not around during the Civil War (1861-1865) when the country WAS divided—politically, culturally, and geographically.

But let’s focus on the 1960s, not the 1860s. The music of Bob Dylan was an anthem for the counterculture revolution. Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock were the emblematic settings of a time when flower-power hippies, tie-dye-wearing revolutionaries, and other social-political rebels gathered to burn incense, drop acid and profess their adherence to peace and love.

“Don’t trust anybody older than thirty,” warned leaders of the counterculture—street revolutionaries. Meanwhile, The Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Black Panthers were blowing up buildings, robbing banks, and attacking and killing police.

During one 18-month period between 1971 and 1972, there were 2,500 bombings in the United States by radical groups. The Weather Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972, and the U.S. State Department in 1975.

Some students and even some faculty on college campuses are the living by-products of this raucous and intense era—though I doubt if many of their middle class and middle-aged parents who find themselves knee-deep in mortgages and college loans are eager to “fess up” to have been one of America’s ubiquitous “if it feels good, do it” flower children.

As a student at the University of Kansas and as editor of the University Daily Kansan (K.U.’s student newspaper), I watched demonstrators engage in running battles with Chicago cops during the 1968 Democratic convention. Police wielding cudgels cracked open heads, and the streets were blood-soaked. Protesters retaliated by throwing plastic bags filled with human feces at police. Reporters called those protesters “waste baggers.” The cops had other names for them.

Back on campus at the University of Kansas, angry students in 1970 burned down the Student Union. It was a residual gesture aimed at showing solidarity with four Kent State University students who were killed and nine who were wounded May 4, 1970 when Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of students who were demonstrating against President Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia—a move that was seen as an expansion of the Vietnam war.

One of 4 students killed at Kent State University

Not long after that, as a Chicago Tribune reporter, I covered what seemed like the “demonstration of the week” as protesters took to the streets again and again to protest an infinite menu of social, racial, ethnic, political, environmental and economic evils.

Unlike today, when police have opted to allow protesters to destroy property, loot, and burn entire city blocks to the ground, the protests I covered in Chicago were met with unflinching and deadly force. It was Mayor Richard J. Daley’s City, and he was not going to allow protesters to overturn cars, loot, and burn buildings.

I recall covering a Weather Underground demonstration on October 8, 1969, when some 300 so-called “Weathermen” rioted through Chicago’s affluent Gold Coast area. They smashed windows, overturned cars, and tried to set fire to buildings. The mob rampaged four blocks until they came to police barricades.

That didn’t stop them. Foolishly, students charged the police, whose numbers had swelled to more than 1,000. The police quickly counter-attacked. Unlike 1968, these protesters came prepared, many wearing motorcycle and football helmets. However, Chicago’s police were well trained and better armed. It was no contest.

Tear gas choked the streets, and when protestors gathered to counter-attack, police ran squad cars into the mob, sending them flying in all directions. Thirty minutes later, the rioting was finished.

Even though 28 policemen were injured in the melee, there was little doubt who had won. Police shot six Weathermen, and an unknown number were wounded. About seventy rioters were arrested.

Was America ever as divided as we are today? Are you kidding? How many protesters do police shoot today for attacking property or looting?

Check out any library that maintains digital or microfiche versions of newspapers and magazines of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the divisions seem like minor abrasions compared with the gaping wounds that marked America 40 or 50 years ago.

It wasn’t until the last choppers lifted off Saigon roofs on April 30, 1975, that the healing began. The war in Vietnam was over—finally, after almost 15 years of American involvement.

I had been a soldier during part of that era, and between 1974 and 1975, I was covering the fall of South Vietnam and Saigon for the Tribune. As some 200,000 Communist North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon and a U.S. Marine CH-53 Sea Stallion chopper carried me down the Vung Tau corridor to the waiting U.S. 7th Fleet, an almost palpable sense of healing and reconciliation swept over America.

                   Leaving Vietnam 1975

That didn’t resolve the guilt, anger, and grief many Americans felt about their nation’s abortive crusade in Vietnam. Indeed, we are still dealing with those issues more than 40 years after those choppers carried the last Americans out of Saigon. After all, more than 58,000 Americans died in that war, and another 300,000 were wounded. Vietnamese casualties on both sides were in the millions.

The yawning schisms of 40 years ago, for the most part, have been filled in by the relentless sands of time.

I am still amazed by that healing process. As a student in the 1960s, I was sure the nation would never recover from the terrible wounds of Vietnam.  Of course, this country’s ability to heal itself is one of those things that make the U.S. so remarkable.

Americans are resilient people. But we have short memories. And because we have short memories, we repeat many of our mistakes and sometimes open old wounds.

Most wounds leave scars. We are adept at covering up those scars, but we forget what caused the injuries in the first place.

So when a television analyst asks if America has ever been so divided as it is today, my answer is absolute—look for the scars. And try not to repeat the mistakes that made them.

Someone once said that good journalism is a nation talking to itself. Today, it seems that kind of journalism has been replaced by a country screaming at itself.

Good journalism is not only a conversation about what is happening today and what may happen tomorrow, but it also should provide a translucent lens to the past. And above all, it needs to do all of those things fairly and without bias.

To paraphrase George Santayana: when we cannot see or remember the past, we are condemned to repeat its mistakes—and to ask such questions as: “Has America Ever Been as Divided as it is Today?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Veterans Day to All My Fellow Vets

Today is Veterans Day. Given that only 7 percent of the people of this nation have ever put on a uniform, I wonder how many Americans know why Veterans Day is a national holiday.

Yes, it means schools and most government offices are closed. But it means a lot more to the men and women who served this country. Originally called Armistice Day, the holiday was declared on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month beginning in 1919 following the 1918 ceasefire agreement that brought World War I to a close. In 1954, the day was extended to honor all veterans.

Veterans Day gives Americans the opportunity to celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of all U.S. veterans. However, most Americans confuse this holiday with Memorial Day, reports the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Memorial Day honors service members who died in service to their country or as a result of injuries incurred during battle. Deceased veterans are also remembered on Veterans Day but the day is really set aside to thank and honor living veterans who served honorably in the military – in wartime or peacetime.

                PFC Ron Yates

Someone, I don’t know who, once defined a veteran this way: “A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to, and including his or her life.”

That is Honor. It’s a concept that those who have never worn the uniform will ever fully comprehend or appreciate.

There are too many people in this country today who no longer understand what honor and sacrifice are.

Today, when some athletes feel entitled to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem, or when our nation’s flag is burned or disrespected, it’s a slap in the face to veterans–at least to most of us.

Yes, it is a First Amendment right to display that contempt and to disparage those who served. The great irony is that those who do are permitted to enjoy the advantages and freedom veterans have won for them just the same.

I joined the U.S. Army in the 1960s and spent almost four years on active duty with the Army Security Agency (ASA) where I had a Top Secret & Crypto security clearance doing signals intelligence work focused on the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. It was probably the best thing I ever did. It taught me about leadership, self-discipline, and working as part of a team. It taught me to be dependable and trustworthy. And it showed me the importance of serving something more important than yourself—the country that you were fortunate enough to be a citizen of.

I achieved the rank of Sergeant (E-5) and had I re-upped I was promised an immediate promotion to Staff Sergeant (E-6) along with a hefty re-enlistment bonus because I had what the Army considered a “critical MOS” (Military Occupation Specialty). I declined because I wanted to finish my college education and become a foreign correspondent. I achieved both and I credit my time in the U.S. Army with teaching me about setting goals and doing what is necessary to achieve them.

       U.S. Army Security Agency shoulder patch

Let me end with a few facts about the nation’s veterans.

There are 18 million veterans living in the United States as of 2020, according to the Census Bureau. Of these, 1.7 million are women.As of last year, there were 6.4 million American veterans who served during the Vietnam era and 7.1 million who served in the Gulf War era, which spans from August 1990 through the present. (Some veterans served through both eras.)There are also about 250,000 World War II veterans still living, down from 5.7 million in 2000. There are another 1.6 million who served during the Korean conflict, the VA estimates.World War II veterans are dying at an average of 234 every day.About three-quarters (77%) of veterans in 2020 served during wartime and 23% served during peacetime.A large proportion of the veteran population, 9.2 million, are aged 65 and older, while 1.6 million are younger than 35. By service period, Post-9/11 veterans were the youngest with a median age of about 37; Vietnam Era veterans had a median age of about 71, and World War II veterans were the oldest with a median age of about 93.Currently, nine-in-ten veterans (91%) are men while 9% are women, according to the VA’s 2016 population model estimates. By 2045, the share of female veterans is expected to double to 18%.

[image error]

Fewer members of Congress have prior military experience than in the past. As the share of Americans who are veterans has declined, so has the share of Congress members who have previously served in the military. In the current Congress, 20% of senators and 19% of representatives had prior military service, down drastically from just a few decades ago.The American labor force has 7.2 million veterans ages 18 to 65. Of these, 6.8 million are employed. Male and female veterans’ annual median incomes are both higher than their nonveteran counterparts.

Veterans from recent service periods have the highest levels of education. More than three-quarters of Post-9/11 and Gulf War veterans had at least some college experience, and more than one-third of Gulf War veterans had a college degree.Post-9/11 veterans had a 43% chance of having a service-connected disability, after accounting for differences in demographic and social characteristics among veterans —significantly higher than that of veterans from other periods.Among veterans who had a service-connected disability, Post-9/11 veterans had a 39% chance of having a disability rating of 70% or more — significantly higher than for veterans from other periods.

So, this is just a quick shout out to all of my fellow veterans who put on the uniform of this country and served: HOO-RAH!  

Musical artist Sailor Jerri shares her music video of Hallelujah that she rewrote as a tribute song for Veterans. Click on this link to hear her:

Hallelujah Veterans

Is our Military a Woke Joke?

This Thursday, November 11, is Veterans Day. I will be posting about that special holiday, but before I do that, I want to discuss the deliberate deterioration and weakening of America’s military.

Immediately following my comments is a commentary I received from US Defense Watch, a website founded by U.S. Army veteran Ray Starmann, who served in the Gulf War. Like a lot of veterans, I included, Starmann is appalled by the destructive “wokeness” being inflicted on members of America’s military by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Millie, and our stumbling, bumbling president.

  Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley 

How “woke?” Here’s one recent example:

New Pentagon regulations allow more hairstyles for women and permit pregnant aircrew members to wear maternity flight suits while flying missions.

So, pregnant women with big hair are now going to fight our wars? What next?

While China’s military becomes more masculine our military apparently needs to become, as Joe Biden and Milley say, ‘more feminine.’

While women have proven that they can be great combat pilots, the fact remains that by emphasizing things like climate change, gender fluidity, wokeness, and political correctness, America’s military leaders are risking unit cohesion and combat readiness.

Already, the type of basic and advanced training I and Vietnam era veterans received in the 1960s has been “dumbed down” in terms of rigor and harshness to accommodate female recruits. Basic trainees can even request a “time-out” when they feel a drill sergeant is being too tough on them. These were unheard-of concepts with I was going through basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. It was rigorous and our drill sergeants did not spare the verbal and, sometimes, physical abuse.

“If you f–kin maggots can’t take it here at Ft. Leonard Wood, what the hell are you going to do in Vietnam when people are trying to kill you,” I recall my Platoon Sergeant Monroe Harrington bellowing. “We want no pussies in E-3-2!” (Company E, 3rd battalion, 2d regiment)

        “I need a time-out, Sergeant”

Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese troops are being trained with greater severity and shaped into highly efficient combat-ready units designed to fight real wars, not woke squaddies designed to fight “culture wars.”

During my basic and advanced training, I learned that the “point” of the U.S. military is to deter war, and failing that, to win the war that follows. That doesn’t seem to be the purpose anymore.

Civilian leaders and active-duty service members alike argue that the military “should be a reflection of our socio-political and neoliberal values and goals as a nation.”

Really? How does redesigning the military to be a reflection of these new values and goals make for good warfighting? Does it make formations and tactics more efficient, effective, and lethal in making war?

As Frank Bennett, a former infantry platoon leader in Afghanistan recently put it:

“The American public is exposed to an image of an armed force composed of bearded alpha males in special operations units, cigar-smoking paratroopers rescuing the world from fascism, or the sight of the Blue Angels tearing across the sky above the Super Bowl, all designed to enhance the perception that the U.S. military is unstoppable. The reality of a bloated million-headed mass of semi-fit clerks does not set the blood pumping.”

Instead, our military leaders seem bent on creating a force that is more concerned with the principles of “equity and diversity,” rather than how military units will actually perform.

Sadly, for the past 20 years, we have witnessed the results of this relentless dumbing down and tempering of our military. We just spent 20 years in a socially and politically backward place called Afghanistan—20 years of failure after failure. We and our coalition cohorts fought a frustrating losing war against a rag-tag collection of autonomous warlords, loosely organized Hindu Kush clans, and illiterate irregulars.

And what do we have to show for it? Nothing. The Taliban are back in power and Afghanistan is once again a breeding ground for dangerous terrorist groups.

Contrast that with World War II when our military, along with our allies, took only four years to annihilate Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan—two of the most sophisticated military powers ever to march across our planet. That army was not one built on political correctness. It was a lethal fighting force that focused on winning battles, not on winning “woke” debates about climate change, gender equity, white rage, or transgender latrines. Ditto, the military units that fought in Vietnam where they rarely lost a battle, but wound up losing the war because of the political spinelessness and malaise oozing from the feckless Washington swamp.

[image error] Vietnam: No pregnant troops anywhere

So this is where we are. As a veteran, I am appalled by this new military’s focus on wokeness and weather panic.

I worry about how we will confront a belligerent China that seems intent on supplanting the United States as the preeminent power in Asia, if not the world. With a navy that already dwarfs ours, a combat-ready army that is probably five times larger than ours, and a slew of hypersonic missiles, we are already an underdog.

God help us if our feckless and woke military leaders are allowed to further erode the effectiveness and competence of our fighting forces in favor of further wokeness and deceitful critical race theory.

Over and out!

GI Joe RIP: 1775 – 2021

By Ray Starmann

 Now, that you’re gone Joe, I just wanted to say thanks for everything you’ve done for the country.

You were around a long time, all the way back to 1775. You waged a lot of battles, fought plenty of bad guys, and helped bring down evil empires.

You crossed the Delaware with Washington, trudged endlessly through the steaming jungles of the South Pacific, climbed Pointe du Hoc to save the world at Normandy, and battled sandstorms and Jihadis from the 73 Easting to Tal Afar.

As General MacArthur said so eloquently, “From one end of the world to another, you drained deep the chalice of courage.”

G.I. Joe where have you gone?

They called you Yankee Doodle, Rabble in Arms, Billy and Johnny, Doughboy, Soldier, Grunt, Trooper, but perhaps the greatest title they bestowed upon you was GI Joe; Government Issue Joe.

Sometimes you were a draftee, other times a volunteer, but all the time you stood for one thing above all, VICTORY.

You didn’t want to be there; you wanted to be home with your family, or at a ball game, or at your job. But, you did what you had to do and you did it heroically and magnificently.

You have known what it is like to be filthy and frozen and afraid. You have endured and experienced things that no one else can understand, especially the people who wanted to destroy you.

Make no mistake about it Joe; they didn’t want you around anymore.

You weren’t perfect; you swore, you drank, you brawled; you associated with women you wouldn’t introduce to your mother. But, the world knew you as the “Good Guy”, the guy in uniform who always had a spare ration or some extra chocolate for a child, and who delivered it with a smile.

Little did you know that it wouldn’t be a bullet that killed you, but political correctness, wokeness, and left-wing radicals who have never spent a moment in your blue and gray and khakis, in your jungle fatigues and ACU’s.

Some call it progress, some call it social engineering; I call it the death of the US Army.

I know you turned to your leaders for help. As usual, your sergeants did their best. But, they only have so much power. Next, you went to your lieutenants and captains. But, they were young and just trying to survive in a system that was crumbling from within. Then, you approached your field grade officers, the majors, and colonels. You thought they could help. But, they were too busy rising in the ranks to care.

Next were the people with the real power; the brass, the generals. Finally, you thought, help was on the way. No doubt these men would save you. But, you thought wrong, Joe. They couldn’t have cared less about you. Oh, they said they were behind you, during graduation speeches or base visits. But, their promises, like their characters, were empty.

They said they needed you. But, in the end, all they needed was another star, or more retirement benefits or a defense contractor job after they had sold you out and the nation with you.

I know you pleaded with them, Joe. You told them what would happen if you were gone, but they didn’t care. Your cries went unanswered. Their moral cowardice and greed and irresponsibility were the cause of your death.

To quote that man of wisdom, Don Vito Corleone, “You will always be betrayed by those closest to you.” And you were betrayed, Joe.

Now, that you’re gone, we won’t forget you, how could we, after everything you’ve done for us. No doubt, there will be a time when we wish you were still around, believe me. It’s coming. Only our enemies seem to understand the disaster we’re embarking on. We are too blinded by our own weakness, political correctness, and sensitivity to save you. Your death is celebrated by those who think that by destroying you they are being progressive.

Of course, those that destroyed you won’t be around when the reckoning takes place. They never are. They’ll be retired or at another government agency or at some left-wing think tank. They’ll be safely tucked away when the New Army, the Great Woke Social Experiment takes the field and loses over and over and over again to a myriad of the nation’s enemies.

Then and only then will the public cry out for you and wonder how we could have possibly let you slip away into a death slumber. By then, it will be too late.

Garryowen, Joe

 

 

Why the Mainstream Media Ignores This Woman

I had never heard of Winsome Sears before Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election.

Why not?

She is charismatic, smart, confident, and formidable. She is a 57-year-old mother of three, a former U.S. Marine, vice-president of the Virginia Board of Education, and a business owner. And she was running for Lt. Governor of Virginia along with the state’s newly-elected Governor Glen Youngkin.

Glen Youngkin & Winsome Sears on the campaign trail

But she has one flaw as far as America’s corrupt legacy media are concerned.

She’s a conservative Republican.

That makes her persona non grata when it comes to national media coverage.

In today’s America, you cannot be a conservative black woman and expect to receive any kind of positive coverage by the mainstream media.

Here for example, is how CNN portrayed her Wednesday morning:

“(Sears) was national chair of Black Americans Making America First, a coalition that promotes initiatives by former President Donald Trump and has defended him after controversies and racist comments. Asked about her support for Trump, Sears told CNN, “I am an independent thinker” and promised to ensure “more diverse representation is appointed on boards and commissions.”

In other words, because she supported Donald Trump, she is, as Joe Biden says, not really black. Her skin color, race, and heritage are somehow diluted by her conservative beliefs.

Nevertheless, Sears will be the first Black woman and woman of color to serve as lieutenant governor of Virginia. She also is the first and only Black Republican woman, female veteran, and legal immigrant elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. Sears immigrated to the United States from Kingston, Jamaica with her parents when she was 6 years old.

“There are some who want to divide us and we must not let that happen,” Sears said after her election. “They would like us to believe that we are back in 1963 when my father came to America. Here I am, living proof. In case you haven’t noticed, I am black and I have been black all my life. But that’s not what this is about. What we are going to do is be about the business of the commonwealth.”

Winsome Sears & “Friend.”

And here is another strike against Sears as far as the national media are concerned. She is a Second Amendment advocate. In April, she posted a photo of herself at a gun range on Twitter, citing the constitutional right of every American to bear arms and declaring her opposition to red flag laws, which make it easier for law enforcement to seize guns from individuals whose family members have reported them as mentally unstable.

“Marines know how to use guns and I won’t ever support a red flag law! The 2nd Amendment says the peoples’ right to bear arms ‘shall not be infringed!’” she wrote in her post.

Good for her.

And here’s somebody else you won’t see the mainstream media talking about. His name is Jason Miyares, a Republican who was elected as Virginia’s first Latino attorney general.

Virginia’s new Atty Gen. Jason Miyares

Miyares was the first Cuban American elected to the Virginia General Assembly, and often highlighted his Cuban background on the campaign trail by telling the story of his mother’s immigration to the US in 1965.

He is also critical of the state’s lenient policies when it comes to releasing violent criminals.

“The victims of violent crime are too often ignored or forgotten in Richmond,” Miyares’ website says. “An out-of-control parole board has let … felons, rapists, murderers, cop killers, and child abusers out of prison and back in our neighborhoods and communities.”

“On day one, we’ll work toward a safe and secure Virginia and ending the criminal first, victim last mindset,” Miyares said Wednesday. “Virginia has spoken – we want safe streets, we want our police to be well trained and supported in the community – and we want the rule of law respected. I intend on delivering on my campaign promises.”

It’s about time.

Sears said that while Democrats center many of their messages on being friendly to immigrants and the black community, they actually sow division in each election cycle.

Winsome Sears & Family

“This is what the Democrats do over and over again,” Sears said. “They come into the black community and they try to gin up our anger over some supposed threat or some supposed slight, and then we’re supposed to run out and vote for them because they’re coming to save us.

“We want them to go find another victim. You see that they come and they try to get our vote, but only at election time, people. And after that, they are gone again for another four years,” Sears said. “They’re like the cicada.”

In addition to the unanticipated ouster of Virginia’s Democrats from the governor’s mansion, Republicans also recaptured the Virginia House of Delegates—another sound rejection of Joe Biden and his socialist policies.

“The red wave is here, and things are only going to get worse for Joe Biden and the Democrats come November 2022,” said Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

As Winsome Sears might say: “Keep those cicadas entombed.”

 

 

 

Why Teachers Drink & Parents are Outraged. Should We Be Worried?

 

There is a lot of talk and controversy these days about how our children are being indoctrinated with such specious Marxist ideas as Critical Race Theory, the erroneous and debunked 1619 Project, and Critical Gender Theory that posits that gender division is a social construct and that there is no real difference between men and women.

In fact, say the CGT protagonists, humans are “gender-fluid,” meaning that biological boys born as biological boys can transition into girls if they want to, and vice-versa.

It is little wonder then that outraged parents coast to coast are rising up against this kind of political/social disinformation and caustic brainwashing and demanding answers to several troubling questions.

They are asking school boards why they are teaching children to hate our country and its founding fathers.

They are asking why schools are telling white children that they are oppressors and by being born white, they are innately racist while black, brown, and yellow children are oppressed and can never be racists.

Why are you pitting kindergartners and first graders against one another by separating them by race and ethnicity, they are asking.

[image error]

And why aren’t you teaching our children how to read and write, to do math, to understand science, and to respect one another rather than to hate one another?

Good questions all, especially when you compare American students with those in other nations.

The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students around the world and is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2018, when the test was last administered, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science. It did worse in math, ranking 30th.

The U.S. scored 478 in math, below the OECD average of 489. That’s well below the scores of the top five, all of which were Asian nations: Singapore at 569, Macao at 555, Hong Kong at 551, Taiwan at 531, and Japan at 527. China was not included in this ranking, because only four provinces participated.

In science, the United States scored at 502, above the OECD average of 489, but still behind several other nations. The top five highest-scoring countries were Singapore at 551, Macao at 544, Estonia at 530, Japan at 529, and Finland at 522.

These low scores mean that American students may not be as prepared to take high-paying computer and engineering jobs, which often go to foreign workers. While Silicon Valley is America’s high-tech innovation center, one reason for its success is the cultural diversity of its foreign-born software engineers—not American engineers.

Less you think that this is nothing to worry about, here is something I received recently via email. It’s entitled: “Why Teachers Drink.” You might find it illuminating. I certainly did. While some of the answers are amusing and waggish, they are also disquieting. Take a look.

 WHY TEACHERS DRINK

The following questions were set in last year’s GED examination These are genuine answers (from 16 year olds)

Q. Name the four seasons
A.. Salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar

Q. How is dew formed?
A.. The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire

Q. What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
A.. If you are buying a house they will insist that you are well endowed. (Definitely more important than financial solvency)

Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A.. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election

Q. What are steroids?
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs  (Shoot yourself now, there is little hope)

Q… What happens to your body as you age?
A.. When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental

Q. What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A.. He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery  (So true)

Q. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes?
A.. Premature death

Q. What is artificial insemination?
A… When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour?
A.. Keep it in the cow  (Simple, but brilliant)

Q. How are the main 20 parts of the body categorized (e.g. The abdomen)?
A.. The body is consisted into 3 parts – the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A,E,I,O,U  (wtf!)

Q. What is the fibula?
A.. A small lie

Q. What does ‘varicose’ mean?
A.. Nearby

Q. What is the most common form of birth control?
A.. Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium.  (That would work)

Q. Give the meaning of the term ‘Caesarean section’?
A.. The caesarean section is a district in Rome

Q. What is a seizure?
A.. A Roman Emperor. (Julius Seizure, I came, I saw, I had a fit)

Q. What is a terminal illness?
A. When you are sick at the airport.  (Irrefutable)

Q. What does the word ‘benign’ mean?
A.. Benign is what you will be after you be eight  (Brilliant)
 

AND THE BEST IS LAST:::

Q. What is a turbine?

A.. Something an Arab or Shreik wears on his head. Once a Arab boy reaches puberty, he removes his diaper and wraps it around his head.  (Now we’re getting somewhere)

 

 

 

The Awful English Language

To conclude my series of posts on the English language in general and on rhetorical devices, oxymora, respecting the language, and writing well in particular, here is a post about how illogical and difficult it is to master the English language. As with those previous posts, this post was a handout I used to share with my journalism students when I was teaching at the University of Illinois. I hope you find it interesting, but most of all I hope that you will have pity on those poor souls who are faced with the unenviable task of learning English as a second or third language. 

Let’s face it, Americans are notoriously inept when it comes to learning other languages. Unlike Europe, where many people speak several languages because dozens of nations with distinct tongues adjoin one another, the United States only has Canada to the North and Mexico to the South.

Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the United States. So you would think it would make sense for us to learn Spanish. But how many of us have taken Spanish classes in high school (or even college) and can manage only such phrases as “Una Cerveza mas por favor” (one more beer, please) or “¿Como te llamas?” (What’s your name?)?

Then there is Canada—an English-speaking country, except for those French-speaking diehard traditionalists in places like Montreal. Okay, some Americans may argue that Canadians speak English weirdly, as in aboot rather than about and uutside rather than outside.

Nonetheless, Americans can travel to Canada and get along just fine without worrying about a significant language barrier. Cultural barriers are another matter, but I won’t go into those here.

Centuries ago, I took high school French, and I think the only phrase I still recall is: “Comment allez-vous aujourd’hui?” (How are you today?).

Later in life, I learned German, but only because I was based for almost three years in a small Bavarian town in a signals intelligence detachment, married a German woman, and minored in German at the University of Kansas. Later, I learned Japanese while living there almost ten years as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. Then, I picked up some Spanish while working in Mexico, Central, and South America.

And that brings me to the purpose of this post. When I was teaching journalism as a professor at the University of Illinois, I used to spend part of a class talking about what I called “The Awful English Language.”

We Americans complain about learning other languages because we say they are hard to digest. But think about the non-English speaker who has to traverse the illogical and contradictory muddle that the English language is.

It is filled with homographs—words of like spelling that have more than one meaning. Then there are heterodoxies. That’s a homograph that is also pronounced differently.

Also, English tends to be a combination of prefixes, suffixes and borrowed words from several other languages. As a result, we end up with endless combinations of words with unpredictable, sometimes contradictory, meanings.

While some parts of the English language are relatively straightforward, such as the fact that nouns only have a single gender, it is the spelling and phonetics that often boggle the mind. There are so many silent letters – knock, knee, knight – and plurals that just don’t make sense.

The plural of ‘box’ is ‘boxes,’ yet the plural of ‘ox’ is ‘oxen,’ not ‘oxes.’ We see these arbitrary formations happen all the time in the English language, as well as words that sound similar yet are spelled differently, or sound the same but are used in different contexts.

Now for a brief homily about the English language and how it got so damned complicated. Ahem, bear with me, please.

The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages but has been influenced over the centuries by many different languages. English is considered to be a “borrowing” language, and that is why it developed the complexity that non-English speakers and even we native speakers find frustrating today.

English can be categorized into three groups: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English and Modern English.

The invasion of the three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes) who came to the British Isles in the fifth century A.D from places now known as Northwest Germany and the Netherlands significantly impacted the English language. Their dialects mixed with English throughout the years.

Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, later invaded the country. Hence, Old Norse and Latin words are also found in the English language. The Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class also profoundly influenced vocabulary after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Hence, we have a mongrel language blended from dozens of tongues, dialects, and idioms.

There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Now, take a look at these gems and maybe then you will begin to pity the non-English speaker who must learn English.

The bandage was wound around the wound.The farm was used to produce produce.The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.We must polish the Polish furniture.He could lead if he would get the lead out.The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.I did not object to the object.The insurance was invalid for the invalid.There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.They were too close to the door to close it.The buck does funny things when the does are present.A seamstress and a sewer fell into a sewer line.To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.The wind was too strong to wind the sail.After a number of injections, my jaw got number.Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?Why do our noses run but our feet smell?I did not object to the object.Freddie filled in his form by filling it out.Why do performers recite a play, yet play at a recital?

Had enough? No? Then think about these conundrums of the English language.

If lawyers are disbarred, and clergymen defrocked, does it not follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, or dry cleaners depressed?

Laundry workers could decrease, eventually becoming depressed and depleted.

Even more, bedmakers could be debunked, baseball players debased, landscapers deflowered, software engineers detested, underwear manufacturers debriefed, and even musical composers will eventually decompose.

On a different note, though, perhaps we can hope that some politicians will be devoted.

Yes, English is a crazy language. In fact, that was the title of a song that Pete Seeger used to sing years ago. Here are a few excerpts:

“English is the most widely spoken language in the history of the planet.

One out of every seven human beings can speak or read it.

Half the world’s books, 3/4 of the international mail are in English.

It has the largest vocabulary, perhaps two million words,

And a noble body of literature. But face it:

English is cuh-ray-zee!

There’s no egg in eggplant, no pine or apple in pineapple.

Quicksand works slowly; boxing rings are square.

A writer writes, but do fingers fing?

Hammers don’t ham, grocers don’t groce. Haberdashers don’t haberdash.

English is cuh-ray-zee!

If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth?

It’s one goose, two geese. Why not one moose, two meese?

If it’s one index, two indices; why not one Kleenex, two Kleenices?

English is cuh-ray-zee!

You can comb through the annals of history, but not just one annal.

You can make amends, but not just one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one, is it an odd or an end?

If the teacher taught, why isn’t it true that a preacher praught?

If you wrote a letter, did you also bote your tongue?

And if a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

English is cuh-ray-zee!

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?

Why is it that night falls but never breaks and day breaks but never falls?

In what other language do people drive on the parkway and park on the driveway?

Ship by truck but send cargo by ship? Recite at a play but play at a recital?

Have noses that run and feet that smell?

English is cuh-ray-zee!

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same

When a wise man and a wise guy are very different?

To overlook something and to oversee something are very different,

But quite a lot and quite a few are the same.

How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the next?

English is cuh-ray-zee!” 

Of course English is a creation of humanity, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

There are also dozens of illogical idioms we hear every day. Such as:

“Head over heels” (in love, for example). Surely the phrase should be “heels over head.”

“Meteoric rise” (to fame, for example). Meteors don’t rise. They fall.

“Quantum Leap” (meaning a significant change). A quantum leap is a very small change, but at least it is large on the scale of atoms.

“To leapfrog” over something. Surely it should be “frog leap” over.

He “turned up dead.” That’s used mainly in the US. Turning up, even when you are dead, takes real determination.

“Back-to-back” means consecutive, e.g., back-to-back wins. It should be “back-to-front,” I think. The end of one thing is followed by the start of the next thing and not the end of it. Unfortunately, “back-to-front” already has a different meaning.

Finally, there are these ten meaningless and irritating English clichés and expressions that should be banned forever. I cringe whenever I hear them, which is every day—especially by newsreaders and political pundits on television.

At the end of the dayAt this moment in timeThe bottom lineI personallyWith all due respectIt’s a nightmareFairly uniqueShouldn’t of (ouch!)24/7It’s not rocket science-

PS: Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?

 

A Short Primer on Rhetorical Devices

This post is a continuation of my discussion of writing and the English language. Yesterday and Monday, I posted about oxymora and some tips about writing well. Both posts were based on handouts I used to give my students when I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois. If you haven’t seen them, I urge you to take a look. Here is another handout I used to give my students. It deals with rhetorical devices and how to employ them in your writing. I hope you find it useful.

Style must be in harmony with content, and with the story’s purpose and audience. The best way—perhaps the only way to acquire a distinctive style is by reading and analyzing excellent writing. When this is done with care, you will begin to absorb into your language patterns, some useful techniques that will improve your writing.

Because style is a matter of emphasizing the essential parts of your subject—your facts or your feelings—remember that the most faithful servants of emphasis are surprise and variety. Too much surprise will exhaust readers, thus making them immune to it. But too much familiarity will bore them. 

Though readers may be unaware of an article’s tone, remember that they are nevertheless affected by it, for tone is contagious. Therefore, take care to choose words that accurately convey your feelings about the subject at hand.

Finally, because laziness in word choice, staleness, and monotony are the enemies of style, a writer must occasionally let words cut unexpected capers. Writers must strive to remain unpredictable. If there is a secret of good writing, perhaps that is it.

A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms

Alliteration: The occurrence of words more or less in sequence having the same beginning sound. (“words that had warmed women, wooed and won them…”—Gay Telese).

Allusion: Reference to a well-known book, person, place, or event. Allusion is an economical way to enrich the impact of your writing with emotional and intellectual echoes from another work. (“If a [McDonald’s] manager tries to sell his customers hamburgers that have been off the grill more than 10 minutes…Big Brother in Oak Brook will find out.”—Time. Big Brother is a reference to the supreme authority in George Orwell’s 1984. “(The photograph) shocked the nation into realizing that something was rotten in Vietnam.”—John G. Morris. An allusion to Hamlet.

Anticlimax: A descent from a comparatively lofty vocabulary or tone to one noticeably less exalted. If the drop is sudden, the effect is often comic. (“Fun is for the frivolous, and Jimmy (Carter) sees the world as a hard and serious place. Man was put here to suffer, to atone, to repent, to confess, to surrender, to witness, or else to bake until well-did.” Larry L. King)

Antithesis: Figure of balance in which contrasting ideas are intentionally juxtaposed. (“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” President Lincoln. “We are caught in war, wanting peace. We’re torn by division, wanting unity.” President Nixon.

Connotation: The implications or suggestions evoked by a word. Connotations may be highly individual, based on associations because of pleasant or unpleasant experiences in a person’s life, or universal—that is, culturally conditioned.

Denotation: The literal meaning of a word, exclusive of attitudes or feelings the writer or speaker may have.

Hyperbole: Exaggeration as a means of achieving emphasis, humor, and sometimes irony. (“Here she [Ann Miller] stands for a moment, examining legs that start at the waist and end nine miles below in a pair of shoes she’s nicknamed Mac and Joe.”—Arthur Bell.

Imagery: In its most common use, imagery suggests visual detail or pictures, though it may also refer to words denoting other sensory experiences.

Irony: A discrepancy between what is said and what is meant; incongruity. Often used with a kind of grim humor, irony gives the effect of cool detachment and restraint. (“Carter…ignored the Democratic crown prince, Ted Kennedy, the well-known midnight aquanaut.”—Larry L. King)

Metaphor: A comparison of two unlike objects without using the word “like.” (“Sentimentality and repression have a natural affinity; they’re the two sides of one counterfeit coin.”—Pauline Kael. “A very old woman with gray hair is hauled along by her life-support system, a curly-haired blue-jacketed black dog on a leash.”—Talk of the Town, The New Yorker. Another example is Kenneth Tynan describing the stage relationship between TV’s Johnny Carson and comedian Don Rickles: “More deftly than anyone else, Carson knows how to play matador to Rickles’ bull, inciting him to charge, and sometimes getting gored himself.”)

Onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds seem to express or reinforce their meanings: hiss, bank, bow-wow, for example. (“The room clacked with the crack of billiard balls.”—Gay Telese.

Oxymoron: Two apparently contradictory terms that express a startling paradox. (“a smiling man-child of 51”—Shana Alexander; “flawless faux pas”—Arthur Bell)

Parallelism: Writing in which similar or related ideas are expressed in similar grammatical structure, thus achieving balance, rhythm, and emphasis. (Look for the series of parallel verb phrases at the end of this sentence: “It is strangely comforting to surrender an unadorned, eminently imperfect body to the ministration of another human being: someone who will rotate the stiffened joints, knead the balky muscles, unknot the drum-tight nerves and coax the sluggish skin into alertness.” Michelle Green. “So say what you will about Reggie Jackson: he knows how to heat up a house and how to ring down a curtain.” Mark Goodman)

Periodic Sentence: A suspenseful sentence, usually long, in which the main idea is not completed until the very end. (“Every four or eight years a large band of men, mostly without previous experience of government, mostly young, all dangerously euphoric because of recent and often accidental political success, all billed as geniuses by the Washington press corps and believing their own notices, all persuaded that they were meant by the stars to reinvent the wheel, are given great ostensible, and even actual, power on the White House staff.”—John Kenneth Galbraith.

Personification: A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstract ideas are endowed with human qualities. (“the shape and shade and size and noise of the words as they hummed, strummed, jigged and galloped along”—Dylan Thomas.

Pun: Wordplay involving the use of a word with two different meanings or the use of a word that is pronounced similarly to another with a different meaning. (“a science writer who can make the language of numbers sound as easy as pi”—Time. “McDonald’s is a super clean production machine efficient enough to give even the chiefs of General Motors food for thought.” Time)

Simile: An expressed comparison between two unlike objects. (Kenneth Tynan describing host Johnny Carson: “In repose, he resembles a king-sized ventriloquist’s dummy.”  “The white flesh of her thighs rose like soft bread dough over the tops of her stockings.”—Stephanie Mills.)

Symbol: Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.

Zeugma: A construction in which one word is placed in the same grammatical relationship to two other words, but it relates to the two in different senses. Zeugma usually involves a verb and two objects, and the verb has two different meanings. (“He was a serious young man wearing glasses and the mien of a Harvard divinity student.”—Terry Southern)

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