Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 61

Another Casualty at the Gray Lady

During my career as a foreign correspondent, I knew a lot of New York Times reporters. Most were excellent reporters and good writers. Many, if not all, were from the East Coast and were graduates of Ivy League schools. I can’t recall many Times reporters who, like me, were products of the nation’s more plebian heartland and less prominent universities.

As a result, I always had the sense that reporters for the Gray Lady, as  The Times is sometimes called, considered themselves on a dais just above everybody else—even reporters who worked for the Washington Post, which has always been the Times’s number one competitor. Okay, I got that. I worked for the Chicago Tribune, which at one time was the nation’s third or fourth-largest newspaper.

Many times while covering some story in Asia or Latin America the New York Times correspondent would scurry into a hotel lobby, or a bar, or wherever and ask: “Have you seen the Post?”

Times reporters were always terrified that the Post correspondent would have a story they didn’t. I always wanted to respond: “No, but the Chicago Tribune is here, along with the Baltimore Sun and the Boston Globe.”

 Of course, I never responded that way. Today, I kinda wish I had.

Whenever I met a Times reporter I was always reminded of the old Saturday Night Live spoof in which Chevy Chase would introduce himself this way: “Hello, I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not.” That might be a bit unfair of me, but that’s how I felt.

After all, the New York Times was considered the national newspaper of record and its supercilious motto was: “All the news that’s fit to print.”

Despite its smugness, I always had tremendous respect for the Times. Once upon a time, it was a great newspaper. Yes, it always leaned left, but even so, its stories were typically thoroughly reported, well written, and by and large fair. Sadly, that is no longer the case. It has lost its way. Today, the Times makes no pretense about where it stands in the battle between the forces of the left and the right.

All of this is my way of leading up to the extraordinary resignation letter Times opinion editor and writer Bari Weiss wrote to A.G. Sulzberger, the Times’ publisher. In that letter, she decried the “constant bullying by colleagues” who disagreed with her views on Black Lives Matter, the so-called “cancel culture,” and the inaction management took on her harassment allegations. Eventually, a war of words erupted between the paper’s vocal young “wokes” and those less “woke” and Weiss decided she had had enough.

Here is the complete letter Bari Weiss penned to Sulzberger. I think you will find it enlightening. As for me, I am saddened to see a once-great newspaper flattened under the weight of its own biases and dishonesty.

Dear A.G. (Sulzberger),

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times. 

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives, and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honored to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

[image error] Bari Weiss

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still, other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong. 

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital Thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets. 

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated, and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati. 

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned, and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm—language—is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry. 

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Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper. 

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labor for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do—the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them. 

Sincerely,

Bari Weiss

 

Writing A Memoir: Five Common Misconceptions

I am pleased to share with my readers this post from award-winning author Marylee MacDonald, author of Bonds of Love & Blood and Montpelier Tomorrow. Marylee is also a teacher and writing coach and is the author of 7-Day Writer’s Bootcamp, a short course on writing. You can find out more about Marylee at her website: http://maryleemacdonaldauthor.com/

By Marylee MacDonald

[image error] Marylee MacDonald

So you’ve always dreamed of writing a memoir. Where should you start, and how can you get a handle on the big and small turning points, traumas, and people that constitute your life?

Are You Confused?

Writing a memoir is not simple. The writing itself takes far longer than beginning writers think it will.

Let’s take a hypothetical. Imagine getting a letter with this message.

“You’re about to embark on the most intense four years of your life. Welcome to Med School!”–Best regards, Dean of the Medical College of Grenada

You would be taken aback. “Gosh, I don’t think I even applied!”

On the other hand, if you’ve had a secret hankering to become a doctor, you might welcome such a letter. You would swallow hard, adjust your expectations, and prepare for the long hours that developing medical competency will take.

Plowing through to the end of an 80,000- to 110,000-word manuscript can feel similarly daunting. It can take years to figure out what you want to say and how you want to say it. And, then, you’ll start on revisions. Before you produce a readable and engaging book, your manuscript may go through five, ten, twenty, or thirty revisions.

  Writing a Memoir Takes Courage

The act of putting words on the page–words that are but a faint approximation of the lived experience–requires a huge amount of emotional investment on your part. You may have to live in a place of emotional pain every time you sit down at the computer. And, even when you give this story your best, you will believe you have failed to tell it as it should be told.

So much for the hors d’oeuvre. Now for the meat.

Here are five misconceptions about memoirs. Think about them when your work is in the formative stage, and you’ll save yourself some grief.

Myth #1: Recovering From Trauma

Can writing a memoir help you recover from trauma? Possibly, but not necessarily. I’m amazed when folks say, “Oh, you wrote about getting trapped in a mine shaft for 91 days. I guess writing about the experience helped you put it behind you.”

People, there is a huge, huge difference between journaling to “work through the problem” and writing a memoir. If you have stuff to work through, then write faithfully in your journal and hope you can expunge the trauma or loss.

However, ask any vet who has PTSD issues, and you’ll find that memories or experiences are not so easily expunged. From my reading in neuropsychology, I believe the best bet for recovery involves cognitive behavioral therapy, desensitization therapy (talking/reliving the experience until it has lost its power to wound), and hypnosis. (For more about PTSD, check out these resources at the Veterans Administration. Writing a memoir is not therapeutic.

What writing a memoir can do is help you find the deeper truths. It can give you the satisfaction of making art. As memoirist Annie Dillard wrote:

Why are we reading if not in the hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power?

Now, that’s a reason to write a memoir! Are you game?

Myth #2: Writing To Set the Record Straight

All of us feel aggrieved. We are disappointed that life hasn’t turned out the way we thought it would, that our good intentions go unrewarded, or that people who’ve done us an injustice get off scot free.

Those who have suffered childhood trauma–rape, incest, neglect, or abuse–may very well feel that the only way to sort out the lingering effects of that past is to wrestle it into submission via a memoir.

The problem is that any hint of victimhood will doom your book. If you come off as “someone to whom bad things happened,” readers will put the book down.

Life is hard enough for all of us. We want to know that it’s possible to survive, even in the direst circumstances. Readers want to be uplifted.

Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, is an example of violence, trauma, and reinvention. The point is that Beah, though showing us the dark place, doesn’t leave us stranded.

Can your memoir show us the resilience that wells up from within the human spirit? Can it offer hope?

Myth #3: Having a Monopoly on The Truth

In geometry, we might call Myth #3 a corollary to Myth #2.

One of the most fertile places to look for memoir material is childhood. That’s because children have greater access to their feelings. We haven’t yet learned to shut down or filter out what might be unacceptable if spoken aloud.

Another reason to tap into childhood is that our memories remain vivid with smells, sights, and “firsts” –dates, kisses, and defeats.

But the danger with using material from that portion of our pasts is that we may find ourselves mired in the “Little Matchgirl” (aka “The Poor Little Matchgirl”) syndrome. Read Hans Christian Andersen’s story here, and you’ll see what I mean.

Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Match Girl” is an example of a protagonist who is a victim. Though she tries to escape in her imagination, she cannot help freezing to death.

Frank McCourt’s bestseller, Angela’s Ashes, taps into a similar vein. It’s a tearjerker of a childhood in which humor leavens the pathos. What’s so wonderful about this book is that McCourt stands the cliche of victimization on its head. Here’s an excerpt:

Frank McCourt waited until late in life to publish ANGELA’S ASHES. What makes his work so popular is “voice”–the voice that takes a wry look at a childhood of deprivation.

When you write your memoir, you must set the bar high, both in terms of objective truth and of what I call “truth of intention.” Consider the other people in your story. Note that McCourt sees his alcoholic father and long-suffering mother as “characters” crushed by poverty, religion, colonialism, and tradition. He pities them.

Can you find it in your heart to forgive?

Myth #4: Writing the Whole Life, Not Just Part

The instant you embark on a memoir, you will discover one of its biggest myths–the illusion that the book must cover your whole life, not just part of it. You don’t have to emulate Frank McCourt, looking back on a long life. (If you’re young you haven’t lived it yet!) The easier path in this memoir-writing endeavor is to write about part of your life.

When you’re writing a memoir, think about which slice of the pie will be the most interesting for the reader. Focus on one event, theme, or subject, and let the remainder of your life stay in the background.

Pin the above visual above your writing desk. Narrow your focus. Find and read memoirs that start in medias res–in the middle of the action. Put readers there with you, and you’ll win their loyalty.

The excerpt below comes from Tobias Wolff’s In Pharoah’s Army: Memories of the Lost War. Wolff would rather show than tell. He allows us make up our own minds about Vietnam.

Tobias Wolff selected one slice of life to write about–the Vietnam war. His memoir, IN PHAROAH’S ARMY, has been called one of the finest books ever written about armed conflict, and yet it’s told through the lens of one man’s war experience. What makes memoirs so compelling is that they are particular stories (of one individual); but, in the particular, readers find universal truths.

Myth #5: You Are Writing A Memoir Only For Family Members

My granddaughters are always bugging me to write about my life. “Grandma, you were a carpenter. That’s awesome!” Or “Grandma, you were a single mom. How did you do it?”

But, what they actually want, and what I would love to provide, is a document that will help them make up for the time we didn’t know each other. My young mommy years, when I made my kids eat five bites. And to take that back further, my teenage years, when the hormones raged and decades of either/or choices lay before me.

When we are young, we have all the time in the world. And, yet, I know that if I penned even a short memoir about the days before cell phones and social media, my eager admirers would grow bored.

No one can bear to read a book that has no tension. A straight, chronological retelling of the past will bore readers and remind them of how they feel on a long plane flight with a seatmate who yammers in their ear.

If you want to write a memoir, learn from others who have written them.

Two Resources to Make Your Memoir a Success

Mary Karr has just published The Art of the Memoir. It’s a funny and thoughtful book that will give you the benefit of her wisdom. If you aspire to “become a writer,” read it. (Karr is the author of several bestselling memoirs, one of which is The Liar’s Club.)

Another resource you might explore is the National Association of Memoir Writers, founded by Linda Joy Myers, herself a memoirist and author of Don’t Call Me Mother. This site is especially good for beginning writers. NAMW’s podcasts contain a ton of information about writing memoirs and getting them published.

Writing a memoir can be a great way to share what life has taught you about the human condition. If you can find humor in the ordinary and compassion for those who’ve wronged you, you’re halfway to your goal.

 

Sophisticated Synonyms for the Word “Jerk” You Can Use in Intelligent Conversation

Below is another article from Janey Davies, sub-editor at Learning Mind. It deals with the word “jerk”–or more accurately, synonyms for that pejorative term that we can use in our writing. So, take it away, Janie.

By Janey Davies

Sub-editor at Learning Mind

Sometimes I want to describe a situation where a person is a complete jerk, but I don’t want to use that particular word. It’s not that I‘m being pretentious, it’s more that the word doesn’t quite fit the circumstances. It was only when I started looking for alternatives that I realized just how many synonyms for jerk actually exist.

Here are just a few of my favorites:

20 synonyms for jerk to use in intelligent conversation

Bogan

The word bogan comes from British Australian slang and means a person who continually engages in drunken or stupid behavior.

Boot Boy

If you ever see vandals mindlessly destroying or defacing property, you don’t have to call them jerks anymore, you can use a word that is more specific. A boot boy is a person that needlessly destroys other people’s property.

Charlie

This is a British slang term for a stupid person. You hear people say ‘He’s a right Charlie’ and they will mean that he is a bit of a plonker. That he is stupid and silly but in a non-offensive way.

Chuff

A chuff is a rude or insensitive person. Someone who is a boor amongst others. Chuff is also another word in British slang for the buttocks.

Churl

You might already know this word from ‘churlish behavior’. It can also mean a person who hates the human race, someone who is offensive, or a stingy person.

Dag

Do you know someone who is always joking around? A person that never acts seriously? Someone who is always acting the fool? They are always being silly? The next time you go to call them a jerk, just swap the word for dag instead. A dag is a joker who doesn’t know when to stop.

Dill

Someone who is a dill is an object of ridicule or criticism. Instead of saying ‘Look at that jerk over there, acting like a complete idiot’, you could use the synonym dill as a substitute for a jerk.

Divvy

Most of us know the word divvy as a verb to divide or spread, but the noun has a different meaning. This is one of the kinder synonyms for jerk that you can use. It means someone who lacks intelligence.

Dork

Dork is a good synonym for jerk because it just sounds a little kinder when you use it in conservation. A dork is a clumsy, sometimes bad-mannered person. Say, for instance, someone bumps into you in a coffee house and you spill your latte and they don’t apologize. They would be a dork.

Gink

If the person you want to call a jerk is acting in a strange or unconventional way, you could call him or her a gink. Gink means someone who holds weird views and acts in bizarre ways.

Meatball

Do you know someone who never seems to make the right call? Do they always appear to lack judgment? They cannot make good decisions? You might want to stop calling them jerks and substitute the synonym meatball instead. A meatball is a person who lacks common sense or good judgment.

Nerk

Have you ever called someone a jerk because they are so insignificant or small? Or that their views were unimportant to you? Next time use this synonym for jerk instead. Nerk means minor or trivial.

Nointer

Nointer comes from Australian slang and means a mischievous or wild child. Or a reckless and rash person. So if the person in your situation behaves in a reckless manner, you can substitute the word jerk for the synonym nointer.

Ocker

I’m sure we’ve all come across a few ockers in our time. An ocker is a particularly aggressive or uncouth boy or man. Just imagine a closing time at your local bar or club. It can also mean a person, usually male, with bad manners.

Prig

A prig is a great synonym for jerk, especially if you are looking for a word to describe someone who likes to spoil other people’s fun. A prig believes they are superior to everyone else. They are right and you are always wrong. They are self-righteous bores.

Putz

Putz is a Yiddish word that literally means penis, but if you’re looking for synonyms for jerk, it applies. You can swap jerk for putz if you want to describe a loser, a stupid, ineffectual person. Someone that is lazy or a person you can put the blame on easily. A person easily ridiculed.

Radge

A radge can have a few different meanings, but in terms of synonyms for jerk, it means a wild person who is difficult to control. It can also mean someone who is mentally-challenged and prone to hurt others. Radge is also defined as a very cruel and wicked person.

Sumph

(pronounced sumf)

This is a Scottish word that means a slow-witted, foolish, clumsy, or sulky person. A blockhead, a soft person, an idiot.

Varlet

This word has several meanings but in the context of synonyms for jerk, it means to display a lack of courage. So if someone has been a jerk by running away from danger then you could call that person a varlet.

Vulgarian

You would use this synonym in place of jerk to describe the newly wealthy who flash their money around in a vulgar way. A vulgarian is a person who acts like a jerk in a vulgar way but is not aware of their vulgar habits or ways.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes the word jerk just doesn’t quite cut it. If you’re ever looking for synonyms for “jerk” to use, I hope you find my list useful.

Learning Mind is a blog created by Anna LeMind, B.A., with the purpose to give you food for thought and solutions for understanding yourself and living a more meaningful life. Learning Mind has over 50,000 email subscribers and more than 1,5 million followers on social media.

Guidelines for Good Writing

When I taught journalism at the University of Illinois, I created a Journalist’s Handbook that I required my students to purchase. I collected and revised the information contained in the  Journalist’s Handbook for almost four decades. Some of it dates back to my time as a journalism student at the University of Kansas. Some of it is information that I accumulated and consigned to a three-ring binder during a 27-year career as a reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune.

The binder accompanied me during my years as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America and as a national correspondent covering the West Coast of the United States. I kept it close at hand when I was an editor. As the years passed, the binder got older and frayed (sort of like me), but that never kept me from consulting it–a humbling reminder that you will never know all there is to know about journalism, nor should you ever stop learning. My old binder was rife with coffee stains, grubby handprints, lots of barely readable hand-scribbled notes, and to top it off the pages kept falling out.

Before I created the handbook I used to pass out much of the material as handouts. I suspect many of those handouts were tossed away once my class ended. Below is one of the chapters of the handbook. Occasionally, I will post other chapters of the Handbook. Stay tuned!

Guidelines for Good Writing

Subject and verb always has to agree.
Do not use a foreign term when there is an adequate English quid pro quo. Foreign words and phrases usually are not apropos.
It behooves the writer to avoid archaic expressions.
Do not use hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
Consult a dictionary frequently to avoid mispelling.
Don’t be redundant again and again. Don’t repeat yourself or say what you have said before.
Remember to never split an infinitive.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Don’t use no double negatives.
Proofread carefully to see if you have any words out.
Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Never use a long word when an infinitesimal one will do.
Avoid colloquial stuff.
No sentence fragments.
Avoid alliteration. Always.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
Contractions aren’t necessary.
One should never generalize.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
Profanity sucks.
Be more or less specific.
Understatement is always best.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Remember to finish what

                    –30–

 

12 English Words That You Should Avoid

And now for something completely different.

When I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I used to get on students for using, or I should say, misusing words—especially slang or words that have no business being in anybody’s vocabulary—especially university students.

I created a list of those words and handed them out to students. Not long ago, I received a similar list from Learning Mind, and I am sharing it here. I hope you find it useful and take heed!

By Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons)

Sub-editor & staff writer at Learning Mind

‘Ain’t.’

Unless you are starring as Eliza Doolittle on some London theatre stage in My Fair Lady, you should not say ‘ain’t.’ Even spellcheck doesn’t recognize it.

It is a contraction of ‘am not’ or ‘is not’ and is a lazy way of saying either of the two. Although it was popular a century ago, nowadays it sounds common and uneducated.

‘Whatever!’

This dismissive term is best reserved for stroppy teenagers going through puberty. If you are older than 13, then you should have some sort of opinion and be able to vocalize it.

Saying ‘whatever’ is suggesting that you don’t care about the other person’s opinion, and you are not prepared to give your time or effort to them. It is glib and rude.

‘No worries’

Do you live in Australia? Then why are you talking like an Australian? You might think this phrase has nothing to do with English slang words, but you’d be wrong. It’s becoming more commonplace in the U.K. than you realize.

If you think it is acceptable to say ‘no worries’ in place of ‘You’re welcome’ or ‘No problem,’ would you also change ‘G’ day mate!’ for ‘Good morning’ or ‘fair dinkum’ for ‘honest’?

Now, do you see how it sounds? It sounds a little pretentious, especially if you top it off with a slight Aussie twang and add ‘mate’ at the end.

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‘Awesome’

Before you describe something as ‘awesome,’ really look at it and think, is it awesome? If you are having trouble deciding whether this is the right word, then here are some synonyms for awesome:

Breath-taking, overwhelming, remarkable, splendid, outstanding, magnificent, incredible, inspiring.

Now, take another look at that sandwich you just said was awesome. It could be tasty, delicious, moist, flavorsome, peppery, or filling, but is it really awesome?

‘Like’

When did it become acceptable to use the word ‘like’ as a form of punctuation in our speech? Like, I was going to like, try and explain, like, what this English slang word, like, sounds like.

If you want to sound as if you don’t know your subject well, then this is probably one of the worst English slang words you can use. It instantly makes you appear hesitant and devoid of any decent vocabulary.

‘Totes!’

Again, how old are you? Nobody over the age of ten should ever say the word ‘totes’ unless they are buying or selling shopping bags. And don’t even think about adding the word ‘emosh’ at the end.

That phrase is reserved for the use of love-struck teenage girls at sleepovers. Not for adults.

‘Epic’

This is another one of the overused slang words in English like ‘awesome.’ People say it without really paying attention to the gravity of the word.

Epic is heroic, larger than life, grand, an extravaganza, impressive. Use the word epic to describe events or circumstances of that nature. Not your night out on the town.

‘Double negative.’

These English slang words were a pet peeve of my father. He would shout ‘Double negative!’ at me from an early age, then explain what I had said wrong.

‘If you haven’t got nothing, you must have something,’ he’d explain. Frequent use of double negatives shows a basic lack of understanding of English grammar rules.

‘OMG/LMAO/BRB’

While it’s fine to use abbreviations like these with friends, it’s never acceptable in the workplace. Particularly in letters or emails. Any kind of text speak or misspelling in written communication will instantly highlight a lack of education.

Leave text speak for friends and family.

‘My truth.’

This is a phrase that has come out of the U.S. recently and has no place in the world. What exactly does ‘my truth’ mean? It means you can’t ask questions, and you can’t probe this person. It’s a little like religion and faith. Because it’s ‘their truth,’ it’s untouchable.

But you can’t have two different versions of the truth. There is THE truth, and that’s it. Suggesting there is ‘your’ truth is subjective. The truth always needs to be objective.

‘Guesstimate’

An estimate is a reasonable evaluation based on the available data to hand. So what is the point of a guesstimate? You are just going to say whatever comes into your mind?

Why not stick with an estimate in that case? Guessing is supposing, conjuring, or assuming. It doesn’t take evidence or facts or knowledge into account. So why bother?

‘Literally’

Ah, our old friend ‘literally’! I literally couldn’t wait to get to this word. Many of us use this word to emphasize what we are doing. We use literally to make what we are doing sound more dramatic.

‘She literally flew into the house.’

The problem is that the word ‘literally’ means actually or in a literal sense.

For example:

‘The hurricane was so strong it literally uprooted several trees.’

A hurricane can be strong enough to uproot trees, so in this sense, the word ‘literally‘ is correct.

But we have started to use the word literally to intensify or exaggerate a word.

For example:

‘He was literally in floods of tears at the tragic news.’

A person might be upset but could never produce ‘floods’ of tears, so in this case, ‘literally’ is being used as an intensifier and is wrong.

Final Thoughts

None of us likes to think that others see us as uneducated. One way we can avoid this is to stop using the above English slang words.

What words make you stop and wonder about a person? Let me know in the comments section.

References:

www.theguardian.com
www.businessinsider.com

Learning Mind features thought-provoking and informative content aimed to give you food for thought, practical solutions, and new ideas on how to uncover your inner potential. 

Take a Knee . . . A Note from Ted Nugent

I received this short commentary written by singer, songwriter, and political activist, Ted Nugent, and wanted to share it with my followers. I found it both powerful and poignant.

TAKE A KNEE

  By Ted Nugent 

Take a little trip to Valley Forge in January. Hold a musket ball in your fingers and imagine it piercing your flesh and breaking a bone or two. There won’t be a doctor or trainer to assist you until after the battle, so just wait your turn. Take your cleats and socks off to get a real experience.

Then, take a knee on the beach in Normandy where man after American man stormed the beach, even as the one in front of him was shot to pieces, the very sea stained with American blood. The only blockers most had were the dead bodies in front of them, riddled with bullets from enemy fire.

Take a knee in the sweat-soaked jungles of Vietnam. From Khe Sanh to Saigon, anywhere will do. Americans died in all those jungles. There was no playbook that told them what was next, but they knew what flag they represented. When they came home, they were protested as well, and spit on for reasons only cowards know.

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Take another knee in the blood-drenched sands of Fallujah in 110-degree heat. Wear your Kevlar helmet and battle dress. Your number won’t be printed on it unless your number is up! You’ll need to stay hydrated but there won’t be anyone to squirt Gatorade into your mouth. You’re on your own.

There are a lot of places to take a knee where Americans have given their lives all over the world. When you use the banner under which they fought as a source for your displeasure, you dishonor the memories of those who bled for the very freedoms you have.

That’s what the red stripes mean. It represents the blood of those who spilled a sea of it defending your liberty.

While you’re on your knee, pray for those that came before you, not on a manicured lawn striped and printed with numbers to announce every inch of ground taken, but on nameless hills and bloodied beaches and sweltering forests and bitter cold mountains, every inch marked by an American life lost serving that flag you protest.

No cheerleaders, no announcers, no coaches, no fans, just American men and women, delivering the real fight against those who chose to harm us, blazing a path so you would have the right to “take a knee.” You haven’t any inkling of what it took to get you where you are, but your “protest” is duly noted.

Not only is it disgraceful to a nation of real heroes, it serves the purpose of pointing to your ingratitude for those who chose to defend you under that banner that will still wave long after your jersey is retired.

If you really feel the need to take a knee, come with me to church on Sunday and we’ll both kneel before Almighty God. We’ll thank Him for preserving this country for as long as He has.  We’ll beg forgiveness for our ingratitude for all He has provided us. We’ll appeal to Him for understanding and wisdom.

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We’ll pray for liberty and justice for all because He is the one who provides those things. But there will be no protest.

There will only be gratitude for His provision and a plea for His continued grace and mercy on the land of the free and the home of the brave.

It goes like this, GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Ted Nugent is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and conservative political activist. He’s a powerful, high-decibel guitarist and singer who earned fame with a gonzo act that earned him the nickname Motor City Madman.

White Guilt and those Dreadful (Gasp!) White Men

Given the mood of our country today, I am resurrecting one of my commentaries I posted last year about white guilt and those terrible creatures known as “white men.”

White men, after all, are the ones that committed the unpardonable sin of writing the Declaration of Independence, who wrote the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and then set our nation on the course it has followed reasonably successfully for the past 244 years.

For doing that, they need to have monuments to them shattered, their statues ripped down, and their names erased from the pantheon of American history. 

Oh wait, that is already happening today. Never mind. Please read on:

A couple of years ago MTV released a controversial video in which a cluster of smug and self-righteous twenty-somethings looked into the camera and told viewers that white guys should “try to recognize that America was never great for anyone who wasn’t a white guy.”

Social media was quick to condemn the video as “racist” and “pathetic.”

For a good reason.

It was racist, and it was pathetic.

The video essentially asserted that white males were at fault for every bad thing that has ever happened in America.

A 20-something blasts white men on MTV

Really? So the United States has always been an unexceptional land without liberty and opportunity for all? I see.

Perhaps that explains why millions of people have for more than two centuries flocked to our shores from every continent on the planet–and still do! I guess they are eager to come to a disgusting country where angry white men oppress them. Makes sense to me.

MTV’s video (which by the way, was quickly taken down) implied that white men are guilty of what? Of being white and being male, of course.

If that’s not bigoted and racist, then I don’t know what is.

Because the video targeted white men, MTV, and its lineup of inane nonwhite actors and one “token white guy” thought it was perfectly okay to smear an entire class of human beings as racist, clueless, and privileged.

And Democrats and their left-wing masters wonder why they lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

The premise of the video is this: If you are a male and if you were born white, then that is a sin against humanity. How dare you be born white AND male! One of those sins is enough. But committing both sins burdens you with “white guilt” and brands you as a legitimate target for hateful rhetoric from every ethnic, racial, and sexual minority on the planet.

Nothing has changed since that disgusting video hit the airwaves. Speeches by Muslim Democrat congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib not only continue their anti-Semitic diatribes against Jews and the Jewish state of Israel, they often contain references to America’s “whiteness” as though it were some infectious disease.

The Founding Fathers: Deplorable White Guys

Here’s a news flash for Omar, Tlaib, and other mindless bigots: Unlike many of our nation’s frightened, safe-space-seeking cupcakes and snowflakes, I don’t have ANY white guilt. None at all. Not a smidgen. Never did. Never will.

Nor will you EVER see me falling to my knees before a BLM communist goon and begging him (or her) for forgiveness because of my despicable and disgusting “whiteness.”

Why should I?

I wasn’t with Columbus in the 1490s when he allegedly subjugated the native inhabitants he encountered. I wasn’t a slave-owner when slavery was legal in the 18th and 19th centuries. I didn’t attack Mexico in 1846 and appropriate much of what is now the Southwest United States from that country. I had nothing to do with creating the exclusion laws that barred Chinese from entry to America. Nope, I wasn’t around for any of those events.

All I have done to warrant such loathing from Muslim bigots like Omar and Tlaib, BLM thugs, and Antifa reprobates is work hard in school and my chosen profession, serve four years of active duty in the U. S. Army and try to live my life as much as possible by the tenets of the Golden Rule.

So why do these fatuous imbeciles want to yoke me with White Guilt?

Perhaps it’s because, like a lot of like-minded Americans, I don’t believe in white guilt, but I do think that All Lives Matter—not just black lives.

As Tomi Lahren, of the Blaze, said in response to that MTV video:

“Apparently white males are no longer allowed to say ‘All Lives Matter’ or ‘Blue Lives Matter’ because a group of snowflakes on MTV say so. When we say ‘All Lives Matter,’ we include black lives in that. And by the way, the All Lives Matter movement has yet to burn down a CVS, call for the murder and abolishing of police, destroy monuments, or block an interstate.”

MTV News may have the lowest intelligence quotient of our mindless culture-shaping entertainment media, but its position is hardly distinctive.

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Lena Dunham, the radical feminist creator, and star of the HBO series “Girls,” recently posted a video gleefully predicting the “extinction of white men.”

I wonder if she included her biological father in that cheery death wish. Or perhaps she emerged fatherless from an alien pod.

Maybe it’s her well-known obsessive-compulsive disorder speaking, but when she and other bovine hypocrites haughtily harangue “white guys” for imaginary crimes, such as being born white and male, it apparently has never occurred to them that just as being a white man does not impart any moral superiority, neither does being female, black, brown, yellow, red, gay, or lesbian.

If that notion makes me a depraved and debauched white man, then so be it. I am not ashamed of my gender or my race, and I am sure as hell not saddled with white guilt.

Are you?

Blacks, Crime, and White Guilt

I am reposting this slightly updated article by journalist Shari Goodman. She makes many inconvenient, but valid points in this piece about the irrationality and absurdity of “white guilt”–of which I (and millions of other “European-Americans”) have none. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The inane notion of “victimhood” in our country is growing tiresome, as is the concept of “white privilege” of which I (and millions of other “European Americans”) have had none. Zilch, Zero. Nada.

Nobody in this life gave me anything I didn’t earn–except my mother, who gave me life. White privilege is a fabrication perpetrated by some in the minority community who are convinced they are victims. About the only white people I know with white privilege are those individuals who are the offspring of billionaires. And then, not all of them are even white! Read on. I think you will be enlightened by some indisputable facts.

By Shari Goodman

Fresh off the destruction of historical monuments by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, new protests are occurring–this time against our National Anthem and our flag. “Taking the knee“ was first introduced by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick a few years ago, but has since gained in momentum as many other black athletes with multi-million-dollar salaries have joined in solidarity with demonstrations against so-called white oppression and racism.

There is even a new Black National Anthem entitled “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which was first written as a poem in 1899 by James Weldon Johnson, former leader of the NAACP. Johnson wrote the poem for the 90th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Apparently, the NFL has agreed to play the anthem before every NFL game during the first week of the season, followed by the National Anthem.

I wonder if this means that every minority, every religion, and every ethnic group will now have their own national anthem? If that’s the case, I guess the nation’s motto “E Plurius, Unum,” (Out of Many, One)  needs to be scrapped.

You would think the nation was still afflicted with slavery and had never experienced a seminal civil rights movement. In fact, America fought a civil war to end slavery. It’s been over 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, thus, the fate of today’s blacks rests not upon yesterday’s slaveholders, but upon today’s failed black leadership who have intentionally kept America’s blacks on an imaginary plantation through the indoctrination of victimhood.

By instilling the notion that blacks today are the victims of white racism and “white privilege”, black leadership (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Maxine Waters, to name a few) have created not only an entitlement mentality but dependency and helplessness prevalent among young blacks in inner cities throughout the country.

It is not “whitey” who is committing 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders, 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties throughout the United States. Despite comprising only about 15 percent of the population in those counties. 91 percent of blacks are murdered by other blacks.

Blacks comprise 10 percent of the population but commit 42 percent of the robberies and 34 percent of felonies. In a report from the Department of Justice, over a 30-year period between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed half of all homicides in the United States despite comprising only 13 percent of the population. https://www.channel4.com/news/factche...

Furthermore, a 2007 FBI file reports there were 433,934 single-offender victimization crimes against whites by blacks compared to 55,685 crimes committed by whites against blacks — eight times as many more crimes committed against whites by blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively a black on white crime with 14,000 assaults on white women but not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female.

In her book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, Heather McDonald documents the inner-city warfare committed by black males against other black males. In Chicago, 76 percent of all homicides are committed by blacks, and 78 percent of all juvenile arrests involve blacks.

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Black educational statistics are dismal when compared to whites. In a 2012-2013 report by the Schott Foundation titled “Black Lives Matter: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males,” it was reported that only 59 percent of black males graduate from high school compared to 65 percent for Latinos and 80 percent for whites. In Detroit, a city governed by black leadership for decades, only 20 percent of black males graduate from high school. What an indictment and disgrace!

Nor are whites responsible for the huge increase in out-of-wedlock births. In 2013, 71 percent of black births were born to black unwed mothers.

These children were born into a life of poverty without the benefit of a father in the home. The norm for these kids is to drop out, use drugs, become unemployed, commit crimes, and become imprisoned at many more times the rate of whites, Asian, and Hispanics.

Yes, the black community has a problem, but it is of its own making, and too often whites are the victims of a dysfunctional black community. America has lavishly poured billions of taxpayer’s dollars in recent decades to improve public education, outreach, and equal opportunity programs such as Affirmative Action for blacks in inner cities, but to what avail?

We have stepped aside and watched silently as city after city, once safe and prosperous, became Third World outposts after decades of corrupt black Democratic leadership. They enriched themselves with unkept promises while the rest of the population floundered.

For decades, beginning with the 60s, white guilt was kept alive by a civil rights revolution that swept the nation. Many blacks found success in the media, the press, education, sports, law enforcement, the halls of government, culminating in the election of the first black President, Barack Hussein Obama.

Many whites, eager to assuage their guilt after many years of playing defense, voted not for the best man to fill the office, but for a symbol, they hoped would end the racial conflict once and for all.

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Contrarily, the election of Obama only served to exacerbate tension between whites and blacks. Many blacks felt emboldened and protected in their demands, and racist protests against police are now commonplace.

Chants by Black Lives Matter “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” were frequently heard at protests. The result is a war on cops with numerous officers killed in the line of duty in NYC, Dallas, Baton Rouge, San Antonio, and other cities throughout the land.

It is not you who needs protection from us. It is we who need protection from you. Black problems are self-created, and history has proven that no amount of money thrown at them will solve the problem. Scapegoating is getting tiresome and dangerous.

Do not lecture us about social injustice and the debt owed to you. The only thing we owe you and what is owed to any of us is equal opportunity. We have more than given that to you. It is high time for the black community to look inwards, and when it does, it will discover the problem is not a lack of opportunities, but a lack of values.

Education, self-reliance, delayed gratification, responsibility, hard work, ambition, and an intact family are values incorporated and ingrained within those who lead decent, productive lives. It is lacking within a large segment of the black community.

[image error] This made the rounds during the Obama reign

Shame on those who display ingratitude and dishonor America, a country that has given black athletes the opportunity to make millions playing a sport that young men in Africa can only dream about, a country that has given blacks liberty and opportunity.

Shame on you and those who kneel with you.

Shari Goodman is an educator, political activist, public speaker, and journalist. Her articles can be found in  American Thinker, World Net Daily, and Israel Today among others.

 

Is John Wayne a Racist Symbol?

I wrote John Wayne’s obituary for the Chicago Tribune in 1979. At the time, I was the newspaper’s West Coast Bureau Chief, and the “Duke” had just passed away at age 72 from stomach cancer.

It was a tough obit to write. I had grown up on John Wayne movies—especially classics like 1956’s “The Searchers,” and director John Ford’s iconic “cavalry trilogy” (“Fort Apache,” “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” and “Rio Grande”).

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There are so many unforgettable Wayne films that I can name from the 200 or so he made. There is 1948’s “Red River” about the first cattle drive from Texas to Kansas along the Chisholm Trail. There was 1949’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima” in which he plays tough and demanding Sergeant John M. Stryker, and there is 1952’s “The Quiet Man,” in which he plays an Irish-born American and former heavyweight boxer who travels to Ireland in the 1920s to buy his family’s old farm.

And of course, there is 1969’s “True Grit,” Wayne’s only Oscar-winning performance as the cantankerous lawman Rooster Cogburn.

His last film, 1976’s “The Shootist,” was a poignant and prophetic look at an aging gunfighter named John Books who is dying of cancer. I still can’t look at that film without getting a lump in my throat.

Along with my father, John Wayne was a man I wanted to model myself after.

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I loved Wayne’s portrayal of strong, brave, and confident men who were courageous when faced with peril and self-assured in their power to overcome barriers.

He was the quintessential independent American— self-reliant and ready to fight for what he believed was right.

When it came to politics, he was just as tough and just as confident that the right thing to do was to stand up for freedom, for “the individual and his rights.”

He was a true patriot, a man who loved America. And of course, that’s precisely why the left hated him—and still does.

You would think that hatred would have dissipated a little in the 41 years since his death.

But it hasn’t.

With Wayne in his grave and unable to defend himself, the sleazy Democrat Party of Orange County California recently passed a resolution calling John Wayne a “racist symbol” and demanding that the airport in Orange County that bears his name, along with a commanding nine-foot statue, be renamed.

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How ludicrous.

The Democrats are basing this spurious indictment on a minor 50-year-old interview Wayne did with Playboy magazine. As they are inclined to do, one of their ilk apparently rummaged through his closet of ancient Playboy T & A magazines and stumbled upon the Wayne interview during which the outspoken Duke used what today is deemed inflammatory and racist words.

Tsk, tsk.

I have not read the interview, but in the 1971 interview, Wayne was apparently asked about white supremacy—a term that didn’t carry the same connotation then that it does today. His response: “Until blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. . . I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.”

Wayne also said that although he did not condone slavery, he didn’t feel personally guilty about what happened five or ten generations ago.

He also said he felt no remorse that Europeans supplanted Native Americans as stewards of the nation’s lands.

“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them,” Wayne said. “Our so-called stealing of this country from them was a matter of survival.”

John Wayne’s son, Ethan, came to his father’s defense last week.

“It would be an injustice to judge someone based on an interview that’s being used out of context,” Ethan Wayne told CNN last Saturday. “They’re trying to contradict how he lived his life, and how he lived his life was who he was. So, any discussion of removing his name from the airport should include the full picture of the life of John Wayne and not be based on a single outlier interview from half a century ago. 

“My father worked in Hollywood for 50 years, and Hollywood is probably, you know, one of the most progressive and diverse communities on Earth. He didn’t care what race, gender, or sexual orientation you were. He cared how well you did your job. He took everyone at face value.

“They put my father’s name on that airport for the same reason that Congress voted to give him a Congressional Gold Medal, for the same reason that the President gave him a Medal of Freedom. It was recognition of a lifetime of significant contributions to this country, his community, and his industry.”

Were John Wayne’s words a bit injudicious in that Playboy interview? Yes, if you examine them in the context of a 2020 mindset.

When I was growing up in 1950s Kansas, I recall hearing the “N” word often, as well as derogatory terms to describe gays, Mexicans, Indians, Irish, Jews, Italians, Chinese, etc.

I didn’t condone them, but I still wouldn’t desecrate the memory or the accomplishments of those who uttered them so long ago.

That would be what Jesus rightfully called “casting the first stone.”

Would you hear those same words used today? I don’t think so. At least I haven’t.

It was a different time; a time when people were not sensitive to the pain a pejorative or deprecating word could have on others.

To hold people accountable for the attitudes and thoughtlessness of an era five decades past is, I believe, the height of unreasonable retrospection.

Of course, I sincerely believe there is another reason Democrats are so intent on destroying the formidable legacy of John Wayne.

He was an unapologetic American patriot. For example, he was one of the few people in Hollywood who continued to support American troops in Vietnam when his tinsel town colleagues were calling them baby killers, and some in this nation were spitting on them when they returned home.

As a veteran of the U.S. Army, I appreciated Wayne’s unrelenting support.

Wayne was no sunshine patriot. He put his mouth where his beliefs were. In 1944, he was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the MPA. The group of actors, directors, and writers was organized to fight the leftist movement in Hollywood.

Iconic actors Clark Gable and Robert Taylor were presidents of the organization. Wayne became the MPA’s President in 1949 and served until 1952. Studio executives warned Wayne that his role at the MPA would wreck his career and kill him at the box office.

They were woefully wrong. A year after assuming the presidency of the organization, Wayne was the top box-office star in the country, up from a rank of 32nd.

“I never felt I needed to apologize for my patriotism,” Wayne once said. “I felt that if there were Communists in the business — and I knew there were — then they ought to go over to Russia and try enjoying freedom there. We were just good Americans, and we demanded the right to speak our minds. After all, the Communists in Hollywood were speaking theirs. (Ahem. They still are.)

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“If you’re in a fight, you must fight to win, and in those early years of the Cold War, I strongly believed that our country’s fundamental values were in jeopardy. I think that the Communists proved my point over the years.”

John Wayne was a defiant anti-Communist. He once explained his position by saying Communists “were rotten and corrupt and poisoned the air of our communities by creating suspicion, distrust, and hatred.”

Sound familiar? It should. It’s what we are seeing and hearing today as mobs rampage through our streets ripping down statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and attacking anybody who opposes them.

“We (members of the MPA) were the real liberals,” Wayne said. “We believed in freedom. We believed in the individual and his rights. We hated Soviet Communism. It was against all religions, and it trampled on the individual because it was a slave society.”

Ethan Wayne insists his father did not support ‘white supremacy’ in any way and believed that responsible people should gain power without the use of violence.

“It’s an injustice to judge my father based on a single interview, Ethan Wayne said. “The big picture paints a much different picture of dad, who called out bigotry when he saw it.”

Wayne’s son also pointed to his father’s lasting legacy, the John Wayne Cancer Foundation, and says his name will always embody courage, strength, and grit.

That’s the John Wayne, I know.

Click here to see my front page obit of John Wayne:

John Wayne dead at 72, Jun 12, 1979

The Remarkable Life of a Reluctant Hero

All authors are emotionally engaged with their protagonists. I am no exception. I want readers to love my characters as much as I do. That means creating a flawed, three-dimensional protagonist who still has “things to work out.”  The Finding Billy Battles series follows Billy from his roots in Kansas, through his career as a journalist, to his final years. Along the way, Billy makes both good and bad choices–just as we all do. He does some extraordinary things–things that some might call “heroic.” But is Billy a hero? 

Today’s post is meant to introduce the topic of “heroes”–and heroines–and get us all thinking about what kinds of heroes and heroines readers will love.

What Is a Hero?

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission defines a hero as “someone who voluntarily leaves a point of safety to assume life risk to save or attempt to save the life of another.”

Does that describe William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, the protagonist in my Finding Billy Battles Trilogy?

Yes and no. There are definitely times in the three books when Billy risks his life for others. So, I guess Billy might fit the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission’s definition of a hero. But I don’t think Billy would think of himself that way. Does Billy display courage? Yes, but in most cases, those displays are in response to an attack on him, his family, or a friend.

In Book One of the trilogy (Finding Billy Battles), Billy learns at an early age that there is a thin line between courage and survival. He is just nineteen when he confronts the murderous Bledsoe clan on his old homestead in Western Kansas. During that confrontation, he accidentally kills the malicious matriarch of the clan. It’s an act that will follow and haunt him for the rest of his life. The Bledsoe gang, he soon learns, has long memories and this single violent act will make him a marked man for decades.

As the story evolves, a young Billy interacts with several legendary people who will shape his view of the world and how a man should behave in it. From Wyatt Earp, he learns about nerve and understated courage. From Bat Masterson, he learns about unswerving responsibility and steadfastness. Even the infamous and misunderstood Doc Holliday unwittingly schools Billy about loyalty to one’s friends and comrades. Then, there is his semi-outlaw cousin Charley Higgins, from whom Billy acquires the traits of mental toughness and strength.

Last, but not least, Billy learns a lot about dependability and rectitude from his mother, who was widowed on the wild Kansas plains less than five years after her marriage. Of course, Billy doesn’t recognize or appreciate these life lessons from his mother until much later when he approaches middle age. In that respect, I think he’s like a lot of us. We take our parents for granted, and then they are gone.

These are the attributes and qualities that Billy is fortunate to absorb early in life and shape his character until his dying day. All rolled into one, they provide Billy with the stuff with which to survive and persevere on the wild American frontier and later in places like French Indochina, the Philippines, Mexico, and Germany.

[image error] Long before the Vietnam war, the French sent troops to Indochina. This image was taken in the 1890s when Billy Battles stepped into a conflict zone.

Is Billy an “Everyman” Hero?

Does that make Billy an “Everyman” hero? Once again, he would contest that description. Billy describes himself best in his introduction to Book One:

“Let me begin by owning up to some pretty terrible things I did during my life. That way, you can make up your mind right now if you want to read further.

“I have killed people. And I am sad to say the first person I killed was a woman. It was entirely unintentional, and to this day, the incident haunts me. The next person I killed was that woman’s grown son, and that was intentional. If you decide to read on, you will learn more about these two people and how they came to die at my hands.

“You will also learn about other things I did—some of which I am not proud of, some of which I am. In the course of my life, I got into a lot of brawls where I had to defend myself and others in a variety of ways. I did so without regret because in each case, someone was trying to do me or someone else harm.

“Now I know the Christian Bible says it is a sin to kill, and in some of these imbroglios, I probably could have walked away and avoided the ensuing violence. I chose not to because I learned early in my life that walking away from a scrap is too often seen as a sign of weakness or cowardice and merely incites bullies and thugs to molest you later on. There were a few individuals who tried their damnedest to put an end to me, but fortunately, I was able to dispatch or incapacitate those malefactors before they could apply the coup de grâce.

“So there you have it—a forewarning about me and my sometimes-turbulent life. As the Romans used to say, “Caveat emptor,” if you decide to continue reading.”

The violence of frontier Kansas, Arizona, and New Mexico was the crucible that transformed a naïve nineteen-year-old teenager into a man. Without a doubt, the young men and women today who are serving in war-ravaged Afghanistan and the hostile Middle East are learning the same lessons Billy did.

Courage, however, is not just a physical manifestation. There is another kind of courage; that unspoken resolve deep within us that permits us to handle tragedy and heartbreak. That’s the kind of courage that Billy lacks early on and that he doesn’t find until later in life.

As Book One ends and Book Two (The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles) begins, Billy, who is now a successful journalist, is struggling with a profound personal loss. His response is to leave those he loves behind and journey to French Indochina. This is not the behavior of a courageous man. In fact, as Billy himself acknowledges, it’s the action of a selfish absconder. Yet, off he goes.

Cowardice and Heroism

As we soon learn in Book Two, Billy is not a physical coward. In fact, he becomes embroiled in the native uprising against the French in Indochina and later is roped into the war in the Philippines—first against the Spanish during the Spanish-American War and afterward against the native Filipinos who wage war against thousands of American troops who refuse to leave after defeating the Spanish.

In French Indochina, Billy is quite possibly the first American combatant in a country that will eventually become Vietnam. While there he reunites with a Vietnamese man he once met in the New Mexico desert. This man, Giang Văn Ba, is now one of the rebel commanders leading the insurgency against the French. Billy sees that the struggle is hopeless against a more powerful enemy with a trained military using superior weapons, but he respects Ba’s doggedness. This man, Billy comes to believe, is a hero, if a doomed one.

Later in the Philippines, Billy is persuaded to take a temporary commission in the Army. His job is to serve as a liaison officer between the commander of U.S. forces and the Twentieth Kansas Volunteer Infantry Regiment led by a fiery colonel named Frederick Funston—a fellow Kansan.

For the next year, Captain Battles finds himself fighting an enemy that he secretly respects and sympathizes with. The contradiction of that situation is painful for Billy to abide. Nevertheless, he performs with courage while feeling like the unwelcome invader he and the other American troops are.

The courage Billy displays inspires the men around him. But once again, if you were to attribute the “hero” label to him, Billy would undoubtedly object because he performed his duties as a liaison officer while swallowing a generous portion of guilt.

The Third Book Brings New Challenges

At the beginning of Book Three (The Lost Years of Billy Battles), Billy is fifty-four years old and content with his somewhat sedentary life as a newspaper editor in Chicago. He and his wife Katharina have just celebrated fifteen years of married life, and then the bottom falls out. They are persuaded to take on a secret surveillance assignment for the Army officer Billy and Katharina had befriended in the Philippines. Frederick Funston (now a general) sends them to the Mexican city of Veracruz.

[image error] Veracruz, Mexico Ca 1900

That assignment triggers a series of other dangerous missions that Billy undertakes. Once again, even at the half-century point of his existence, Billy’s life is charged with danger. If I were to interview Billy and ask why he decided to embark on such perilous assignments at his age, he would no doubt answer: “Because I felt it was the right thing to do.”

A Reporter in Real Life

There is an undeniable similarity between Billy’s later life and mine. For example, I decided to stop covering war when I hit fifty. Of course, unlike Billy, I never participated in any of the wars and revolutions I covered. I remained, as much as possible, strictly an observer.

[image error] Ron Yates in Bangkok, 1985.

That said, in El Salvador, I did carry a 9 mm automatic pistol on those occasions when I was in a dodgy area. El Salvador was maybe the most dangerous revolution I ever covered, and I was determined to go down fighting rather than allow myself to be helplessly executed by some revolutionary guerilla band or a government death squad.

I genuinely enjoyed writing about this time in Billy’s life because it mirrors my current stage of life and I could identify with him a lot more than I could a thirty-year-old man. Does that mean that after his adventures in Mexico I allowed Billy to retire to a rocking chair in Chicago? Not on your life. In the wake of another personal tragedy he once again fogs it out of the country and back to Asia where twenty more years of adventure and peril await.

At this time, Billy is living in the Philippines attempting to ease back into a conventional, non-violent life. And he does, up to a point. But after a few adventures in the Philippines, he once again finds himself in French Indochina helping an old friend and risking his life once again. That’s Billy, through and through. He is always there for his friends—even if it means putting his life on the line.

During this time Billy often thinks about those from his past who had an impact on his character—Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Bill Tilghman, his cousin, Charley Higgins, and, of course, his mother. By now, Billy is a man well into his sixties who is extremely comfortable in his own skin. He knows how he will react in a crisis or when his life, or that of others, is on the line.

He is, shall we say, “battle-tested.” There is a scene in Book Three when Billy is about ninety that he finds himself forced to respond to a minor threat. His “past self” kicks in and the men he’s facing back down, mumbling that even at his advanced age, Billy has “eyes that would chill a side of beef.”

The more I wrote the trilogy, the more I began to feel that Billy and I have a unique bond. After all, we lived together almost every day for the past six years as I told his story. I have no doubt that he knows me just as well as I know him.

Heroism and Flaws

As with most human beings, Billy made mistakes during his life—some pretty big ones. I did too, maybe not quite as big as Billy’s, but like his mistakes, mine had an impact on my life. As for Billy, at a couple of points, he looks back on his life and decides that despite some significant regrets, for the most part, he lived his life as he wanted—with courage and integrity.

Of those two words, I think Billy and I both find integrity the most important. Courage is a quality that can be summoned from somewhere inside us when it is required. Integrity, however, is an attribute that dwells closer to the surface of our being; a quintessence that guides our everyday conduct and actions and helps us live righteous and honorable lives. Billy and I are undeniably in agreement on that point.

Funny. Now that the trilogy is finished, I find myself having “conversations” with Billy. In a way, I wish I could resurrect him, but that’s impossible. Instead, I find myself sometimes wondering, “I wonder what Billy would do in this situation?”

Sometimes he answers.

That’s when I decide to retreat to the patio and drink a cold beer.

Here’s where you can order the Finding Billy Battle Trilogy:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KHDVZI/-/e/B00KQAYMA8/