Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 90

Flashman–Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great foreign correspondent

Today I am re-posting a column that appeared a while back in The Economist. Written by an unnamed foreign correspondent, it takes a sardonic and self-effacing view of foreign correspondents by suggesting that Victorian England’s foremost rotter would have made a great journalist. As with all satire, there may be more truth here than we hacks care to admit. Enjoy. (Ron Yates)

From The Economist, Dec 24, 2016

REBELS had captured the dam that supplied electricity to Kinshasa and turned off the lights in the Congolese capital. Now they were marching on the city. Panic reigned. Pro-government thugs were going around lynching suspected rebel spies. Some they hacked to death. One they tossed off a bridge and shot as he bobbed in the river.

A city under siege, full of power-drunk kids with Kalashnikovs, is no place to be. Your correspondent was there and feeling frightened. Which reminded him of one of the great cowards of English literature. He asked himself: in this situation, what would Flashman do?

For readers who have not yet met him, Flashman was the villain of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”, a pious novel about life at a British boarding school published in 1857. The author, Thomas Hughes, portrayed him as a bully who roasted small boys over open fires but ran away sniveling from anyone bigger than him.

A century later, a Scottish journalist called George MacDonald Fraser wondered what happened to Flashman after he was expelled from school. He answered his own question with a series of wickedly comical historical novels. In Fraser’s telling, the adult Flashman was every bit as horrible as the schoolboy, but through sheer luck and sleazy charm became one of the most decorated heroes of the Victorian era: Brigadier-General Sir Harry Flashman, VC, KCB, Legion of Honour, San Serafino Order of Purity and Truth (4th class), etc.

His career took off when, having joined the army because the uniform attracted women, Flashman found himself besieged in a fort in Afghanistan. He feigned sickness to avoid fighting. When all the other defenders were killed or wounded, he grabbed the British flag and, pleading for mercy, offered it to the Afghan warriors surging over the walls.

Just then a big explosion marked the arrival of a British relief force. Flashman was found unconscious, draped in the flag and surrounded by dead Afghans. Everyone assumed he was defending the colours, not surrendering them, and he won the first of many medals.

Morally, it would be hard to find a worse role model. Over the course of 12 books, Flashman bullied underlings, betrayed friends, cheated on his wife Elspeth and stabbed in the back anyone who blocked his escape route. Yet there is much that this fictional Victorian rotter can teach modern reporters. Though he was leery of journalists (“tricky villains, especially if they work for the Times”), he would have made an outstanding one.

Flashman’s first instinct was for self-preservation. This is a useful (and underrated) trait for journalists. Had he been stuck in Kinshasa in August 1998, Flashman would have headed for the best-guarded hotel and hung out in the bar by the swimming pool. That is what your correspondent did, and it proved an excellent policy. The beer was refreshing, the brochettes de boeuf delicious and the conversation highly informative. All the power brokers, spies, moneymen and diplomats passed through. By listening to them, your correspondent gleaned a fuller picture of what was going on than if he had ventured out to the front line, which would have involved a lot of hiding in ditches and trying unsuccessfully to figure out who was shooting at whom.

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Hang back from the shooting, and you often get a better view. During the Crimean war of 1853-6 Flashman used all his wiles to hang back, describing the campaign with colour and precision from safe hilltops. Unfortunately for him, he was then caught up in the most foolhardy maneuver of the entire war.

His horse bolted towards the Russian cannons, causing Flashman unwillingly to race out ahead of the Charge of the Light Brigade. British newspapers interpreted this as “Flash Harry” up to his usual heroics.

Your correspondent has never galloped into a Valley of Death, but he has occasionally blundered into sticky situations. Once during the civil war in the Ivory Coast, he ran into a rebel roadblock—a heap of branches and a broken fridge with a cow’s skull on top. The youngsters manning it were stripped to the waist, armed with rocket-propelled grenade-launchers and drunk at 10.30 in the morning.

Flashman, faced with superior firepower in unsteady hands, would have smiled, made himself pleasant to his captors and tried to buy time. That is what your correspondent did, swigging Kou Tou Kou (a fiery spirit distilled from palm wine) out of a shared plastic jerry can. Eventually, he was rescued by a French army officer, who persuaded the rebels that journalists are not spies.

Modern reporters use all sorts of methods to stay safe. They hire fixers. They go on “hostile environments” courses. They send back a barrage of WhatsApp messages describing where they are. None of this is as effective as Flashman’s nose for danger and intense desire to avoid it. Nor can any course teach his genius for getting out of it. Which is probably just as well: throwing one’s lover off the back of a sled to lighten its load and escape pursuing Cossacks is hardly cricket.

Flashman also immersed himself in the local culture. He picked up foreign languages absurdly quickly. By the end of a long career, he was fluent in nine and could rub along in another dozen. He never learned much in a classroom—Latin and Greek bored him senseless. Rather, he learned by listening to native speakers and catching the rhythm and feel of their dialect.

Usually, he did this in bed. Tall, handsome and effusively whiskered, Flashman was successful with women from a wide variety of cultures. Not all ended up hating him. On one occasion, to pass the time in a dungeon in Gwalior in India, he tried to count his conquests and arrived at a figure of 478. That was in 1857 when he was only 35; he lived to 93.

Speaking multiple languages often saved his skin. Locked up during the Second Opium War, he was the only British prisoner who understood that their Chinese jailer planned to execute one of them. Asked to translate, he lied that the jailer planned to send one of them with a message to the British and French forces besieging the town. Eager for freedom, a soldier who was blackmailing Flashman pushed to the front—and was conveniently beheaded.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter

A good foreign correspondent networks with powerful people, the better to understand the motives behind important policies. Flashman rubbed shoulders with Wellington, Lincoln, and Bismarck (though Bismarck loathed him and tried to have him killed). His accounts add fistfuls of spice to the historical record.

Indeed, the Flashman Papers can be useful background reading during reporting trips. It was thanks to Flashman that your correspondent understood, when visiting the Summer Palace in Beijing, the scale, and scandal of its destruction by British troops in 1860. When covering a flood in Madagascar, he could find no better short history of the island than Flashman’s Malagasy adventures. And Flashman would have chuckled to learn that lotharios are now known there as bananes flambés, after a popular dessert.

The Flashman Papers purport to be written by Flashman himself—the secret, honest memoir of a garlanded rogue, discovered in a Leicestershire saleroom in 1965 and “edited” by Fraser, with helpful historical footnotes. The books are so well researched that, to naïve readers, they can appear genuine. When “Flashman” was first published in America, about a third of the 40-odd reviewers took it at face value. One called it “the most important discovery since the Boswell papers”. Fraser laughed till it hurt.

Strenuous research (Fraser was a keen amateur historian) and dollops of first-hand observation (he was an energetic traveler, too) are the raw materials of great journalism. To this Fraser added a crackling prose style and a gift for storytelling. As an observer, Flashman was often caustic but never blinded by the pieties of his age. He believed neither in the civilizing mission of the British Empire nor in the myth of the noble savage. So whether he was observing Englishmen, Sikhs or Zulus, he recognized fools, heroes, and charlatans for what they were.

In some ways being a scoundrel made Flashman a better reporter. Many modern correspondents tend to preach. This quickly becomes tedious. Journalists who profess outrage at every minor politician’s off-colour remark soon run out of words to describe real outrages.

Flashman did not have this problem. He was callous and made no effort to pretend otherwise. This made his prose more convincing, for he let the facts speak for themselves. On the rare occasions when he was moved to make a moral judgment, the effect is electrifying. One such instance occurred when he was press-ganged onto a slave ship, where he saw Africans branded, chained and crammed below decks.

“The crying and moaning and whimpering blended into a miserable anthem that I’ll never forget, with the clanking of the chains and the rustle of hundreds of incessantly stirring bodies, and the horrible smell of musk and foulness and burned flesh. My stomach doesn’t turn easy, but I was sickened…when you’ve looked into the hold of a new-laden slaver for the first time, you know what hell is like.”

He admitted that, if someone had approached him in his London club and offered him £20,000 to authorize a shipment of slaves, he would have taken the money. Out of sight, out of mind: this was also the attitude of many of his respectable contemporaries to buying slave-made sugar or cotton. Fraser did not need to remind readers that Flashman—a sociopath—was in this respect little worse than millions of 19th-century British tea-drinkers.

Laptop, flak jacket, condoms

Being a foreign correspondent is the most enjoyable job there is. The men and women who are lucky enough to do it today travel the world, meet new people, sample exotic new dishes and grapple with new ideas. Even when it is uncomfortable, it can be exciting. To make the most of a posting, journalists must be open to new experiences and skilled at seeking them out. It helps to have a fat expense account.

Flashman sometimes had no money at all, but made up for it with resourcefulness. When fleeing from angry gun-toting slave-owners in New Orleans, he crept into the French Quarter and inveigled his way into a luxurious brothel by seducing the madam, who fell in love with him and asked her butler to ply him with fine wine and Cajun delicacies.

Your correspondent had a more austere time in the Big Easy in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. At one point he too had to beat a tactical retreat from an angry gun-toting homeowner. Alas, with all the hotels in town closed by floodwater, the only place to sleep was in a cramped, sweaty caravan with half a dozen other hacks, some of whom snored.

Whenever your correspondent visits a place where the ultimate cad once trod—Harper’s Ferry, Isandlwana, even west London—the relevant passage from the Flashman Papers comes easily to mind. Such memorability sets a standard that journalists rarely match. Most of his own work, he knows, is written in haste and soon forgotten.

As he writes this, he is about to head for Afghanistan, where Flashman earned his first laurels. In his luggage will be the first “Flashman” on his iPad. And at the first whiff of danger, he will bolt.

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition of The Economist under the headline “The cad as correspondent.”

 

ALL ABOUT THE #RRBC SPONSORS BLOG HOP!

Today, ForeignCorrespondent is pleased to participate in the Rave Reviews Book Club Sponsors Blog Hop in support of author Jan Sikes, and her book “Til’ Death Do Us Part.” Read on. 

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Welcome to the first ever ALL ABOUT THE SPONSORS BLOG HOP!  These kind members of the RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB (RRBC) donated their support during the 2017 conference, in the way of gift card and Kindle e-book donations for our Gift Basket Raffle. They supported us, and now we are showing our support of them by pushing their book(s).  
 
We ask that you pick up a copy of the title listed and after reading it, leave a review.  There are several books on tour today, so please visit the  HOP’S main page  to follow along.  
 
Also, for every comment that you leave along this tour, including on the  HOP’S main page , your name will be entered into a drawing for an Amazon gift card to be awarded at the end of the tour!

Book:

​ TIL’ DEATH DO US PART
​
Blurb: 

Veteran Texas musician, Luke Stone, has cheated death more times then he cares to remember. He’s been everything from a simple farm boy to a rowdy roughneck, a singing star to a convict and finally a husband and father whose goals consisted of building a home and raising a family…which he did.

Now, with a chance for a second music career, he knows the sand in his hourglass is running thin. His anchor in life and true love, Darlina, stands at his side determined to help make the dream a reality. But, his aging body is sabotaging every effort, and the only thing that keeps him going is sheer willpower and the love he has for Darlina.

When faced with being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Luke draws on every resource to continue to function and contribute to their home and society.

This is a story of inspiration, endurance and most of all undying love. When Luke and Darlina face life-altering situations that would destroy a lesser man and woman, they draw on each other’s strength and determination to face them.

Will fate allow Luke to sing his last song?

Click here for more about Author:  JAN SIKES

This blog hop sponsored by 4WillsPublishing

The Properly Equipped War Correspondent, ca. 1905

Having just finished the third book in my Finding Billy Battles trilogy, which begins in 1914, I find myself still deeply immersed in the lifestyle and routine of that period.

Because my central character, William Battles, is (among other things) a journalist who spends time covering (and participating in) conflicts in places like French Indochina ca. 1894, the Philippines ca. 1898, and Mexico in 1914-17, I was intrigued by the kind of “kit” correspondents of that era took with them into the bush.

I recalled reading something Richard Harding Davis, one of America’s most legendary foreign correspondents, wrote for Scribner’s Magazine in 1905. It was entitled: “A War Correspondent’s Kit.” Scribners was a highly popular magazine that featured such writers as Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and John Galsworthy, to name a few.

[image error]  Richard Harding Davis

 I often shared portions of Davis’s article with the class on International Reporting and Foreign Correspondents I taught for some 13 years at the University of Illinois.

I thought my blog followers might find it interesting, if nothing else, for the prodigious amount of bulky and weighty gear intrepid correspondents lugged into the field more than 100 years ago.

In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful 1938 satirical novel about journalism and war correspondents, he tells of hacks bringing bundles of “cleft sticks” with them to the fictional African nation of Ishmaelia.

[image error] Zulu courier carrying a message in a cleft stick

For those unaware of what a cleft stick is, it is a stick that has been partially severed along the grain of the wood to make a tight, springy clasp to carry some object—most commonly, written messages or, in the case of Scoop, news stories.

I must confess that not once during my 25 years as a foreign correspondent did I ever send a message using a cleft stick. I am not sure that Davis ever did either. At least he doesn’t include them on the list of essential items for the suitably kitted out correspondent of 1905.

I hope you will enjoy this little journey to the past.

A War Correspondent’s Kit   (slightly annotated and abridged)

Scribner’s, April 1905.

By Richard Harding Davis    

I am going to try to describe some kits and outfits I have seen used in different parts of the world by travelers and explorers, and in different campaigns by army officers and war correspondents.

In recommending any article for an outfit, one needs to be careful. An outfit lends itself to dispute because the selection of its parts is not an exact science. It should be, but it is not.

The truth is that each man in selecting his outfit follows the lines of least resistance. With one, the pleasure he derives from his morning bath outweighs the fact that for the rest of the day he must carry a rubber bathtub. Another man is hearty, tough, and inured to an out-of-door life. He can sleep on a pile of coal or standing on his head, and he naturally scorns to carry a bed. But another man, should he sleep all night on the ground, the next day would be of no use to himself or his newspaper. So, he carries a folding cot and the more fortunate one of tougher fiber laughs at him.

Another man says that the only way is to travel “light,” and sets forth with raincoat and field-glass. He honestly thinks that he travels light because his intelligence tells him it is the better way; but, as a matter of fact, he does so because he is lazy. Throughout the entire campaign he borrows from his friends, and with that camaraderie and unselfishness that never comes to the surface so strongly as when men are thrown together in camp, they lend him whatever he needs. When the war is over, he is the man who goes about saying: “Some of those fellows carried enough stuff to fill a moving van. Now, look what I did. I made the entire campaign on a tooth-brush.”

On one march my own outfit was as unwieldy as a gypsy’s caravan. It consisted of an enormous cart, two oxen, three Basuto ponies, one Australian horse, three servants, and four hundred pounds of supplies and baggage. When it moved across the plain, it looked as large as a Fall River boat. Later, when I joined the opposing army and was not expected to maintain the dignity of a great London daily, I carried all my belongings strapped to my back, or to the back of my one pony, and I was quite as comfortable, clean, and content as I had been with the private car and the circus tent.

Personally, I am for traveling “light,” but at the very start, one is confronted with the fact that what one man calls light to another savors of luxury. I call fifty pounds light.

The list of articles I find most useful when traveling where it is possible to obtain transport, or, as we may call it, traveling heavy, are the following:

A tent, seven by ten feet, with fly, jointed poles, tent-pins, and a heavy mallet. I recommend a tent open at both ends with a window cut in one end. The window furnishes a draught of air. The window should be covered with a flap which, in case of rain, can be tied down.

A great convenience in a tent is a pocket sewn inside of each wall, for boots, books, and such small articles. The pocket should not be filled with anything so heavy as to cause the walls to sag. Another convenience with a tent is a leather strap stretched from pole to pole, upon which to hang clothes, and another is a strap to be buckled around the front tent-pole, and which is studded with projecting hooks for your lantern, water bottle, and field-glasses.

I consider first in importance the folding bed. Second, in importance, I would place a folding chair. Many men scoff at a chair as a cumbersome luxury. But after a hard day on foot or in the saddle, when you sit on the ground with your back to a rock and your hands locked around your knees to keep yourself from sliding, or on a box with no rest for your spinal column, you begin to think a chair is not a luxury, but a necessity.

[image error] Vintage Ad for Gold Medal Folding Cot

As a rule, a cooking kit is built like every other cooking kit in that the utensils for cooking are carried in the same pot that is used for boiling the water, and the top of the pot turns itself into a frying-pan.

In importance after the bed, cooking kit, and chair, I would place these articles:

Two collapsible water-buckets of rubber or canvas.
Two collapsible brass lanterns, with extra isinglass sides.
Two boxes of sick-room candles.
One dozen boxes of safety matches.
One ax. The best I have seen is the Marble Safety Axe, made at Gladstone, Mich. You can carry it in your hip-pocket, and you can cut down a tree with it.
One medicine case containing quinine, calomel, and Sun Cholera Mixture in tablets.
Toilet-case for razors, tooth-powder, brushes, and paper.
Folding bathtub of rubber in a rubber case. These are manufactured to fold into a space little larger than a cigar-box.
Two towels old, and soft.
Three cakes of soap.
One Jaeger blanket.
One mosquito head-bag.
One extra pair of shoes, old and comfortable.
One extra pair of riding breeches.
One extra pair of gaiters. The former regulation army gaiter of canvas, laced, rolls up in a small compass and weighs but little. (NOTE: Gaiters were worn over the shoe and lower pants leg, and used primarily as personal protective equipment.)
One flannel shirt. Gray least shows the dust.
Two pairs of drawers. For riding, the best are those of silk.
Two undershirts, Balbriggan or woolen.
Three pairs of woolen socks.
Two linen handkerchiefs, large enough, if needed, to tie around the throat and protect the back of the neck.
One pair of pajamas, woolen, not linen.
Two briarwood pipes.
Six bags of smoking tobacco; Durham or Seal of North Carolina pack efficiently.
One pad of writing paper.
One fountain pen self-filling.
One bottle of ink, with screw top, held tight by a spring.
One dozen linen envelopes.
Stamps, wrapped in oil silk with mucilage side next to the silk.
One stick sealing-wax. In tropical countries mucilage on the flap of envelopes sticks to everything except the envelope.
One dozen elastic bands of the largest size. In packing they help to compress articles like clothing into the smallest possible compass and in many other ways will be found very useful.
One pack of playing-cards.
Books.
One revolver and six cartridges.

I place the water-buckets first on the list for the reason that I have found them one of my most valuable assets. With one, as soon as you halt, instead of waiting for your turn at the well or water-hole, you can carry water to your horse, and one of them once filled and set in the shelter of the tent, later saves you many steps. It also can be used as a nose-bag, and to carry fodder.

I recommend the brass-folding lantern because those I have tried of tin or aluminum have invariably broken. A lantern is an absolute necessity. When before daylight you break camp or hurry out in a windstorm to struggle with flying tent pegs, or when at night you wish to read or play cards, a lantern with a stout frame and steady light is indispensable.

The original cost of the sick-room candles is more than that of ordinary candles, but they burn longer, are brighter, and take up much less room. To protect them and the matches from dampness, or the sun, it is well to carry them in a rubber sponge bag. Anyone who has forgotten to pack a towel will not need to be advised to take two.

Every man knows the dreary halts in camp when the rain pours outside, or the regiment is held in reserve. For times like these, a pack of cards or a book is worth carrying, even if it weighs as much as the plates from which it was printed. At present, it is easy to obtain all of the modern classics in volumes small enough to go into the coat-pocket. In Japan, before starting for China, we divided up among the correspondents Thomas Nelson & Sons’ and Doubleday, Page & Co.’s pocket editions of Dickens, Thackeray, and Lever, and as most of our time in Manchuria was spent locked up in compounds, they proved a great blessing.

In the list I have included a revolver, following out the old saying that “You may not need it for a long time, but when you do need it, you want it damned quick.” Except to impress guides and mule-drivers, it is not an essential article. In six campaigns I have carried one, and never used it, nor needed it but once, and then while I was dodging behind the foremast it lay under tons of luggage in the hold. The number of cartridges I have limited to six, on the theory that if in six shots you haven’t hit the other fellow, he will have hit you, and you will not require another six.

This, I think, completes the list of articles that on different expeditions I either have found of use or have seen render good service to someone else.

But the sagacious man will pack none of the things enumerated in this article. For the larger his kit, the less benefit he will have of it. It will all be taken from him. And accordingly, my final advice is to go forth empty-handed, naked and unashamed and borrow from your friends. I have never tried that method, but I have never seen it fail, and of all travelers, the man who borrows is the wisest.

(NOTE: How did I travel when covering war and mayhem in the pre-laptop and smartphone era? With a typewriter, paper, notebook, pen and my Chicago Tribune American Express Gold Card, and nary a pair of silk drawers.)

 

 

How Political Correctness is Destroying America (Part 4)

( By popular demand, I am re-running a series of posts I published a while back about Political Correctness and the impact it is having on our country)

Vladimir Lenin, the man who in 1917 created the now-defunct one-party socialist state called The Soviet Union, understood how critical education is in molding pliant minds.

“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” he once said.

[image error] Lenin

Lenin knew that planting the seeds of communist doctrine in the young would result in ideas that were not only intransigent but enduring. He was right–at least until the late 1980s when the old Soviet Union began to crumble under the crushing weight of decades of intractable political miscalculation, failed socialist ideology, and acute economic infirmity.

When I look at that quote from Lenin, I can’t help thinking about what is happening in many of our schools and universities today as the iniquitous objectives of Political Correctness continue to run rampant through the classroom.

Examples of PC in our schools are everywhere.

Increasingly we see schools intent on indoctrinating children with PC ideas and behavior. Too many public schools have become “Big Brother” indoctrination centers that monitor, track, scrutinize, and condition children to behave in “acceptable ways.”

The PC fanatics who are running too many of our schools are seeking to impose uniformity of thought and behavior on children while stigmatizing those who dissent or who insist on impeding their values with things like free speech or objective intellectual inquiry.

Actual education and instruction, meanwhile, continue to decline.

Don’t say anything that might offend little Johnny or Mary. Don’t wear t-shirts with the American flag on them. That might offend non-Americans. Don’t use your finger as an imaginary gun and point it at another. That is threatening.

And let’s not compete. Let’s have all sports events end in a tie. There are no winners or losers. Give everybody a trophy for just showing up. One middle school went so far as to ban footballs, baseballs and soccer balls during recess because students might get hurt playing competitive games with them.

Now at least one university has decided that personal pronouns should no longer be used by students.

Administrators at the University of Tennessee worry that students might be offended by the use of traditional pronouns like she, he, him and hers, according to the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

“With the new semester beginning and an influx of new students on campus, it is important to participate in making our campus welcoming and inclusive for all,” wrote Donna Braquet on the university’s website. “One way to do that is to use a student’s chosen name and their correct pronouns.”[image error]

“Correct pronouns?”  Yes, says Braquet, who is director of the university’s Pride Center. “There are dozens of gender-neutral pronouns we can use instead of traditional pronouns.

Her solution is to rewrite critical elements of the English language, which apparently she considers offensive.

Remember when you were in school and the only pronouns were him and her, he and she, etc.?

Well get ready for the new (and improved?) gender-neutral pronouns: ze, hir, zir, xe, xem and xyr.

PC Madness? You bet. But don’t tell Braquet that.

“These may sound a little funny at first, but only because they are new,” she insists. “The ‘she’ and ‘he’ pronouns would sound strange too if we had been taught ‘ze’ when growing up.”

Thank God Braquet and her dopey ideas about gender-neutral language were not around when I was learning English back in the Pleistocene era.

But Braquet doesn’t stop there. “Instead of calling roll, ask everyone to provide their name and pronouns,” she wrote in her post. “This ensures you are not singling out transgender or non-binary students.” Non-binary students?

“We should not assume someone’s gender by their appearance, or by what is listed on a roster or in student information systems,” Braquet continued. “Transgender people and people who do not identify within the gender binary may use a different name than their legal name and pronouns of their gender identity, rather than the pronouns of the sex they were assigned at birth.”

Assigned at birth? Does that mean we may have been mislabeled in the delivery room?

OK, whatever happened to educating children and students about American history, math, science, etc.?

This is just another example of the totalitarian nature of Political Correctness on college campuses.

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If you dare depart from the imposed “norms” established by Feminazis, homosexual-rights activists or any other PC-anointed “victim” group, you do so at your peril.

People who challenge the PC-madness saturating our institutions of learning are liable to face some form of retribution and even punishment.

Students have been expelled from school for using what academic kangaroo courts deem “inappropriate behavior, offensive language, or hate speech.”

Yet it is okay for PC-demented teachers and professor to infuse children and students with the idea that America (whoops–one school has already banned that word) is at the root of all the world’s problems; that the founding fathers were a bunch of malevolent old white men who hated women and minorities; and that all the evil in the world is a result of American (that word again) power, hegemony, and exceptionalism.

Once upon time schools actually educated children and gave them a broad, useful understanding of American history. They explained America’s uniqueness in history and imparted knowledge of and appreciation for our Constitution and the rights that it guarantees.

Then along came political correctness and socialism and ideas that were once considered worthy and beneficial were suddenly turned on their head. No longer was the goal to prepare high school and college graduates to be good citizens and informed voters. Now the goal was to turn out millions of “right-thinking” young people who left school believing that government and only government could solve their problems.

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That, my friend, is the epitome of totalitarianism.

Increasingly today we are seeing that schools are forbidding children to acknowledge the reality of our history. Instead, they are filling children’s heads with a revisionist view of our history–one that attempts to marginalize people like Jefferson, Washington, and Adams.

Our founding fathers are “exposed” as examples of Western class, gender, and racial evil. One school in the state of Washington is even teaching that the Bill of Rights is outdated and needs to be rewritten–and has given students an assignment to do just that.

If I think too long and too hard about all of this, I get a headache.

The only cure, I have found, is to find some politically incorrect jokes, read them, and laugh out loud.

Try it. It may work for you too. These are from across the pond where politically incorrect humor still rages:

How does the leader of ISIS practice safe sex? He marks the camels that kick.
I was walking down the road when I saw an Afghan bloke standing on a fifth-floor balcony shaking a carpet.

I shouted up to him, “What’s up Abdul, won’t it start?”
An older couple goes out to dinner to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary. After dinner, they decide to stop in at an old disco the used to go to when they were dating. As they walk in, they see this older gentleman out on the dance floor, and he’s doing backflips, moonwalking, jitterbugging and really cuttin’ a rug. The guy’s wife said, “you see that guy? 25 years ago he proposed to me, and I turned him down” Husband said, “looks like he’s still celebrating to me.”

 

 

 

 

 

How Political Correctness is Destroying America (Part 3)

( By popular demand, I am re-running a series of posts I published a while back about Political Correctness and the impact it is having on our country)

Once upon a time in America, we used to be able to laugh at ourselves. And nobody was offended. Just listen to old radio shows, and you will see what I mean.

Without a doubt, the old Fred Allen radio shows would be banned today because of the ethnic humor displayed in a segment called “Allen’s Alley.”

[image error]Allen’s AlleyThere was the wry Jewish housewife Pansy Nussbaum, stoic New England farmer Titus Moody, and bellowing Southern Senator Beauregard Claghorn–all stereotypes that in today’s hypersensitive culture would be considered politically incorrect.

Allen’s show ran from the 1930s into the late 1940s, and it was really funny. I discovered it, and other fantastic comedy radio shows like Jack Benny, George Burns & Gracie Allen, and Bob Hope in the 1960s when there was an old-time radio revival and many old radio shows were rebroadcast on stations devoted to nostalgia.

I can still recall listening to Senator Claghorn say things like: “Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked;” “I’m from the South, Suh;” “That’s a joke, son”; and “Pay attention, boy!”

After talking with Sen. Claghorn, Allen would introduce the next guest in the ally by saying:  “It’s Titus Moody.” The stoic New Englander would answer with a sardonic “Howdy, Bub.”

Then there was Mrs. Nussbaum who spoke with a decidedly German/Yiddish accent and when Allen introduced her, said things like “You were expecting maybe…” at which point she would butcher some famous person’s name “…Veinstein Chuychill?”

In their book The Big Broadcast 1920-1950, Frank Buxton and Bill Owen wrote:  “[Claghorn, Nussbaum, and Moody,] were never criticized as being anti-Southern, anti-Semitic, or anti-New England. The warmth and good humor with which they were presented made them acceptable even to the most sensitive listeners.”

Sadly, the Political Correctness Gestapo that pervades America today would disagree.

And so do many of today’s comedians who have gone on the record lamenting the hyper-sensitivities of today’s readily offended audiences as well as the death of the kind of humor that made Fred Allen a staple with audiences.

Take the recent turmoil regarding Trevor Noah, who will take over the Daily Show next month. After his selection as the show’s new host was announced several of his old tweets that were considered racist and sexist were posted online. Noah was quickly condemned by the media, prompting several fellow comedians to come to his defense. The problem, several said, wasn’t Noah’s bad jokes, but an overly sensitive public.

Writing in Time Magazine, comedian Jim Norton said: “Trevor, while tweeting things with the intention of being funny, had gone … yes, you guessed it – over the line!… In his rush to be funny, he had broken what has become the new golden rule in American public life, which is to never say anything (or, God forbid, joke about anything) that may be deemed even remotely offensive or upsetting by any segment of the population for any reason…”

For your consideration, I offer several more comments from comedians and comics who feel the political correctness that permeates America today is robbing us of our ability to laugh at ourselves and others.

John Cleese of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame explained recently that he stopped using any race-related jokes when he was criticized for telling jokes about Mexicans in his routine.

“Make jokes about Swedes and Germans and French and English and Canadians and Americans, why can’t we make jokes about Mexicans? Is it because they are so feeble that they can’t look after themselves? It’s very, very condescending there.”

During a recent interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, Daniel Lawrence Whitney (Larry the Cable Guy) said political correctness had gone too far.  

“It’s gotten way outta control. You know. I really think that we’re at a point in this country where people really need to take the thumb outta their mouth and grow up a little bit and realize there’s a lot bigger problems out there than what a comedian did a joke about.”

Take a look at the Cable Guy’ “politically correct” version of “The Night Before Christmas:”

Gilbert Gottfried recently wrote a piece for Playboy Magazine called “The Apology Epidemic” in which he said America’s current “apology culture” has gone too far.

“Imagine if the most brilliant comedians in history were working today,” he wrote. “They’d never stop apologizing. Charlie Chaplin would have to apologize to all the homeless people he belittled with his Little Tramp character. W.C. Fields and Dean Martin would both have to apologize to alcoholics. The Marx brothers would have to apologize to Italians, mutes and uptight British ladies. Comedy has been around for a long, long time, and there have been a lot of impolite, unpleasant and jaw-droppingly politically incorrect jokes. You went up there as a comic and joked about it all, and nothing was off-limits. And to this day, nobody has died from a single joke.”

Comedienne Lisa Lampanelli recently wrote an article for the Hollywood Reporter called: “How Political Correctness is Killing Comedy.”

In it, she said: “Here’s the problem: Comedy, probably more than any other art form, is subjective. What jokes crack up your mom, your little brother and your gay best friend will be completely different — unless it’s a video of a guy getting hit in the gonads with a piñata stick. That’s funny to everyone….If you like safe, generic comedy that’s fine. Go on a cruise ship and crack up listening to the comedian point out the hilarious differences between loafers and shoes with laces. But don’t go to one of my shows and be outraged by what you hear. Going to my show and expecting me not to cross the line of good taste and social propriety is like going to a Rolling Stones concert and expecting not to hear ‘Satisfaction.’”

Canadian comedian, Russell Peters might have summed it all up best in a recent interview. Society, he said, has become overly sensitive. And political correctness is the reason.

“If you look at TV in the ‘70s versus TV now, and you see the things people said back in the day – they said the most off-color stuff and nobody’s feelings were hurt. Do you know why? Because it’s about intent. The intent then was to make you laugh. And the intent is still to make you laugh, but they’ve (the PC Police) drilled it in into your head that you’re not supposed to laugh at this.”

In my humble opinion, when a nation can no longer laugh at itself, we are in big trouble.

Political Correctness is a treacherous wedge that is dividing and polarizing us. Its proponents believe we should all think alike. But we are individuals. We don’t all think alike or laugh at the same things. Thank God!

[image error] NOT PC!

That is not how the real world works. You won’t get far trying to walk through life on eggshells.

Kill me with comedy.  I’d rather die laughing than crying.

In that spirit, I offer up a couple of politically incorrect jokes for your amusement and consideration.

Q: Have you heard about McDonald’s new Liberal Value Meal?

A: Order anything you like, and the guy behind you has to pay for it.


When asked if they would have sex with Bill Clinton, 86% of women in D.C. said, “Not again.”


What does Nancy Pelosi call illegal aliens? Undocumented Democrats.

There. Now the PC Mafia and all the other handwringing moral guardians out there can lambast me for sharing such horribly politically incorrect humor.

And that’s no laughing matter.

(NEXT, PART 4: WHERE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS LEADING US)

 

 

 

 

How Political Correctness is Destroying America (Part 2)

( By popular demand, I am re-running a series of posts I published a while back about Political Correctness and the impact it is having on our country)

What would happen if the Political Correctness Fanatics decided to rewrite a few 19th Century fairy tales to make them more suitable to the pliable minds of children in the politically correct 21st Century?

I shudder to think.

But someone already has thought about this, and I am going to share a PC version of Little Red Riding Hood that came to me via The Internet the other day.

Please enjoy. (Or not, depending on your PC meter.)

And thanks to the anonymous author of this PC masterpiece.

Politically Correct Little Red Riding Hood

There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.

Red Riding Hood lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as “mother,” although she didn’t mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of the person if a close biological link did not in fact exist.

Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, although she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.

One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house.

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“But mother, won’t this be stealing work from the unionized people who have struggled for years to earn the right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form.

“But mother, aren’t you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free.

“But mother, then shouldn’t you have my brother carry the basket, since he’s an oppressor, and should learn what it’s like to be oppressed?”

And Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights, and besides, this wasn’t stereotypical women’s work, but an empowering deed that would help engender a feeling of community.

“But won’t I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she’s sick and hence unable to independently further her selfhood?”

But Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her grandmother wasn’t actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called “health”.

Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.

Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were, in fact, intolerable competitors.

Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to “come out” of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.

On her way to Grandma’s house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path, to examine some flowers.

She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket.

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Red Riding Hood’s teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality and chose to dialog with the Wolf.

She replied, “I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity.”

The Wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid worldview. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way.”

Red Riding Hood returned to the main path and proceeded towards her Grandmother’s house.

But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma’s house.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator.

Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma’s nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said,

“Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty-free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch.”

The Wolf said softly “Come closer, child so that I might see you.”

Red Riding Hood said, “Goddess! Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

[image error]

“You forget that I am optically challenged.”

“And Grandma, what an enormous…I mean fine nose you have.”

“Naturally, I could have had it fixed to help my acting career, but I didn’t give in to such societal pressures, my child.”

“And Grandma, what very big, sharp teeth you have!”

The Wolf could not take any more of these specious slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother cowering in his belly.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. “You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of intimacy!”

The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her.

At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an ax.

“Hands off!” cried the woodchopper.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” cried Little Red Riding Hood. “If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my abilities, which would lead to poor self-esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams.”

“Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is an FBI sting!” screamed the woodchopper, and when Little Red Riding Hood nonetheless made a sudden motion, he sliced off her head.

[image error]

“Thank goodness you got here in time,” said the Wolf. “The brat and her grandmother lured me in here. I thought I was a goner.”

“No, I think I’m the real victim, here,” said the woodchopper. “I’ve been dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers earlier. And now I’m going to have such a trauma. Do you have any aspirin?”

“Sure,” said the Wolf.

“Thanks.”

“I feel your pain,” said the Wolf, as he patted the woodchopper on his back. Then he belched and said: “Do you have any Maalox?”

I don’t think I will be reading this version of Little Red Riding Hood to my grandchildren any time soon.

(NEXT, PART 3: HOW P.C. IS IMPACTING COMEDY TODAY)

How Political Correctness is Destroying America (Part 1)

( By popular demand, I am re-running a series of posts I published a while back about Political Correctness and the impact it is having on our country)

A long time ago a Pulitzer Prize-winning Kansas editor named William Allen White wrote an editorial in the Emporia Gazette entitled “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”

In it he railed against obtuse populist politicians and visionless citizens who he was convinced were running Kansas (my home state) into the ground.

[image error]  William Allen White

If White were around today there is little doubt that he would be inveighing against the descendants of those thickheaded populists, some of whom have morphed into today’s Political Correctness Thought Police. I strongly suspect that he would already have written an editorial entitled “What’s The Matter With America?” in which he takes the PC Gestapo to task.

For those of us who utilize words for a living the idea of someone telling us we can only use words that the PC Police have decided are “correct” is not only an attack on our ability to express ourselves using the tools (words) of our trade, it is an attack on the First Amendment that guarantees, among other things, free speech.

For the first time in our history, Americans must be afraid of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. Today, we must be worried about using words the PC Police have determined are offensive or insensitive.

Do so, and you are liable to lose your job or be accused of being racist, sexist, or homophobic.

Sadly, universities, with their “speech codes” are the biggest proponents of this political correctness–and, as such, are becoming opponents of the First Amendment.

The very institutions that should be marketplaces of ideas by fostering uninhibited discussion and speech, are becoming more and more restrictive in an effort to promote inclusiveness and encourage tolerance.

Take the recent example of the University of New Hampshire.

In its new “Bias-Free Language Guide” posted on the University’s website, using the words “American,” “obese,” “normal,” “mothering,” “fathering,” “homosexual,” “illegal alien,” and “senior citizens,” is offensive and should be discouraged.

What?

Even the word “American,” the guide said, is “problematic” because it “assumes the U.S. is the only country inside the continents of North and South America.” Really?

[image error]

Calling those who unlawfully cross our borders “illegal aliens” is also not PC. Undocumented immigrants are not “illegal.” They are “persons seeking asylum,” or “refugees.”

Furthermore, the word “foreigner” should be replaced with “international person.”

Are you kidding me?

Take a look at other examples of this political correctness run amok in the University of New Hampshire’s Language Guide:

“Caucasian” is replaced with “European-American individuals.”
“Mothering” and “Fathering” are replaced with “parenting” and “nurturing” so as to “avoid gendering a non-gendered activity.”
“Homosexual” is replaced with “gay,” “lesbian,” or “same gender loving.” (It is really too bad that the perfectly good English word “gay” has been commandeered by a vociferous and strident minority.)
“Obese” or “overweight” is replaced with “people of size.” What size? Large? Extra large? Humungous?
Calling somebody “poor” is a no, no. Now you must say “a person who lacks advantages that others have.” How patently ridiculous.

Those who have read George Orwell’s book “1984” will know that this is the 21st Century’s version of “Newspeak.”

Newspeak in Orwell’s dystopian novel was “a reduced language created by the totalitarian state as a tool to limit free thought and concepts that pose a threat to the regime such as freedom, self-expression, individuality, peace, etc. Any form of thought alternative to the regime’s construct is classified as “thoughtcrime.”

Sound familiar? It should. This is exactly what the Political Correctness Gestapo is doing today.

And it begins in the White House.

The Obama administration once banned all U.S. government agencies from producing any training materials that link Islam with terrorism. In fact, the FBI has gone back and purged references to Islam and terrorism from hundreds of old documents. Amazing.[image error]

As Orwell once said: “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Here a few more recent examples of this kind of PC insanity.

At a high school in California, five students were sent home for wearing T-shirts that displayed the American flag on the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. (This was California, right? Not Baja California?)

A Washington state college said its “non-discrimination” policy prevents it from stopping a transgender man from exposing himself to young girls inside a women’s locker room, according to a group of concerned parents. What next?

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, it is illegal for employers to discriminate against criminals because it has a “disproportionate” impact on minorities.

Speaking a few years ago at American University, William Lind, an author, and journalist said: “America today is in the throes of the greatest and direst transformation in its history. We are becoming an ideological state, a country with an official state ideology enforced by the power of the state.

“In “hate crimes” we now have people serving jail sentences for political thoughts. And the Congress is now moving to expand that category ever further. Affirmative action is part of it. The terror against anyone who dissents from Political Correctness on campus is part of it. It’s exactly what we have seen happen in Russia, in Germany, in Italy, in China, and now it’s coming here.

“And we don’t recognize it because we call it Political Correctness and laugh it off. My message today is that it’s not funny, it’s here, it’s growing, and it will eventually destroy, as it seeks to destroy, everything that we have ever defined as our freedom and our culture.”

Are we to assume political correctness will fade only after the “gravitationally disadvantaged” lady has sung?”

George Orwell must be hooting from the grave.

(NEXT, PART 2: A Politically Correct Version of Little Red Riding Hood)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fascinating Facts For Word Lovers

As a someone whose primary tools are words, I am always interested in where these critical implements originated and how they continue to evolve.

The study of grammar, language, vocabulary–otherwise known as etymology–has always fascinated me. For those who enjoy writing and reading, what follows should be an entertaining romp through the worlds of philology, semantics, and dialectology.

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Don’t let those terms throw you. We are not talking about theoretical mathematics or quantum physics. It is a look at where some of the words and phrases we use every day come from, some of the anomalies of words, language and usage, and how certain expressions evolved.

What follows comes from a book entitled: 501 Things You Should Have Learned About Grammar. E njoy 

Did you know that “R” is the most commonly used consonant in the English language? Were you aware that the term “English” came before the name England?  Did you even realize that punctuation did not appear until the 15th century?

There is a treasure trove of fascinating facts in 501 Things You Should Have Learned About Grammar.  It’s a  book that linguists, lexicologists, book-lovers, grammarians, and those in book publishing should love.  The book is put out by Metro Books, an imprint of Sterling Publishing, the Barnes & Noble publishing company. It features sections on the history of English grammar, parts of speech, linguists, English around the world, and grammar through the ages.

Here are 35 items from the book that should entertain, if not stimulate, you:

Shitfaced” meant “young-looking” in the Scottish dictionary.  Yes, before 1826, shitfaced, according to Scottish dictionary meant small-faced.  It referred to someone who had boyish or young looks.
Queue” is the only word in the English language that doesn’t change in pronunciation if the last four letters are removed!
One of the most interesting facts about words in the English language is that the female form of all words in English are longer than their corresponding male forms, except for in one case. The word “widow” is an exception to this. Its male form “widower” is longer.
The oldest word in the Oxford English dictionary that is still in everyday use is “town.”
Forty is the only number in which the letters that form the word appear in the order that they appear in the English alphabet.
One is the only number in which the letters appear in the exact reverse order of their appearance in the English alphabet.
“Four” is the only word whose numerical value is equal to the number of letters in it! [image error]
Pangrams in English are sentences that contain all the letters in the English alphabet in a single sentence itself. Pangrams are used for testing typefaces, testing equipment, and for developing skills such as typing on keyboards, typewriting, handwriting, and calligraphy. Pangrams which are short and coherent are very difficult to come by, as English grammar has 26 different letters, and some of these, such as “q” and “x,” are not used very commonly. There is only one pangram in English which is short and universally accepted for keyboard testing. That pangram—“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
About 20,000 books ranging from poems, devotional pieces, grammar books, dictionaries and mythical stories were printed in the 150 years that followed the year 1476, which was when the printing press arrived in England.
There are no masculine nouns for certain professions like maid or seamstress in English.
The longest word in the English language that is commonly used and does not contain any letter that is repeated is “copyrightable.”
“Queueing” is the only word in the English language with five consecutive vowels appearing in it.
China has more English speaking people than the United States of America!
In the early 18th century, a large number of English words were being derived from names of people and places. Many have stuck on until today! The word “sandwich” owes its existence to the Earl of Sandwich, who, on a particular occasion, put a slice of meat in between two pieces of bread.
Over 80 different spellings of Shakespeare’s name have been documented, and it is interesting to note that he has used various spellings in all his six known signatures.
The printing press was first invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439 in Germany. Each letter’s mirror image was carved in relief on a small block. Words were formed when blocks, which were quickly movable, were arranged to form different words.  The words were separated with the help of blank spaces, and this gave rise to a line of type, and some such lines of type gave rise to a page.
With the help of some borrowed money, Gutenberg started the “Bible Revolution” in the year 1452, wherein 200 copies of the two-volume Gutenberg Bible were printed, out of which only a small number of them were printed on vellum.”
By the year 1500, 13 million books were being circulated in Europe that was populated with 100 million people then.
The Gutenberg Bibles were expensive and beautiful and were sold at the 1455 Frankfurt Book Fair, where each one was equal to the amount an average clerk got his salary in three years. About 50 of these Bibles survive today.
The written English used in the official documents at the Court of Chancery, a court of equity in England and Wales, was what set a standard in grammar and vocabulary, and that’s where the term “Chancery English” originated.
Paradise Lost is amongst the most significant epics ever written in English. And what makes it even more special is the fact that the author John Milton (who had lost his eyesight by then) would mentally compose the verses at night and in the morning he would dictate them to his aides.
The discovery that English and Sanskrit had much in common, in spite of having little contact, stunned theorists. Surprised by the linguistic similarities between different languages, scholars began to hypothesize the existence of an ancient language called the “proto-Indo-European” language that would later give rise to the various branches of the Indo-European group.
Language historians now believe that the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European languages spread to different parts of the world. Their language (spoken between 4,000-6,000 years ago) changed with their travels, leading the original Proto-language to die out, but leaving several distinct elements in the languages that evolved later.
Words and sentences that are made by teaming up letters, numbers, or pictures are called Rebus. One example that we use in our day-to-day SMS lingo is “l8r,” which is short for “later.”
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Spoonerisms pop up when letters and sounds get misplaced. Missed becomes hissed, flags become hags, so on and so forth.
Malapropism: This term is used to denote the replacement of a correct word with the incorrect word because they sound similar.
“Puns are often called the lowest form of humor because of their reliance on manipulating the sound of words for effect. These are homophones, where the pun is created by replacing one word with another similar sounding one. For example “Old kings never die, they’re just throne away.”
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two or more contradictory phrases that, in sum, express an essential relation. Can you hear the deafening silence at that? If so, act natural.
Many grammarians believe that the process of onomatopoeia – words formed in the imitation of sounds – was the basis of the evolution of words in the human language. Human beings coined words out of exclamations they made or heard animal and birds make, or came across in their environment. This theory has been pooh-poohed by others who cite the fact that there are very few words in most human languages that are onomatopoeic.
Book and movie titles are also retrospectively used as metaphors – that’s a “Catch 22 situation,” “This is such a 1984ish nightmare” or “it’s a Cinderella story.
Incidentally, the English word “alphabet” is made by combining “alpha” and “beta,” the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.
Elizabethan English refers to the English and the laws of English grammar that existed during the period of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was the Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603.
The Elizabethan Alphabet had 24 letters, unlike the present day alphabet, which has 26 letters. “u” and “v,” “I” and “j” were the same letter.
After the writers of the Bible, Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the English language.
By 1400, English had replaced French as the most widely spoken language in England. In 1500, the English dialect that became the most common among all of them was Westminster English. Speaking this dialect was considered to be a matter of great prestige.
A lot of Norman French words found their way into the English language. In today’s times, it is believed that over 30% of all English words are of French origin. Words like “joy,” “joyous,” “attaché,” and several others found their way into English courtesy Norman French.”

 

 

 

California Dreaming? Or California Nightmare?

Here’s a bit of news I never expected to hear about California. It ranks 50th; dead last; at the bottom of the heap, of all American states when it comes to quality of life, according to a recent ranking by U.S. News & World Report.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this revelation. After all, I live in California and I have witnessed what has happened to a state that once was the envy of the other 49.

California today is a terminus for the homeless, illegal aliens, MS-13 gang members, welfare cheaters, and clueless socialist politicians determined to transform the state into an abortive political and societal hodgepodge somewhere between communist Cuba and the impecunious wilds of Northern Mexico.

But let’s get back to the U.S. News analysis. The magazine’s quality of life rankings considered two sets of metrics for every state:

Natural environment, comprising drinking-water quality, air quality, and pollution and industrial toxins.
Social environment, comprising community engagement, social support, population density, and voter participation.

And guess what? California ranked near or at the bottom in each of those categories.

Little wonder. California, which calls itself the “Golden State,” is a mismanaged behemoth controlled by a mob of far-left zealots led by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state’s supreme leftist potentate.

This gang of political malefactors has sacked the state’s treasury, leaving it $427 billion in debt with a debt to GDP ratio of 15.6 percent. That means the debt for every one of California’s 39 million people is $10,818 and growing.

The state has long been a lodestone for illegal immigrants, but since Gov. Brown declared California a “sanctuary state,” a tidal wave of illegals, many with criminal backgrounds, is sweeping over the state’s splintered social landscape.

It is interesting to note that California’s high cost of living and its rising illegal immigration rates were two metrics that did not factor into the quality-of-life rankings.

Yet both are among the most obvious and disturbing issues facing the state.

Sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland have opened their doors and coffers to illegal immigrants while American citizens are afforded the privilege of paying ever higher taxes to pay for this foolish munificence.

Recently, I received a tongue-in-cheek story suggesting that President Trump sell California back to Mexico. A map depicted the new U.S.-Mexican border running from Texas all the way to Oregon. There are some who feel jettisoning California might be a good thing. After all, Mexico ceded California to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. Maybe it’s time to send it back.[image error]

In any case, to watch California crumble before one’s eyes is disconcerting. But wait, you might ask, what about all of the millionaires living in places like Beverly Hills, Calabasas, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, San Diego and the Orange County coast? How can California be disintegrating when you still have all that wealth?

The fact is, more than one-third of the state is now populated by immigrants, half of them illegal. Then, the state’s homeless population is growing at an alarming rate with some 30,000 in Los Angeles alone. In Orange County, thousands of homeless tents and hovels occupy miles and miles of land along the Santa Ana River. As a result, human feces, discarded hypodermic needles, and mounds of trash litter the bicycle path that runs between the fleapits and the river while expensive homes sit just a few hundred yards away.

To make matters worse, housing prices have gone through the roof, leaving only a minority of Californians able to buy a house. What about renting? In the Los Angeles area, including San Diego and Riverside Counties, rents for a one bedroom apartment are running about $1,900 a month and for two and three bedroom apartments and homes, rents are between $2,500 and $3,500 per month.

This is NOT the California that I first moved to in 1976 or that former Governor Ronald Reagan oversaw between 1967 and 1975.

Yes, California is a state of incomparable wealth. The movie and music industries reside here as do enormously productive agricultural and high tech industries. In fact, California recently leapfrogged France and the United Kingdom to become the fifth-largest economy in the world with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion. Only Germany, China, Japan, and the European Union have higher GDPs.

So what’s the problem?

Let’s begin with the state’s water supply. It is unreliable and can barely sustain the current population and the needs of the state’s thirsty, drought-ridden agricultural sector. Then there is the crumbling infrastructure of freeways, roads, and bridges. To make matters worse, there is a wall of debt acerbated by an onerous and punitive tax structure, as well as a volatile budget system. Another recent study found that California ranked 49th in the cost of doing business and 50th in “business friendliness,” which translates into such things as onerous regulations, tax breaks, and quality of the workforce.

[image error] Homeless camps stretch for miles along Orange County bike path

There are also missed payments and mounting debt for excessive public retirement benefits, rising healthcare costs and diminishing access to health care, unstable funding for K-12 education, and poor student performance compared to other states. In addition, there are new and harsh restrictions on gun ownership that many see as a direct assault on the Second Amendment. Add to that the state’s skyrocketing cost of living and declining home ownership and the welcome mat looks a bit soiled.

Finally, there is rising crime and an overcrowded and costly prison system as well as a lack of transparency and eroding public trust in government that is compounded by apathetic voters and consistently low voter turnout.

All of that adds up to California’s 50th ranking when it comes to quality of life for its citizens.

Is it any wonder that hundreds of thousands of over-taxed Californians and hundreds of companies are bolting the state every year for places like Texas, Arizona, and Washington?

Meanwhile, California continues to be the nation’s leading nanny state for illegals, the homeless, criminals, and those who swill at the public trough.

What’s next for the Golden State?

It could fall into the Pacific Ocean, I guess.

A Mixed Metaphor Walks into a Bar….

All of us know that English is the most inconsistent, confusing, and maddening tongue on the planet. Unlike most other languages, it is often called a “bastard” language because of its multifarious etymological and philological foundations.

English, as we know, is a combination of Latin, Germanic, French, Saxon, Gallic, and Nordic tongues—to mention just a few. And while it belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, its grammatical rules are often bewildering and paradoxical—especially to non-English speakers who are learning the language.

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Recently somebody sent me some interesting examples of English grammar in action and I thought to myself, ‘this is a great way to teach the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of English grammar.’ 

Take a look and enjoy. You might even learn something.

A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

An Onomatopoeia screeches into a bar, sizzles, growls, and roars.

A question mark walks into a bar?

A non-sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

A synonym strolls into a tavern.

At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

A dyslexic walks into a bra.

A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar, and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.