Good ol’ boy network? I hardly think so

The recent anti-élite campaign jargon of the McCain-Palin camp has made use of a most annoying–but ubiquitous–malapropism.  Palin, especially, refers rather often, and rather annoyingly, to the “good ol’ boy network.”  If anything could solidify one’s status as outside of the élite, this off-target utterance would be that thing.  See, there is a world, or at least a continent, of difference between a “good old boy” and an “old boy,’ and rest assured, it is the old boys who have the network to which one really wants to belong.

You’d never be able to buy your way in to either network, however.  An “old boy” is a graduate of one of England’s “public” or independent schools, someplace like Eton College.  While good ol’ boys have quite the little network of their own, membership will cost one very little.  All one has to do is be among the fourth or fifth generation of a respectable, church-going family living in some region of the rural south, and you’re well on your way.  True, this membership will only take one only just so far.  Still, A “good ol’ boy” need not have graduated from anywhere, even an American public high school.  One need only possesses a spectrum of traits, which make one worthy of the title, rendered somewhat lovingly in one’s absence.

The term signifies one’s apparent humility, one’s apparent basic decency, as well as one’s obvious tendency to withhold any forthright opinion on any particular topic in the presence of strangers.  This is the central trait of the good ol’ boy, and one he holds in common with many of his upper-crust British cohort.  He leaves people free to hold, and even to express, the most outlandish positions on matters many and various.  He’ll never tell anyone they’re wrong; he’ll never tell people what he thinks about that topic, but you will never win him over to your line of thinking, no matter how solid your argument.  Oh, you will think he agrees with you, but you will want to be a fly on the wall when next he gets together with others of his ilk to know the truth.

Although he is a man of no apparent opinions in the presence of people he doesn’t know that well, one finds he is also a man of rigidly held, dogmatic beliefs once one gets to know him.  It is this trait, and perhaps this trait alone, which he shares in common with the old boys of Britain.  It is this trait, perhaps, that serves as a marker of his common heritage with the ruling élite of the United Kingdom.

On a related note, one has noticed how natives of tiny, overpopulated island nations have a way of taking politeness to the next level.  Look at Japan and England, for example.  I mean, they come by this trait naturally, it seems, and it is easy to see why.  How uncomfortable would it be to spend time with someone once one had established a source of disagreement with him or her?  Best, then, to keep all such disagreements from ever surfacing, to keep one’s own counsel, to state forthright opinion only among those one knows already hold the same opinion.  It only makes sense.

Jury Duty? Almost!

On Oct. 14, 2008, the Word of the Day from the Oxford English Dictionary was jury.  The OED is a little more thorough than many dictionaries in that their lexicographers not only define words, but also chart the use of those  words over time, providing copious verbatim quotations to that effect.  In this case, the story of the word jury begins in 1187 with a reference in Latin.  One might have thought the word would be somewhat older, but we apparently did not derive the entirety of our civic system from the ancients.

The OED defines the word thus:

A company of persons (orig. men) sworn to render a verdict or true answer upon some question or questions officially submitted to them; in modern times, in a court of justice, usually upon evidence delivered to them touching the issue; but in the earliest times usually upon facts or matters within their own knowledge, for which reason they were summoned from the neighborhood to which the question submitted to them related….

Continue reading

Identity: What’s Race Got to Do with It?

picture of bikeIt was bound to happen, and it did, early in the campaign so that measures could be taken.  I refer, of course, to the calls from various entities that Barack Obama is “tryna ac’ white.”  I don’t know exactly what the Obama campaign did to quell this particular complaint, but it seems to have gone away as quickly as it came.

The issue makes one wonder, though.  For example, how would a person go about doing such a thing?  If he or she did so successfully, how would another person tell if he were doing it and if it were intentional?  Apparently, many people see no problem making such judgments.  Also significant, though, is whether a person can be judged too harshly for doing it in the first place.  I mean, lots of white people do it every day, apparently, and it’s hard to condemn a whole race without coming in for some condemnation yourself.

Another question occurs as a natural outgrowth of the conversation:  Assuming that certain behaviors and attitudes still can be recognized as “white” or “black” in 21st century America, why do such racial distinctions still exist after centuries of racial coexistence?  Wouldn’t you think, under normal circumstances, that a certain blending and mellowing would have taken place over the centuries?  Wouldn’t you think that whatever differences existed historically would have by this time become almost imperceptible?  That, clearly, is not the case.  Something must be going on here.  One wonders how intentional this something might be.

Continue reading

Limits? Boundaries? Me?

pic of barbed wireBoundaries and limits. Limits and boundaries. Life is full of these. Why would anyone try to raise a child without a proper grounding in these necessities? We can guess at some of the possible reasons, but people try to do it all the time. Really. All the time.

Sometimes we needn’t guess why certain individuals try to accomplish this trick. Obviously, people exist for whom something went slightly awry in their childhoods, something that made limits and boundaries seem as negative things when they are, rather, quite positive things—when executed properly, that is. It definitely can happen.

My own life provides evidence for how these social constructs can get a bad name. My parents are, as they say, no longer with us, but let’s just say they were no model for how to teach the value and benefit of boundaries and limits. They were inconsistent; they were needlessly harsh from time to time, and often hypocritical, sometimes transgressing the reasonable limits society had placed upon them, and doing so within sight of the kids. To their credit, perhaps, they did so with a certain admirable élan at times, but still, the fact of the violation, in the face of the strictures they applied to the children at home—well, it just didn’t take a juvenile genius to see through it all and come to one’s own conclusions on the matter. One began to see that boundaries and limits could be a pretty fungible commodity, and that is not the most comfortable discovery for a child to make.

And then life went on and put me in a place where, in 25 years as a teacher and coach in various institutions of public instruction, I learned the value of limits and boundaries while dealing with some 3000 young people—other people’s kids, in fact—many of whom had never heard of such a thing as a boundary before and perhaps not even since.

Continue reading

You Can Have All of Mine, Really

My newly revised faceOK, so I “came off my bike” this afternoon.

Yeah, you can believe me on this: This is not something you want. You can die from this. Even if you just get your bell rung, you still don’t want it.

So, how did this happen, you’re asking. Well, very, very quickly, in fact.  “It all happened so fast!” Heard that one before?  Here it is again, for your delectation. Take it for what you will.  But as to the facts at hand, I was returning from a routine bike ride, one I take every day or so, and as I have done countless times before, I turned into my peaceful little cul-de-sac. Apropos to the topic, the entrance to my street has been furnished with an unnecessary extra divot–somebody’s idea of a way to channel storm runoff alongside a piece of road that already sports a generous existing grade. This makes such a feature altogether superfluous (and in my case, at least a little dangerous). Anyway, when I hit this divot, carrying, perhaps, a bit of exuberant, excess speed, the rubber grip on the right handlebar slipped off, leaving me somewhat in the lurch.

Regardless, the aforementioned combination of mechanical and engineering failures put me in rather immediate contact with the unforgiving asphalt. I’d estimate that less than a second elapsed between hitting the bump and hitting the pavement. That’s not a lot of time to do any planning or prognostication, oh my bruvvers. That’s not even enough time to take a deep breath and get ready for all that you are about to suffer. It’s basically just a blur through which one traverses and tries to do the best one can under the somewhat impromptu circumstances.

A brief, subsequent, anatomical inventory provided a retrospective account of the events that transpired with, shall we say, a smattering of indeliberate haste. Said inventory was informative, however, providing insights into what may have transpired in that split instant, such as the following:

  • I had hit the pavement (did I mention it was unforgiving?) with the knuckles, and palms, of both hands, therefore leading me to assume that I must have bounced at least once.
  • I also, apparently, made contact with the big toe of my left foot. Good thing I was wearing sensible shoes. Good safety tip, that.
  • As to the evidence of contact on my right shoulder, there was a rather prominent tear in my T-shirt, and a corresponding raspberry spread gooily on said shoulder’s apex.
  • I won’t go into detail as to the state of the various knees and elbows; they have seen this territory before and were well prepared to revisit it. Let’s just say, however, that they had to cowboy up considerably to make the grade in this instance, forebearance-wise.


* Having been a victim of a little of the old ultraviolence, I am channeling Alex, from A Clockwork Orange.
Continue reading

OK, I Give!

St. SebastianYeah, that’s the way it is with me. Not one to be a martyr in a lost cause, I give up, already.

See, you don’t know me, but I am one of those people–one of those really disgusting people, apparently–who knows all the words and all the grammar and usage rules, but what’s the use, really? I mean, none of it seems to do anyone any good anymore, does it? It’s certainly nothing to boast about in today’s cultural milieu. One should, rather, hang one’s head in shame for knowing all those words and all those rules. Sign of a misspent youth and all that, what?

“Hey, wait,” you say. “You cocky jerk, isn’t it ‘all of the words’ and ‘all of the rules'”? Not really. Nope. And what about knows? Surely, people know things, don’t they? Well, they do, but one person knows things. This one confuses M$ Word’s grammar checker, too, so give yourself a pass. Score one for you if you marked the cliche near the end there, however.

The fact is, though, I’m tired. Having fought the good fight in an English classroom for a quarter century, I can say rather authoritatively that the fight already is over and the other side has won. The barbarians are at the gates, and we’re trapped inside the walls living in our own filth. We’re obviously correct in everything we say or write, but that doesn’t make the air smell any better in here, does it?

But, as my in-laws from Long Island say, “wadda-ya gonna do?” The forces acting to change language are just too strong. Resistance is futile, or perhaps I should say, feudal. I am going to go ahead and be ass-immolated.
Continue reading

300,000 hits for “I can haz”?

wet-madI don’t know what got into me, exactly, but on a whim, I entered “I can haz” into a Google search. I guess I was becoming aware how often the phrase appears as I surf around. I wondered how pervasive it had become, how much cultural penetration it had achieved. Google came up with almost 300,000 references to the phrase, a statistic that gave me pause. (Check it now. Maybe the total has gone up since the date of this post.)

This “cultural penetration” thing is interesting, though, and we’ve all experienced the phenomenon, usually as the uncomfortable feeling that comes from being with someone who is just picking up on something that we have become tired of ourselves. It’s like you got penetrated a long time ago, but this person has just now gotten nailed. What explains that? Perhaps he was hiding in some cultural backwater? Perhaps he has a life?

But ah, the fads: They begin; they gain currency; they end. But not really, huh? Maybe they just keep penetrating like the old television broadcasts of I Love Lucy, which are some 57 light years out in space now. Bless her, Lucy has been hurtling through the galaxy at the speed of light as long as I have been alive. Some far-off alien is just now saying, “So turn off the conveyor belt already!” Continue reading

Dolly Lama?

The current Dalai LamaWith the Dalai Lama so much in the news lately, I am struck by how many commentators mangle the pronunciation of his title. I mean, he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner (1989), for crying out loud. Can we get this right?

It seems that many of them pronounce it “DOLL-lee LAH-muh.” The more approved western pronunciation, however, seems to be something along the lines of “DOLL-eye LAH-mah” (see the resources below). The man himself, heard in recent interviews, seems to say something like “dah-LA-la-ma,” almost as if it were one word with the accent on the second syllable.

One particularly frustrating instance of this confusing pronunciation phenomenon occurred in an interview (3/26/08) on NPR‘s Fresh Air. In her discussion with Pico Iyer, author of The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Terry Gross continued to call the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide the “Dolly Lama” despite the fact that the interviewee, a man acquainted with the Dalai Lama for over 30 years, kept pronouncing it in the approved western fashion.

The natural question is, “What’s going on here?”

Continue reading

“Shooting Spree”

Whitman.jpgThis is one “convention” of journalists that could use some some serious reflection. Whenever someone shoots more than one or two victims, members of the chattering class will refer to the incident as a “shooting spree.” The phrase, ringing so close to the more common “shopping spree,” makes it sound as if someone were having just a whole lot of fun killing people.

The phrase is problematic on so many levels. It has become a particularly obnoxious cliché in the vast majority of cases, it is anything but accurate; furthermore, and more to the point, the phrase could encourage impressionable fringe characters by making the actions of a crazy person sound attractive and fun.

I don’t know which is a worse offense, frankly. I hate cliché s, I hate fuzzy, inaccurate prose, but the idea of making a destructive act of utter desperation sound like fun does not strike me as all that useful, either.
Continue reading

Forward Slash?

Or even more nonsensically, forwardslash.

Where in the world has this new trend come from? I refer to the tendency of calling a “slash” a “forward slash.”

The keyboard has always had a slash character. On the “qwerty” keyboard, it’s there in the lower-right corner under the question mark. It’s a slash. It always has been, at least since Civil War days.

Now people in the media are referring to it as a “forward slash,” and the trend is growing. Why would this be? Where did all this unnecessary folderol come from? I’m thinking it has to do with the various marketing departments of many large firms and their constant efforts at idiot-proofing the world.

Continue reading