When Illiterates Try to Read Between the Lines

I tried twice yesterday to get comments on a New York Times blog called “Moral of the Story” by a fellow named Randy Cohen.  The blog purports to be dedicated to looking at stories from the news through the lens of ethics. (Never mind that ethics and morals are two distinct things and that people who are ethical aren’t always perceived as moral while folks who are moral are oftentimes not ethical.) As of this writing, neither comment has made it through the censors, which, for the purposes of this post, is neither here nor there. The blog post in question concerns the recent public relations tug-of-war between David Letterman and Sarah Palin.

First, let me say that the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. I can’t really imagine a less important news story. The situation is essentially this: Letterman told a joke–in some eyes a rotten joke–poorly, and Palin reacted in an absurd manner. There is no winner in this tiff, especially not the great American public.

Sprinkled amongst the comments generated by this post were a number that berated Letterman for joking about Willow Palin being raped, a thing which he did not do. Being a lover of the English language and of reasoning as an avocation, I wrote the following as my second comment (the first comment is lost to history):

There is not only a semantic but a legal difference between rape and statutory rape. In the one case, one participant in an allegedly sexual act is unwilling. The act is forced upon that person without their consent, whether they have the legal authority to give consent or not. In the other case, a person is engaged in a sexual act at an age that the legislature has determined is below the age at which informed consent can be given. The person’s willingness to engage in the act is irrelevant. They are deemed too young to be trusted to knowingly consent to such an act.

Conflating the two does no one any good. In fact, it cheapens the harm done and the injury felt by the victims of rape, those who were unwillingly violated by another.  However, in this matter and for the sake of making a few third-rate political points, it is convenient for Governor Palin and her acolytes to muddy the two very distinct terms into one so as to misstate the intent and effect of the joke. And if anyone actually thought that Letterman was referring to Willow Palin when he made that joke, you should be ashamed of yourself. You’ve got a dirty mind.

Finally, it is hypocritical to worry about protecting the children when both Willow and Bristol Palin have been repeatedly used as props and weapons by their parents. If the folks who are so worried about them are true to their word, they would find these kids a foster home.

(I have slightly revised this comment to remove spelling and other such errors and to amplify the argument in a couple of places.)

As I’ve trudged through life, I’ve been subjected to a long stream of numbskulls and dimwits who disparaged “book learning” in favor of “street smarts” and who decried the need for a large vocabulary (originally called the use of “twenty-five cent words,” inflation has them valued at somewhere around five dollars these days) and the subtle use of language. And yet the entire line of thinking that goes into jumping to the conclusion that Letterman was joking about anyone being raped shows exactly why book learning and a varied vocabulary and a subtle sense of language are virtues, not vices. For without understanding how words work, without understanding the difference between reasoning and believing, a demagogue can mislead and citizens are reduced to the status of cattle. (I made a similar point in an earlier post.)

Despite what is believed in some quarters, this nation was not founded by men who had faith in religious belief.  They had faith in the ability of humans to reason their way through problems.  They understood that reason elevated the member of a mob to be a functioning citizen.  Reason allowed them to be governed rather than ruled.

The Elements of Style, Not Steel

In reading an article in The Times this morning concerning the 50th anniversary edition of The Elements of Style, I reflected on a blog post I wrote a little over a year ago in which I discussed the effect the so-called “little book” had on me as a writer.  It was a small stroll down memory lane inspired, at the time, by a slight detour.  I had read a blog post by Paul Krugman in which he danced a piroette on the wonders of George Orwell’s essay about clarity in writing, “Politics and the English Language,” and I ventured the opinion that not only might Orwell’s essay perhaps not have been “the best essay on writing ever written,” but was, at least in my case, one of the best sleep aids I had ever encountered.  Some days later, I noticed on the dashboard for this blog that there was a link incoming to that post.  It connected to some website devoted to Orwell, and the author of the link added one of the “rules” from The Elements of Style in which E.B. White enjoined the nascent writer to not “affect a breezy manner.”  Apparently my lack of enthusiasm had struck a nerve, and someone who lacked the courage to identify himself had constructed what he thought was a witty rejoinder to my slander against his hero.  That’s how things are done in the digital world.

Unfortunately for our Orwell-loving sniper, my piece, while playful in spots, was not written in a breezy manner, and he (or she; idiocy is not gender-specific) missed the point of a section that White referred to in the book as a selection of reminders.  This point was also missed in a recent article published in The Chronicle of Higher Learning by a professor from the University of Edinburgh called Geoffery Pullum, although, in fairness, Professor Pullum has more reasonable, compelling, and useful ideas to put forth.  Both seem (although I might be misinterpreting Professor Pullum) to be under the misapprehension that The Elements of Style is anything other than a collection of guidelines for the beginner and is not–especially after E.B. White got through with it–a polemic or manifesto.  Of course, they are not alone.  Too many thousands, including the folks who created the grammar wizard in Microsoft Word, have taken the Little Book too seriously.  They treat it as if it were holy writ, not merely some quick ideas that put forth the notion–the same one as put forth by Orwell, by the way–that clarity in the writing of English prose is a virtue.

Because Professor Strunk followed his own advice concerning the making of definite assertions, the early sections of the book do read like an extension of the Ten Commandments, but this can be overcome.  And the second section, the one dominated by White, is far less proscriptive, although, I guess, by the time that people get that far, they have been conditioned enough to jump when commanded that they unconsciously omit White’s advice to season one’s taste of his reminders with a pinch or two of salt.  It is long past time for everyone to relax a little and to remember that The Elements of Style is not a sacred text.  It began its life as a guidebook for college freshmen and not as a learned disquisition on the English language in all its complexity.  It is a style guide, and a decent one, I think, and entertaining to boot.

Now, two more things before I go.

First, I want to make it clear that I am not anti-Orwell.  1984 and Animal Farm are two of the best novels I’ve ever read, extraordinary in every way.  What I failed to make clear previously was that it was that one essay that put me to sleep.  If it is truly as great as Professor Krugman had it, then the fault is mine.

Second, Professor Pullum’s essay should be read by anyone who is infatuated with The Elements of Style and his words heeded.  I think he is right in just about everything he says except in his insistence on taking the book sooooo seriously.  It also seems to me that some of his notions, such as that “[t]he students who know which words are needless don’t need the instruction,” are logically flawed and detract from his overall argument.   (Not that he’s arguing with overalls.  Whoops!  There’s that breezy side of me rearing its ugly head again.  For shame!  For shame!)  I think it would be great to see his essay published with the standard text as an afterword or something.  Everyone would benefit from a bit of scoffing, for there is no animal duller than a sacred cow.

The Real Article

I’ve just finished copying all my recent posts on logic and the alleged “authorship controversy” and conspiracy theories together into one coherent article that I will try to shop to some magazine somewhere.  The monster I currently have in a Word doc is almost 10,000 words, and it will change.  It may even get longer, since there are several thematic strands I’m hoping to braid together.

I plan to start by printing out what I have and cutting it to pieces with scissors. I’ll then rearrange the sections and start my revisions from there.  As is my best practice, I will revisit every word, every thought, and every assumption along the way.

Oh, well, I guess it’s time to place my proboscis squarely on the grindstone.  Wish me well.

Scattershot

Just a few things that have crossed my mind in the last 24 or so hours:

First, my post yesterday about being Irish is a great example of how this blog functions as a writing journal for me. It’s not really a well-written piece, but it could be with some work. It is, at best, a draft, something to be worked out and smoothed over. As it stands, it has a herky-jerky quality about it. Ideas pop in and out of it like Major Nelson in a second-rate episode of I Dream of Jeannie, and it hops and skips from thought to thought. However, that’s how journals work. You get down the kernel of the idea so that you can flesh it out later. And maybe I will. I think there’s the basis for a decent essay to submit somewhere for next St. Patrick’s Day.

Second, just a quick comment on the folderol surrounding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan in the Democratic Convention. The basic point comes down to this: The legislatures of these two states knew what the consequences were when they moved their primary dates in the first place. If the voters in these states have been disenfranchised–and I don’t think that’s a forgone conclusion–they were disenfranchised by their state legislators, not by the Democratic Party. Everybody can just stop their boohooing and accept the consequences of their actions. And, were I a voter in either of those states, I would certainly do my part in voting the idiots in the state legislature out of office based on how they voted on the original matter. Those are the bad guys in this matter, and more fingers need to be pointed in their direction.

Stanley Fish has posted another great load of twaddle that I couldn’t even be bothered to finish. He’s taken his “I must support Hilary by all means of illogic and obfuscation” to a new level of bloated self-importance by addressing the idea that the so-called superdelegates to the Democratic convention need not support the candidate preferred by the People. As usual, he takes dump trucks full of words and tries to bury a rational argument with them. I did not comment on it, although I was tempted to. What I would have said would have been something along the lines of “If you want to know how the superdelegates will perform their function, start by observing the movements of large flocks of sheep or geese or schools of minnows. We can count on them to blow with the prevailing wind, and , like bolts of lightning, to cut their way from the heavens to the earth along the path of least resistance. To think anything more of them is absurd and without example in nature.”

Of course, the secret story in this whole superdelegate thing is that Obama has been creeping up bit-by-bit. Sen. Clinton’s lead in this category has dipped from more than 100 in February to fewer than 40 today. And, I believe, that trend will continue. The Clintons are counting on being carried to the nomination by old-school party hacks, however, unfortunately for them, those old-school party hacks are growing increasingly tired of the Clintons and their presumption of dynasty. Hilary has waged a tasteless and Rove-inspired campaign that has turned off party stalwarts. She’s not keeping it in the family, which is bad politics. And they know that McCain would clean her clock in November. Also, there is a bubbling undercurrent in the country that is looking for change from politics as usual, and Hilary has shown herself incapable of understanding that.

Finally, could we somehow get past the fiction that McCain wouldn’t trounce Hilary in November? The Republicans (who have started turning out in great numbers–over 100,000 each in Texas and Ohio–to vote for Hilary in the primaries) know that. Hilary energizes their legendary “base.” They can run not only against her, but against Bill as well. (Despite some people’s delusions that Bill was one of the great Presidents, he was, at best, a mediocrity.) Also, everything that she has run on so far, McCain can claim to have more of, such as experience and foreign policy backbone. They will paint her as being “the most liberal member of Congress” and wishy-washy on Iraq. And, with her running against him, McCain can claim the “I’m a Maverick” ground that he loves so. Don’t believe the Clinton propaganda that she has a better chance in a national race against McCain. It just ain’t so. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Rush Limbaugh.

Update:   I was so pleased with the projected comment for Stanly Fish’s blog that I copied it and posted it.  It is comment #493.

Also, I had meant to post a link to  a piece by The Firesign Theatre that came up on the old iPod this morning.  It originally appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered on Labor Day, 2002.  If you have an extra 8 minutes, take a listen.

I Called It Before Krugman

And I have proof. On August 10, 2007, I submitted a comment for response to one of his op-ed pieces. (This was before he moved to true blogging as a way of interacting with readers.) Here’s the exchange:

Len Cassamas, Atlanta: Given the weak dollar and the huge amount of debt the nation has accumulated, I have two questions. First, is there really any difference between a T-bill and a junk bond? Second, is this, in economic terms, the perfect storm brewing? In other words, in your view, how bad could this get?

Paul Krugman: Oh, yes, there’s a huge difference. For all that Bush has done, the US government still has vast potential revenue compared with its debts. Also, T-bills are the safest asset even if you’re worried — what are you gonna hold instead, canned food in the basement.

I don’t think this is the perfect storm — there’s only one crisis, which is largely driven by housing. Now, if we add in something crazy — like, say, Dick Cheney bombing Iran — then you’ve got your perfect storm.

Now, here’s what he had to say about T-bills on his blog today (March 17, 2008), some seven months later:

But right now we’re in a situation in which Treasury bills yield considerably less than the Fed funds rate; to at least some extent this may reflect banks’ nervousness about lending to each other, even in the overnight market. And to the extent that’s true, Treasuries — not Fed funds — are the interest rates to look at.

As of 10:38 this morning, the one-month Treasury rate was 0.57; the three-month rate was 0.825.

And here’s what he said about the economy: “[T]his is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression[.]“

In other words, the nearly perfect storm.

I guess I wasn’t so far off after all.

Len in Hats

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my belief that more American men should wear hats more often. An astute and knowledgeable reader–presumably Aaron of Aaron’s Hats in North Conway, New Hampshire–challenged me to post a photo of myself wearing a hat.  Well, here it is.  Happy?  Are you happy now?  Happy?

.

Fishy Reasoning

Despite my resolution to avoid the news as much as possible, I have to admit that I still make some forays into that world. I have cut way back though, and while I know that sounds like an alcoholic claiming to only drink beer, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Or some version of it.

The thing that I have not been able to free myself from that I really must is reading the opinion blogs on The New York Times website. I know that they’re bad for me and that I really shouldn’t, but there are times during the day–during the work day to be exact–when I have to find some sort of diversion or else turn into a gibbering fool who cackles and mutters to himself about the Brain Police and the microchip in his toenail. And there’s only so much online golf that I can play. So, therefore, whenever I feel my eyes start to cross, my brain feel like it is ensconced in a woolen cozy, and the urge to destroy a hotel room fill my thorax, I skip on over to The Times’s Opinion Page to see what vacuity has been brewing in my absence.

Overall, I have improved to the point where I only occasionally post comments, and most posts and columns roll off my back like so many tears. However, today I had to enter the fray. My old nemesis, Stanley Fish, in this post, was bombarding his readers with his usual assortment of sophistries in a lame attempt to convince his dear readers that he is no mere presenter of opinions, but is, in fact, the personification of Pure Science. As in legerdemain, the principle tactic used in sophistry is misdirection, and you can be certain that there will be a percentage of reasonable people who will let their eyes follow the finger pointed into the heavens rather than the hand where the palmed coin resides.

Then there are people like the one who wrote:

Professor Fish’s mistake is that he has stooped to arguing with the Internet.

People who feel the need to post comments on websites tend not to be especially bright –

they tend to write emotionally and polemically –

and on average they post on websites precisely because they lack other forums by which to express their interchangeable opinions.

Although they are a large proportion of his audience (and a much larger proportion of other columnists’ audiences) these are not the sorts of people whose ideas Professor Fish need rebut.

After reading that, I first tried to see if jimshlif was an anagram of “supercilious ass,” but I came up with nothing. I mean, what kind of pretentious bore would set himself above all other commenters in that way? How does one even think like that? And on a New York Times blog at that, a blog that is moderated and from which the truly moronic comments are culled and consigned to the digital dustbin. There are certainly opinions expressed in those comments that I disagree with and some that I find to be lacking in depth or sustained thought, but very, very few of them are written by people who tend not to be especially bright. One of the reasons why I stick with The Times rather than moving to some other outlet is the intelligence of its readers. The best of them challenge me to think regarding all sides of a given question and are worthy of my respect whether I agree with them or not.

That goes even for poor jimshlif, although I feel it worthwhile to give him some advice should he ever somehow wander by this site. First, jim (if I may be so bold), learn to write paragraphs that contain more than one sentence. Multiple-sentence paragraphs give the writer the opportunity to display his reasoning and to work through a given problem in a logical manner. It is something akin to showing one’s work on a math test. Also, while you make assertions, you show no examples and do nothing to back up your assertions. You seem to think that everything you assert is correct merely because you assert it, and while that, in itself, is not an indication of a lack of intelligence, it is an indication of a poorly trained intellect. Finally, an assumption of superiority on anyone’s part–without doing anything to back that notion up–is mere fatuousness and indicates a deficient maturity.

And as for our dear Professor Fish, it’s all just the old Army game, isn’t it, an intellectual version of three-card Monte rather than a serious approach to intelligent subjects. That someone with such impressive credentials can waste his and our time by churning out such poorly reasoned drivel is depressing. I’ve actually taken to only skimming his posts because it’s all just words, great heaps and piles of them, huge haystacks of words pushed around to hide the tiniest needles of thought. And the thoughts are usually bogus or twisted or turn out, upon closer inspection, to have been a mirage all along.

And the worst part about him is this: People like jimshlif and some editor at The New York Times take him seriously.

The Venerable Mr. Twain

I haven’t felt much like writing blog posts these past couple of days, so I’ve used a couple of stratagems in order to continue piling up the posts. One of them is to copy and paste quotes from other people. Well, I’ve been going over various quotes on the Mark Twain Quotation Page in the last couple of days and thought it might be time to share a few of Uncle Mark’s maxims. Here goes:

In re politicians:

Territorial Governors–are nothing but politicians who go out to the outskirts of countries and suffer the privations there in order to build up stakes and come back as United States Senators.
- Mark Twain’s Autobiography

No matter how healthy a man’s morals may be when he enters the White House, he comes out again with a pot-marked soul.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

History has tried hard to teach us that we can’t have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn’t be wise.
- New York Herald, 8/26/1876

In re politics:

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.
- A Tramp Abroad

I’d like to personally have cards printed with the following on them and pass them out on street corners:

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.
- Notebook, 1898

Facts:

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
- quoted by Rudyard Kipling in From Sea to Shining Sea

I never saw an author who was aware that there is any dimensional difference between a fact and a surmise.
- quoted in My Father Mark Twain, Clara Clemens

I think I’ll finish up with this one is for my wife, who works in the industry:

A railroad is like a lie–you have to keep building to it to make it stand. – Letter to the San Francisco Alta California, printed May 26, 1867

Update:  And cats:

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
- Notebook, 1894

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
- Pudd’nhead Wilson

A home without a cat–and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat–may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
- Pudd’nhead Wilson

Meme-ries, Like the Coroners of Our Minds

I just swiped this meme from Mouse Medicine:

The rules are:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.

Here goes.

I’m not a Jungian! As far as interpreting myths, Jung gives me the best clues I’ve got. But I’m much more interested in diffusion and relationships historically than Jung was, so that the Jungians think of me as a kind of questionable person.

(From An Open Life, Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms, selected and edited by John M. Maher and Dennie Briggs)

I’m not sure what this proves or means, but it was a way to get a post out without harming anyone or resorting to a discussion of (ugh!) politics.

Moratorium

Reading The New York Times has just about worn me plumb out, and it turns every day into an argument with somebody. So, I think I’m going to give it a rest. The time has come to walk away.

For one thing, I end up fuming and writing about that junk day after day instead of writing about something interesting. In the last week, I’ll bet I’ve had half-a-dozen interesting ideas for blog posts, and I can’t remember a damn one of them. That’s not right. And what makes it worse is how God-awful boring it all is. The same bits of minutiae get worried over day-after-day, with everyone, myself included, merely finding new ways of saying the exact same thing over-and-over-and-over again. It’s a little bit of hell right here on Earth, straight from Satan’s warehouse to you, the consumer. And so, I have put an end to it.

My next target is computer games. Now, I’m not making rules for all of society here. I just know how these things affect me and am not implicitly passing judgment on anyone else. But I need to stop. Right now, I spend too much time playing this idiotic golf game I found online, and not enough time writing or playing the guitar. There has been a movement gathering strength in my household recently to invest in a Wii, and one of the arguments put forward to persuade me is that I would love it based on my weakness for computer games. And that is probably true. However, that is what makes it so evil. With a Wii, I would probably spend hours playing a virtual guitar instead of the real one and spare moments would go to working on my virtual golf and baseball swings rather than on my novel.

I’m a lazy man by nature, constantly on the lookout for ways to divert myself that don’t involve actually accomplishing anything. As I inch steadily toward the half century mark, I feel like I have fewer goes left, fewer do-overs, fewer next chances. If I am going to move my professional life over to the path of what I have always assumed was my calling, I cannot afford to waste time in virtual batting cages or political mosh pits. Enough with the diversions. It is time to go forward into the ebbing day to spend my remaining hours in the sun.

Right after this game of Freecell.