What mistake? It's acceptable usage. In golf, it's the preferred jargon. The expressions that follow in that Obama excerpt ("you got the TV set on, you got the radio on...") is colloquial sharpie talk, appropriate for stand-up rhetoric, as it were. No?
But, but Joseph, Obama is the greatest orator since Dr. King! He was just having an "off" moment! Don't you think you're being a little too critical? Are you a racist or something? True progressives want to know.
That's my point, jen. I simply do not understand all this talk about Obama's alleged rhetorical gifts.
He is by no means a bad speaker, but he is hardly the orator his fans believe him to be. His imagery is trite and uninspired. His delivery lacks a sense of musical flow. And he pauses so often that I've taken to calling him "ObamUHHHH...."
Calling Obama a great speaker is like calling the guy who drew the "Mary Worth" comic strip a great artist. Doesn't this generation know the difference between competence and excellence?
His subject isn't what you call "academic excellence", you're being a reductionator again. According to his speech, the subject is about parental goodness's being the precursor to academic goodness. So-called "standard English" is your own term? As the term of art, it needs capitals: Standard English. But you don't mean Standard English or you don't know what SE means. Yet, I agree that SE must be the academic lingua franca, if by SE you also mean:
"the English language in its most widely accepted form, as written and spoken by educated people in both formal and informal contexts, having universal currency while incorporating regional differences [1870-75]".
he was stating in a third person "" you should say "do good in school..." "" Looking technically at the sentence, he was merely giving an example of other people's improper grammatic use.
Soaring rhetoric and inspirational speaking have to do with the effects they engender in the listener, not any kind of academic standard of proper grammatical form.
Run Lincoln's acknowledged masterpiece, the Gettysburg address, through MS Word's grammar checker. You'll find that nearly every line gets flagged by that program for having odd style or non-standard constructions.
When Churchill addressed Hitler's claims that he would destroy England as one might wring a chicken's neck, he said 'Some chicken..... some neck!' Is that an example of academic excellence in writing, or more a colloquial construction? I'd argue the latter is the case.
Obama owes his career and his lead position in this current nomination race to his keynote address to the Democratic nominating convention, which by many accounts was the best such speech since the electrifying keynoter by Gov. Mario Cuomo. He has since delivered comparably well received speeches.
It isn't possible to credibly deny the inspirational effect that Obama's speeches have on his supporters, and perhaps even on those who are not his supporters. (Chris Matthews has said he gets a thrill 'up his leg' (?) when he hears Obama speak.)
Moreover, eventually, usage will sweep away the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, and be reflected in dictionaries and grammar books.
For example, The Nation's radio ads describe itself as 'the country's widest read journal of opinion.' Every time I hear that, I want to scream, 'most WIDELY read, you idiots!'
Why are they making that 'mistake?' Because usage is going in that direction already, and soon enough, that will not even be considered a grammatical mistake.
As someone who's 56 years old, I find the emergence of phrases like "we're good to go" deplorable, but, as another poster above also noted, that seems to be the direction the English language is going so I suppose we'd better get used to it. Perhaps Obama's usage is just one more example of this trend.
The Obama speech is a re-tread of Ralph Nader's rhetorical flourishes during his Mike Douglas/Phil Donahue appearances circa 1970s. Obama's fans think it's new, so he gets good traction from it. Re-reading it, I try to imagine Barack's gesturing since he's giving a kind of performance sermon, and maybe he mugs a little bit.
Someone's looking only at the words on the page and trying to pass judgment on their usage reminds me of Belle Barth's story about the woman who buys a chicken from her butcher and starts smelling it inside and out, all over, and tells the butcher to take it back because it stinks, and the butcher says, Madam, could you pass that test?
But seriously, this is bad, very bad: During Patrick Fitzgerald's news conference when the Libby indictment was read, in response to a question Fitzgerald said, "... would have went to [trial]..." . When I went to school that was illiterate. It was illiterate when Fitz went to school. Most convicts don't talk like that. Think different, Joe, and think absurd.
we can be lingui-snobs all we want, but language is NOT - i repeat, NOT - a static, rule-driven system.
it is organic, and in fact, english was at its best when england ruled the waves and the queen's 'tongue' whored itself to any and every word spoken or writ, welcoming all comers, so to speak. more words were 'born' during that time than any other time in the history of the language, by a huge factor. i daresay hardly a single one of them was ever given its 'proper' translation or grammatical place, but who cares? we're all the better for the vast prolific richness of it all.
and just for the record, shakespeare took incredible liberties with these new words, inventing and twisting and forcing them to conform to his needs, but more likely, to common usage. if you want to blast someone for messing with grammatical rules, go pick on the bard; he was brutal with the strictures!
the truth is, joe, language studies have exposed the fact that individuals who speak within ghetto and pidgin communication structures tend to adhere to those internal grammatical and definitional rules better than even the best speakers of the queen's english! the rules of the street are natural; you're expecting obama to adhere to rules that are not natural.
the 'rules' of language you're so pumped up about are not only not natural, they're fairly arbitrary. it really is a bunch of stuffy dudes (maybe a few stiff spinsters) sitting around just deciding whether or not we're allowed to dangle prepositions. however, and this is the important part, the way we actually speak to each other is far more important.
and the way people actually speak to each other is, well, fine with the usage of 'doing good in school.' this is actually the way most of the american population actually speaks. very few people out there would actually know what to do with the meaning of 'doing well in school,' confusing the issue with their health.
sofia is absolutely right about all this. though it makes me crazy when people forget that data 'are' PLURAL, i know soon it's just not going to matter anymore. i mean, this error is made by scientists who do stats like all the time. shameful.
but who the hell really cares? in fact, i have to say the willliam safire grammar mavens drive me far nuttier than those who butcher the rules. the only time it makes any difference is when the meaning isn't conveyed. otherwise, it's sort of like having to deal with a g**d** computer who literally is so thoroughly incapable of thinking outside the rules that it can't get your meaning even when all you've done is slipped a damn apostrophe.
sofia's also correct about the meaning of real oratory; it's mostly about what happens to the masses of listeners, and certainly NOT about some literary/grammatical critique. in obama's case, i'd have to say the case is pretty well closed on that count.
and you need to remember that mlk grew in his oratory skills, in part because he was a preacher, and in part because he exposed himself to a breadth of experiences to draw upon. he'd have looked so foolish to his audiences had he talked inside the box; they'd have ignored him!
these sorts of discussions inevitably remind me of winston churchill's dilemma. he was himself something of a compelling speaker, but was constantly berated by the mavens for his lapses of the queen's english. on one occasion he was lambasted for dropping a preposition. to which he responded: this is something up with which i will not put.
sorta sums it up, doncha thin'?
just an added note here, joe. i must be frank; this point is picky. really picky. and you've been really damn picky about obama these past few days. i don't get it, to tell you the truth. it's like the flip side of cult-think.
you're picking on him, no less than the vast rightwing conspiracy has been picking on hillary for over 15 years. it's one thing to have policy issues with the man, but this exposes something else, perhaps something about you.
just a thought, because you have not been at your best in these discussions, in my humble but very affectionate opinion.
please read your email, if you will, sir; and consider response?
I knew that someone was going to give the "English evolves" speech, but I had hoped that you would not be that someone. Look, I was simply amused to see the world pounce on Bush's mistake while making excuses for Obama's.
If we are going to accept "do good in school," then we must accept "Is our children learning?" Because the "English evolves" argument covers both.
anon 6:37 -- come off it. Context makes clear that Obama meant to say "do well."
As noted above, I wrote this post for the sake of amusement. Truth be told, I often make similar errors when speaking, and even when writing. (Especially when writing for the comments section.)
The more important point was one I made in an earlier comment. Obama is widely considered to have brilliant oratorical skills. Have our standards of rhetoric changed?
In this strip, someone reads a passage from an OBama speech as though it were Holy Writ:
"When we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three words: Yes we can!"
Cue the fainters.
I just don't get it. I would expect sludge of that sort to come dribbling out of Peggy Noonan's typewriter on a bad day. I mean, cah-MON: "That timeless creed..." Crap like that could get you fired from Hallmark. If such tiresome sentimentality came out of a Republican's mouth, you'd be more willing to confess the triteness of it all.
one, i quite honestly have not listened to that many of obama's speeches, maybe two. the only one i recall is the one he gave at the 04 convention, and i was wowed. and i daresay, if you were honest about it, you would recall that you were too. everyone was; it was powerful.
the point of the rhetoric, again, is not so much the content but how it moves the audience. not to draw a content comparison per se, but to note it doesn't matter so much as connecting with the audience, hitler's content was never soaring demosthenes, yet he is still considered a great orator.
point two, language does evolve, and why wouldn't i be the one to make that point? i'm writing a book on the topic, for chrissake!
the very BIG difference between bush and obama's grammatical 'errors' is this: obama's adhere to common street usage, again according to those bottom-up, naturally evolving rules, whereas bush just blunders.
this, joe, is so NOT a trivial difference. it's like the distinction jung made after assessing the psychological health of james' joyce's daughter. joyce had complained that she went to the same places that he did, thought the same thoughts. and jung replied, but you dive; she falls.
the public knows this distinction, joe. no one is going to fault obama for using language in the vernacular, and no one is going to compare this with bumbling bush. the difference is just glaring. and i'm frankly surprised you overlook it.
this, joe, is so NOT a trivial difference. it's like the distinction jung made after assessing the psychological health of james' joyce's daughter. joyce had complained that she went to the same places that he did, thought the same thoughts. and jung replied, but you dive; she falls.
good dr. Jung also said..
"The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." "The Jew who is something of a nomad has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development." "The Jews have this peculiarity with women; being physically weaker, they have to aim at the chinks in the armour of their adversary."
so mere clever use of words cannot disguise an otherwise evil intent..
anon, I do not trivialize Jung's flirtation with fascism in the mid-1930s. But he did break with the Nazis, he helped the OSS fight the Nazis, he did maintain friendships with Jews throughout his life, and he did (while still in Germany)try to combat or subvert the law preventing Jews from membership in medical societies. So don't over-simplify.
At any rate, what the hell does any of THAT have to do with his analysis of Joyce's daughter?
That said, doc e., you forget that Jung thought the father, not the daughter, was the true schiz. Which all goes to prove that if you suffer from mental illness, the world is kinder to you if you are the world's greatest writer than if you are just a mediocre dancer.
rapt: Neither pink nor blue. April means spring, and spring means green. Dress like one of Robin's merry maidens. Festoon your hair with garlands of leaves. Let birds alight on your arms. Feed the woodland creatures. Dance barefoot in the meadow. Do the occasional pirouette.
I read that jeans got their/its name from the stenciling on the crates: "de genes". 'Genes' is French for Genoa, where the cloth was made. Another batch of crates for Levi had "de nimes" (of/from Nimes, in France), whence 'denim'.
When Obama was at Harvard, during freshmen orientation week, a kid stopped him and asked, "Yo, Dude, can y'all tell me where the liberry's at?" Barry blanched, and then he put on a Brahmin air and said, "Suh, at Haavvid one does not end one's sentences or questions with a preposition." The kid says, "Oh. Uh, could you tell me where the library's at, asshole?"
joe, you are mistaken. jung first diagnosed lucia - who was finally and forever put away at age 28 - as schizophrenic. he reviewed her father's work as akin to the pathologic mind, but made the distinction that joyce chose to immerse himself in these word salads, whereas she could not help herself. hence, 'you dive; she falls.' the 'true' schizophrenic is unable to control where the mind goes; there is no indication of which i'm aware that jung felt lucia was sane but joyce the 'real' nut.
jung also felt joyce relied on her as his muse, which i suspect cut a bit close to the bone and brought up a good deal of guilt for him.
I got that bit from Carol Schloss's controversial bio of Lucia. Not sure if I should trust Schloss -- she seems to have a girl-crush on Lucia.
The only schiz I ever knew somewhat well was a writer. He heard voices -- cartoon characters, CIA agents, what have you. In his worst periods, this fellow was a classic paranoid. He thought that people on the radio and TV were talking about him and that neighbors were constantly sending secret messages to him, via t-shirts and so forth. (If the lady across the street changed the position of a windowsill flowerpot, he felt that the gesture was fraught with meaning.) In other words, the guy was a total kook.
Yet he was still able to pull himself together enough to write lucidly, even though his speech and informal writings sometimes veered toward schizy incomprehensibility.
He was kind of the opposite of Joyce, when you think about it.
Oh, I should add -- there's a theory that Joyce's guilt over Lucia sprang from incestuous feelings toward her, which he may or may not have acted upon. Anthony Burgess always felt that in Finnegan's Wake, the word "insect" is a dream-language code term for "incest," a forbidden word which Joyce could not bear to confront directly.
Had he written nothing except the hyperlucid "Dubliners" Joyce would be in the Hall of Fame. I'm biased, being born on Epiphany. But also the thing about those stories is that they're simultaneously oral and grounded solidly in the literary tradition; with only a little effort they can be memorized and recited, owing to their superficial devices of rhythm, sound, and especially concreteness of detail. If you know the stories, you could name at least 50 details, some of them verbatim Joyce. Schiz takes all the fun out of it, plus blog rumors are viral. Many of the stories are rigorously plotted like early courtly love romances while being expressed in 'naturalistic' 'realism', which the lit crits pointed out was 'anti-Romantic', and I loved that! The opposition! The concordia discors! The harmonious yoking of opposites!
But it's a disease? It's psychotic? Now I feel like Animal in Stalag 17 when he finds out he's dancing with Harry Shapiro instead of Betty Grable.
ho boy, this conversation needs - REQUIRES - a huge pot of tear and eye contact! what fun!!
i forget where i came upon those various details on joyce and jung, so long ago when i was immersed in jung's thought. but i feel strongly jung did not feel joyce a true psychotic, only that his writings reflected access to that. hence his speculation - which infuriated joyce - that lucia was his muse, a diagnosis that was fraught with implications for his ego and his shame (who's the genius, that incest stuff, etc.).
jung was exquisitely sensitive to how closely we all tread on the edge of insanity, dreams being the first clue. but his awareness of this thin boundary led him at one point to isolate himself and direct his interpretations of events along paranoid lines. it took only a matter of short weeks before he was so absorbed with a delusional system that he had to stop and recover. i believe he talks about this episode in 'memories, dreams....'
as for joyce's work, aitchd, i never really felt it veered too closely to insanity, only that - as a literary device of particular genius - he allowed the SOUND of the language to drive the words as much as their meaning, knowing that meaning always comes; as humans, we can't help doing that, hence our precariously close relationship with madness.
what a refreshing escape from the madness of our politics, eh? thanks, all.
There were those on the Nuremberg Tribunal that reccomended that Jung be tried for war crimes as a Nazi "pseudo scientist" which he was. After the war he was Dulles and family's shrink and helped him, no doubt "rationalize" his adoration of Hitler, and Dulles subsequent collaboration with the "Gehlen/Bormann Nazi underground Empire.. Then Jung's postwar reputation as the "Shaman Grandfather" image the "wise one" was hyped to high heaven, so his"mythologizing" of everything sacred,laid the foundation for todays me me me mine New Agers and their oft declared blockheaded delusion..I am God..I am God.
from Richard Nolls book "The Aryan Christ..The Secret Life of Carl Jung". In a January, 1939 interview with Hearst's International Cosmopolitan, Jung described Hitler in glowing terms: There is no question but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. As somebody commented about him at the last Nuremberg party congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been seen in this world. This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler's is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable, curious, and unreasonable. . . . So you see, Hitler is a medicine man, a form of spiritual vessel, a demi-deity, or, even better, a myth. another quote.. "Odder yet, in our post-Holocaust world, that Jung, a virulent anti-Semite whom the British Foreign Office wanted tried at the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a Nazi pseudoscientist, should be embraced as a spiritual guide by millions of followers seeking psychological healing".
Anyway, Jung was obviously playing a double game with his allegiences to Nazi ideas, and ideology and the Allen Dulles negotiations with Hitler throughout WWll culminating in the partnership with the Nazis that gave birth to our CIA via Gehlen, and the many other naziz recruited into the agency after the war. Like so many fascists and Nazis that could see that Hitler was probobley going to lose the war after his bungled Soviet invasion in 1843.. Dulles resources in Switzerland, like Jung, could easily trim their Fascist/Nazi sails and ideological passions to suit the winding down of the war and create fancy rationales and blueprints for a post war cleansing of disputes between the Hitlerites and the American right wing in preparation for the post war cold war and the weakening of the Soviet global strategies to make it easier for the Fascist systems we face today to be transplanted into our body po0litic.
Is there anything that indicates Jung knew what a muse is? Joyce surely knew. It's not something that can be defined or explained, and I suspect Jung transgressed out of ignorance and arrogance, thinking he knew what a muse is, probably because 'muse' names something and language confers on us the illusion of knowing things (according to Richard Feynman's father and Shakespeare's "Othello"). (I'm just responding to the thread, I don't know anything intricate about Joyce or Jung.)
About that 'madness', you can find it along with its roots in Keats's performance of his Ode on a Grecian Urn, a grown-up version of the earlier and maddening transformative La Belle Dame sans Merci; muses also. Keats composed the Ode when Beethoven composed his Later Quartets. It's very cool to read the Ode under your breath as a halting voice-over to the Quartets. Maybe try walking around a large 'urn', enough so you get dizzy like in the 3rd stanza (strophe?), then see where you are when 4 begins.
(from Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, translating Virgil's Eclogues): On February 29 the younger robins returned. The older ones showed up on March 1.
I worry though that the older robins will unwittingly misinform the young ones about Daylight Saving Time's start date, and it won't be because they're teaching them not to say 'Daylight Savings'.
you know, this whole discussion on the distinction between madness and sanity being intent is actually quite crucial.
intent is the most powerful part, not only for sanity, but also for truth.
it's one thing to tell a falsehood without knowing it's a lie, but quite another to intend to deceive.
it's one thing to speak fancifully of robins and time zones and spenser and virgil linking up, but quite another to be convinced that they do, they HAVE, and that the link up is absolutely meaningful and its meaning has everything to do with you.
likewise, we see bush having convinced himself that his war is just, his legacy is powerful, and his party will win in november. and most likely, he's convinced himself it's because the country really loves him, despite his 19% delusion.
In truth I think the robins were stopping for a snack on their way north, but I believe the younger robins thought it was March 1 already since they hadn't experienced a Leap Year yet. I have to use time words because I don't know the robin's system for reckoning and orientation. Hey, have you ever seen a bird resuscitate another bird? It's pretty cool.
19% is nothing to sneeze at - it amounts to some 40 million Americans. I could never get approval from four Americans at the same time.
31 comments:
What mistake? It's acceptable usage. In golf, it's the preferred jargon. The expressions that follow in that Obama excerpt ("you got the TV set on, you got the radio on...") is colloquial sharpie talk, appropriate for stand-up rhetoric, as it were. No?
No. The subject is academic excellence. The rules of standard English must apply.
But, but Joseph, Obama is the greatest orator since Dr. King! He was just having an "off" moment! Don't you think you're being a little too critical? Are you a racist or something? True progressives want to know.
That's my point, jen. I simply do not understand all this talk about Obama's alleged rhetorical gifts.
He is by no means a bad speaker, but he is hardly the orator his fans believe him to be. His imagery is trite and uninspired. His delivery lacks a sense of musical flow. And he pauses so often that I've taken to calling him "ObamUHHHH...."
Calling Obama a great speaker is like calling the guy who drew the "Mary Worth" comic strip a great artist. Doesn't this generation know the difference between competence and excellence?
His subject isn't what you call "academic excellence", you're being a reductionator again. According to his speech, the subject is about parental goodness's being the precursor to academic goodness. So-called "standard English" is your own term? As the term of art, it needs capitals: Standard English. But you don't mean Standard English or you don't know what SE means. Yet, I agree that SE must be the academic lingua franca, if by SE you also mean:
"the English language in its most widely accepted form, as written and spoken by educated people in both formal and informal contexts, having universal currency while incorporating regional differences [1870-75]".
I think you mean it don't sound good. Am I right?
he was stating in a third person "" you should say "do good in school..." "" Looking technically at the sentence, he was merely giving an example of other people's improper grammatic use.
Soaring rhetoric and inspirational speaking have to do with the effects they engender in the listener, not any kind of academic standard of proper grammatical form.
Run Lincoln's acknowledged masterpiece, the Gettysburg address, through MS Word's grammar checker. You'll find that nearly every line gets flagged by that program for having odd style or non-standard constructions.
When Churchill addressed Hitler's claims that he would destroy England as one might wring a chicken's neck, he said 'Some chicken..... some neck!' Is that an example of academic excellence in writing, or more a colloquial construction? I'd argue the latter is the case.
Obama owes his career and his lead position in this current nomination race to his keynote address to the Democratic nominating convention, which by many accounts was the best such speech since the electrifying keynoter by Gov. Mario Cuomo. He has since delivered comparably well received speeches.
It isn't possible to credibly deny the inspirational effect that Obama's speeches have on his supporters, and perhaps even on those who are not his supporters. (Chris Matthews has said he gets a thrill 'up his leg' (?) when he hears Obama speak.)
Moreover, eventually, usage will sweep away the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, and be reflected in dictionaries and grammar books.
For example, The Nation's radio ads describe itself as 'the country's widest read journal of opinion.' Every time I hear that, I want to scream, 'most WIDELY read, you idiots!'
Why are they making that 'mistake?' Because usage is going in that direction already, and soon enough, that will not even be considered a grammatical mistake.
...sofla
As someone who's 56 years old, I find the emergence of phrases like "we're good to go" deplorable, but, as another poster above also noted, that seems to be the direction the English language is going so I suppose we'd better get used to it. Perhaps Obama's usage is just one more example of this trend.
The Obama speech is a re-tread of Ralph Nader's rhetorical flourishes during his Mike Douglas/Phil Donahue appearances circa 1970s. Obama's fans think it's new, so he gets good traction from it. Re-reading it, I try to imagine Barack's gesturing since he's giving a kind of performance sermon, and maybe he mugs a little bit.
Someone's looking only at the words on the page and trying to pass judgment on their usage reminds me of Belle Barth's story about the woman who buys a chicken from her butcher and starts smelling it inside and out, all over, and tells the butcher to take it back because it stinks, and the butcher says, Madam, could you pass that test?
But seriously, this is bad, very bad: During Patrick Fitzgerald's news conference when the Libby indictment was read, in response to a question Fitzgerald said, "... would have went to [trial]..." . When I went to school that was illiterate. It was illiterate when Fitz went to school. Most convicts don't talk like that. Think different, Joe, and think absurd.
It's really quite simple...
'good' is a noun (and/or adjective). If you are asked...
Do good (things) in school... is perfectly acceptable. That could be a noun or adjective in usage.
Maybe...
Be good vs. be well. Would you have a problem with either? of course not.
ok. this is a topic i know a little bit about.
ahem, no; i know a good deal about this.
we can be lingui-snobs all we want, but language is NOT - i repeat, NOT - a static, rule-driven system.
it is organic, and in fact, english was at its best when england ruled the waves and the queen's 'tongue' whored itself to any and every word spoken or writ, welcoming all comers, so to speak. more words were 'born' during that time than any other time in the history of the language, by a huge factor. i daresay hardly a single one of them was ever given its 'proper' translation or grammatical place, but who cares? we're all the better for the vast prolific richness of it all.
and just for the record, shakespeare took incredible liberties with these new words, inventing and twisting and forcing them to conform to his needs, but more likely, to common usage. if you want to blast someone for messing with grammatical rules, go pick on the bard; he was brutal with the strictures!
the truth is, joe, language studies have exposed the fact that individuals who speak within ghetto and pidgin communication structures tend to adhere to those internal grammatical and definitional rules better than even the best speakers of the queen's english! the rules of the street are natural; you're expecting obama to adhere to rules that are not natural.
the 'rules' of language you're so pumped up about are not only not natural, they're fairly arbitrary. it really is a bunch of stuffy dudes (maybe a few stiff spinsters) sitting around just deciding whether or not we're allowed to dangle prepositions. however, and this is the important part, the way we actually speak to each other is far more important.
and the way people actually speak to each other is, well, fine with the usage of 'doing good in school.' this is actually the way most of the american population actually speaks. very few people out there would actually know what to do with the meaning of 'doing well in school,' confusing the issue with their health.
sofia is absolutely right about all this. though it makes me crazy when people forget that data 'are' PLURAL, i know soon it's just not going to matter anymore. i mean, this error is made by scientists who do stats like all the time. shameful.
but who the hell really cares? in fact, i have to say the willliam safire grammar mavens drive me far nuttier than those who butcher the rules. the only time it makes any difference is when the meaning isn't conveyed. otherwise, it's sort of like having to deal with a g**d** computer who literally is so thoroughly incapable of thinking outside the rules that it can't get your meaning even when all you've done is slipped a damn apostrophe.
sofia's also correct about the meaning of real oratory; it's mostly about what happens to the masses of listeners, and certainly NOT about some literary/grammatical critique. in obama's case, i'd have to say the case is pretty well closed on that count.
and you need to remember that mlk grew in his oratory skills, in part because he was a preacher, and in part because he exposed himself to a breadth of experiences to draw upon. he'd have looked so foolish to his audiences had he talked inside the box; they'd have ignored him!
these sorts of discussions inevitably remind me of winston churchill's dilemma. he was himself something of a compelling speaker, but was constantly berated by the mavens for his lapses of the queen's english. on one occasion he was lambasted for dropping a preposition. to which he responded:
this is something up with which i will not put.
sorta sums it up, doncha thin'?
just an added note here, joe. i must be frank; this point is picky. really picky. and you've been really damn picky about obama these past few days. i don't get it, to tell you the truth. it's like the flip side of cult-think.
you're picking on him, no less than the vast rightwing conspiracy has been picking on hillary for over 15 years. it's one thing to have policy issues with the man, but this exposes something else, perhaps something about you.
just a thought, because you have not been at your best in these discussions, in my humble but very affectionate opinion.
please read your email, if you will, sir; and consider response?
here, try this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-ebonic-plague_b_88536.html
I knew that someone was going to give the "English evolves" speech, but I had hoped that you would not be that someone. Look, I was simply amused to see the world pounce on Bush's mistake while making excuses for Obama's.
If we are going to accept "do good in school," then we must accept "Is our children learning?" Because the "English evolves" argument covers both.
anon 6:37 -- come off it. Context makes clear that Obama meant to say "do well."
As noted above, I wrote this post for the sake of amusement. Truth be told, I often make similar errors when speaking, and even when writing. (Especially when writing for the comments section.)
The more important point was one I made in an earlier comment. Obama is widely considered to have brilliant oratorical skills. Have our standards of rhetoric changed?
Take a look at the Doonesbury cartoon here:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20080301
In this strip, someone reads a passage from an OBama speech as though it were Holy Writ:
"When we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three words: Yes we can!"
Cue the fainters.
I just don't get it. I would expect sludge of that sort to come dribbling out of Peggy Noonan's typewriter on a bad day. I mean, cah-MON: "That timeless creed..." Crap like that could get you fired from Hallmark. If such tiresome sentimentality came out of a Republican's mouth, you'd be more willing to confess the triteness of it all.
two points.
one, i quite honestly have not listened to that many of obama's speeches, maybe two. the only one i recall is the one he gave at the 04 convention, and i was wowed. and i daresay, if you were honest about it, you would recall that you were too. everyone was; it was powerful.
the point of the rhetoric, again, is not so much the content but how it moves the audience. not to draw a content comparison per se, but to note it doesn't matter so much as connecting with the audience, hitler's content was never soaring demosthenes, yet he is still considered a great orator.
point two, language does evolve, and why wouldn't i be the one to make that point? i'm writing a book on the topic, for chrissake!
the very BIG difference between bush and obama's grammatical 'errors' is this: obama's adhere to common street usage, again according to those bottom-up, naturally evolving rules, whereas bush just blunders.
this, joe, is so NOT a trivial difference. it's like the distinction jung made after assessing the psychological health of james' joyce's daughter. joyce had complained that she went to the same places that he did, thought the same thoughts. and jung replied, but you dive; she falls.
the public knows this distinction, joe. no one is going to fault obama for using language in the vernacular, and no one is going to compare this with bumbling bush. the difference is just glaring. and i'm frankly surprised you overlook it.
I'm changing the subject: Is blue or pink the right color to wear to a cocktail party in April?
dr. elsewhere says,,Jung said..
this, joe, is so NOT a trivial difference. it's like the distinction jung made after assessing the psychological health of james' joyce's daughter. joyce had complained that she went to the same places that he did, thought the same thoughts. and jung replied, but you dive; she falls.
good dr. Jung also said..
"The 'Aryan' unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish." "The Jew who is something of a nomad has never yet created a cultural form of his own and as far as we can see never will, since all his instincts and talents require a more or less civilized nation to act as host for their development." "The Jews have this peculiarity with women; being physically weaker, they have to aim at the chinks in the armour of their adversary."
so mere clever use of words cannot disguise an otherwise evil intent..
anon, I do not trivialize Jung's flirtation with fascism in the mid-1930s. But he did break with the Nazis, he helped the OSS fight the Nazis, he did maintain friendships with Jews throughout his life, and he did (while still in Germany)try to combat or subvert the law preventing Jews from membership in medical societies. So don't over-simplify.
At any rate, what the hell does any of THAT have to do with his analysis of Joyce's daughter?
That said, doc e., you forget that Jung thought the father, not the daughter, was the true schiz. Which all goes to prove that if you suffer from mental illness, the world is kinder to you if you are the world's greatest writer than if you are just a mediocre dancer.
rapt: Neither pink nor blue. April means spring, and spring means green. Dress like one of Robin's merry maidens. Festoon your hair with garlands of leaves. Let birds alight on your arms. Feed the woodland creatures. Dance barefoot in the meadow. Do the occasional pirouette.
If you have any other questions, do let me know.
I read that jeans got their/its name from the stenciling on the crates: "de genes". 'Genes' is French for Genoa, where the cloth was made. Another batch of crates for Levi had "de nimes" (of/from Nimes, in France), whence 'denim'.
When Obama was at Harvard, during freshmen orientation week, a kid stopped him and asked, "Yo, Dude, can y'all tell me where the liberry's at?" Barry blanched, and then he put on a Brahmin air and said, "Suh, at Haavvid one does not end one's sentences or questions with a preposition." The kid says, "Oh. Uh, could you tell me where the library's at, asshole?"
joe, you are mistaken. jung first diagnosed lucia - who was finally and forever put away at age 28 - as schizophrenic. he reviewed her father's work as akin to the pathologic mind, but made the distinction that joyce chose to immerse himself in these word salads, whereas she could not help herself. hence, 'you dive; she falls.' the 'true' schizophrenic is unable to control where the mind goes; there is no indication of which i'm aware that jung felt lucia was sane but joyce the 'real' nut.
jung also felt joyce relied on her as his muse, which i suspect cut a bit close to the bone and brought up a good deal of guilt for him.
funny, aitchD; quite funny.
I got that bit from Carol Schloss's controversial bio of Lucia. Not sure if I should trust Schloss -- she seems to have a girl-crush on Lucia.
The only schiz I ever knew somewhat well was a writer. He heard voices -- cartoon characters, CIA agents, what have you. In his worst periods, this fellow was a classic paranoid. He thought that people on the radio and TV were talking about him and that neighbors were constantly sending secret messages to him, via t-shirts and so forth. (If the lady across the street changed the position of a windowsill flowerpot, he felt that the gesture was fraught with meaning.) In other words, the guy was a total kook.
Yet he was still able to pull himself together enough to write lucidly, even though his speech and informal writings sometimes veered toward schizy incomprehensibility.
He was kind of the opposite of Joyce, when you think about it.
Oh, I should add -- there's a theory that Joyce's guilt over Lucia sprang from incestuous feelings toward her, which he may or may not have acted upon. Anthony Burgess always felt that in Finnegan's Wake, the word "insect" is a dream-language code term for "incest," a forbidden word which Joyce could not bear to confront directly.
Had he written nothing except the hyperlucid "Dubliners" Joyce would be in the Hall of Fame. I'm biased, being born on Epiphany. But also the thing about those stories is that they're simultaneously oral and grounded solidly in the literary tradition; with only a little effort they can be memorized and recited, owing to their superficial devices of rhythm, sound, and especially concreteness of detail. If you know the stories, you could name at least 50 details, some of them verbatim Joyce. Schiz takes all the fun out of it, plus blog rumors are viral. Many of the stories are rigorously plotted like early courtly love romances while being expressed in 'naturalistic' 'realism', which the lit crits pointed out was 'anti-Romantic', and I loved that! The opposition! The concordia discors! The harmonious yoking of opposites!
But it's a disease? It's psychotic? Now I feel like Animal in Stalag 17 when he finds out he's dancing with Harry Shapiro instead of Betty Grable.
ho boy, this conversation needs - REQUIRES - a huge pot of tear and eye contact! what fun!!
i forget where i came upon those various details on joyce and jung, so long ago when i was immersed in jung's thought. but i feel strongly jung did not feel joyce a true psychotic, only that his writings reflected access to that. hence his speculation - which infuriated joyce - that lucia was his muse, a diagnosis that was fraught with implications for his ego and his shame (who's the genius, that incest stuff, etc.).
jung was exquisitely sensitive to how closely we all tread on the edge of insanity, dreams being the first clue. but his awareness of this thin boundary led him at one point to isolate himself and direct his interpretations of events along paranoid lines. it took only a matter of short weeks before he was so absorbed with a delusional system that he had to stop and recover. i believe he talks about this episode in 'memories, dreams....'
as for joyce's work, aitchd, i never really felt it veered too closely to insanity, only that - as a literary device of particular genius - he allowed the SOUND of the language to drive the words as much as their meaning, knowing that meaning always comes; as humans, we can't help doing that, hence our precariously close relationship with madness.
what a refreshing escape from the madness of our politics, eh? thanks, all.
There were those on the Nuremberg Tribunal that reccomended that Jung be tried for war crimes as a Nazi "pseudo scientist" which he was. After the war he was Dulles and family's shrink and helped him, no doubt "rationalize" his adoration of Hitler, and Dulles subsequent collaboration with the "Gehlen/Bormann Nazi underground Empire..
Then Jung's postwar reputation as the "Shaman Grandfather" image the "wise one" was hyped to high heaven, so his"mythologizing" of everything sacred,laid the foundation for todays me me me mine New Agers and their oft declared blockheaded delusion..I am God..I am God.
from Richard Nolls book "The Aryan Christ..The Secret Life of Carl Jung".
In a January, 1939 interview with Hearst's International Cosmopolitan, Jung described Hitler in glowing terms: There is no question but that Hitler belongs in the category of the truly mystic medicine man. As somebody commented about him at the last Nuremberg party congress, since the time of Mohammed nothing like it has been seen in this world. This markedly mystic characteristic of Hitler's is what makes him do things which seem to us illogical, inexplicable, curious, and unreasonable. . . . So you see, Hitler is a medicine man, a form of spiritual vessel, a demi-deity, or, even better, a myth.
another quote..
"Odder yet, in our post-Holocaust world, that Jung, a virulent anti-Semite whom the British Foreign Office wanted tried at the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a Nazi pseudoscientist, should be embraced as a spiritual guide by millions of followers seeking psychological healing".
Anyway, Jung was obviously playing a double game with his allegiences to Nazi ideas, and ideology and the Allen Dulles negotiations with Hitler throughout WWll culminating in the partnership with the Nazis that gave birth to our CIA via Gehlen, and the many other naziz recruited into the agency after the war.
Like so many fascists and Nazis that could see that Hitler was probobley going to lose the war after his bungled Soviet invasion in 1843.. Dulles resources in Switzerland, like Jung, could easily trim their Fascist/Nazi sails and ideological passions to suit the winding down of the war and create fancy rationales and blueprints for a post war cleansing of disputes between the Hitlerites and the American right wing in preparation for the post war cold war and the weakening of the Soviet global strategies to make it easier for the Fascist systems we face today to be transplanted into our body po0litic.
typo 1943 not 1843 for HItlers "bungled" invasion of Russia.
Is there anything that indicates Jung knew what a muse is? Joyce surely knew. It's not something that can be defined or explained, and I suspect Jung transgressed out of ignorance and arrogance, thinking he knew what a muse is, probably because 'muse' names something and language confers on us the illusion of knowing things (according to Richard Feynman's father and Shakespeare's "Othello"). (I'm just responding to the thread, I don't know anything intricate about Joyce or Jung.)
About that 'madness', you can find it along with its roots in Keats's performance of his Ode on a Grecian Urn, a grown-up version of the earlier and maddening transformative La Belle Dame sans Merci; muses also. Keats composed the Ode when Beethoven composed his Later Quartets. It's very cool to read the Ode under your breath as a halting voice-over to the Quartets. Maybe try walking around a large 'urn', enough so you get dizzy like in the 3rd stanza (strophe?), then see where you are when 4 begins.
(from Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, translating Virgil's Eclogues): On February 29 the younger robins returned. The older ones showed up on March 1.
I worry though that the older robins will unwittingly misinform the young ones about Daylight Saving Time's start date, and it won't be because they're teaching them not to say 'Daylight Savings'.
you know, this whole discussion on the distinction between madness and sanity being intent is actually quite crucial.
intent is the most powerful part, not only for sanity, but also for truth.
it's one thing to tell a falsehood without knowing it's a lie, but quite another to intend to deceive.
it's one thing to speak fancifully of robins and time zones and spenser and virgil linking up, but quite another to be convinced that they do, they HAVE, and that the link up is absolutely meaningful and its meaning has everything to do with you.
likewise, we see bush having convinced himself that his war is just, his legacy is powerful, and his party will win in november. and most likely, he's convinced himself it's because the country really loves him, despite his 19% delusion.
this, folks, is madness.
In truth I think the robins were stopping for a snack on their way north, but I believe the younger robins thought it was March 1 already since they hadn't experienced a Leap Year yet. I have to use time words because I don't know the robin's system for reckoning and orientation. Hey, have you ever seen a bird resuscitate another bird? It's pretty cool.
19% is nothing to sneeze at - it amounts to some 40 million Americans. I could never get approval from four Americans at the same time.
Post a Comment