A&E downs the Duck

I didn't know who Phil Robertson was until just the other day when I stumbled upon A&E's Duck Dynasty and watched a bit before moving on. I had never watched the show, despite it's immense popularity, despite my fondness for shows about people who live in swamps, tiny towns and remote places -- People who hunt alligators, catch crawfish and run bait shops in towns like  Pierre Part  (the end of the world as the sign says) or Bayou Pigeon -- their cuisine, their music and culture, so quickly fading in an urbanizing country that still, as it always has, is forcing people into a cash economy, into paying jobs with regular hours while their environment - our country- is cut down, paved over and polluted. 

In general I'm comfortable with people who love the 'outdoors,' that odd term we call the actual environment of planet Earth -- people who own fishing gear, snake boots, snowshoes, canoes and all that and still prize the ability to use them in unspoiled country.   That's partially because such people are environmentalists although most will carefully explain that "they ain't no treehuggers or hippies."

That love of nature often sets them against entities like Florida's sugar cartel which has done more damage to our formerly vast wilderness than any terrorist could dream of,  so you'd think that the rapacious right would despise anyone who didn't support fracking, strip mining, clear-cutting, toxic waste dumping, smoke belching and generally destructive industry, and perhaps you'd expect to hear the voice of  the Right raised against such folks, but no.  The American Family Association is calling him a New American Hero, now that the network has suspended the release of next season's show.

Robertson likes to spend his time

"daydreaming about what he calls a “pristine earth”: a world where nothing gets in the way of nature or the hunters who lovingly maintain it. No cities. No buildings. No highways."  

says Drew Magary in a GC magazine interview.  But he also hates sinners and takes the Christian Bible as the standard of morality for the world, or at least the nastier parts favored by the Christian Right. That's where we part company. He's a gracious gentleman, says Magary and he doesn't like swearing or any of the other things Bible thumpers insist God doesn't like either, like people who don't subscribe to current, Christian Right sexual prohibitions.  Like the loathsome 'Reverend' Phelps's God, Robertson's god damns homosexuals and assorted other non-conformists.

“Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.” 

he says peremptorily and without regard to empiricism.  Fox News and the extremists in it's orbit  can hardly fail to come to his defense because impediments to religious authoritarianism attract them more than the Robertson's duck calls draw ducks to your blind.  Now of course anything Fox Condemns, anyone Sarah Palin supports ordinarily demands my opposition, but I have to ask myself, should a man be fired for expressing his opinions because we don't like them? 

That's not so easy to be sure about.  If Fox had fired someone for an opinion, for saying their position was "just wrong," I wouldn't hesitate to make it slime time for Fox, so I have to question Robertson's suspension.  After all, his opinion is that one never judges people but leaves it to God to sort out.  He believes in redemption as much as he believes that legal behavior that hurts no one can be "just wrong."

I have no way of knowing whether his contract with A&E stipulated that he make no controversial statements, no expostulations on his religious beliefs, but lacking that, I have to wonder about silencing people for "moral" reasons no matter who does it.   Certainly a network has the right to air or not to air any content, but it's not about the content of Duck Dynasty, but about the opinions expressed elsewhere.

 Some small voice still continues to ask me something the ACLU is asked all the time: are we attacking our own freedom when we curtail anyone's ability to say what "we just know" are ignorant, nasty and disgusting things?

 

Cyber English

Language— a divine gift given to the human race. I have a strong admiration for language. There are thousands of languages spoken worldwide. I speak two of the top three languages in the world. I look up and take interest in many others.

Frequently, I scroll through my Facebook and Twitter accounts and find myself thinking: “what is our language coming to?” or “what disrespect to the English language…” I am no grammarian, but the English that is used in the online world is ridiculous. The words and shortcuts used online, is becoming a dialect (if I may call it that) of its own. Some of the more famous ones even get taken to the outside world, like “OMG” (oh em gee). More and more, the online slang is being spoken inside schools and among cirlces of friends.
 

When I attempt to correct or explain English usage to friends and family, I usually get made fun of and called an English geek. I had come to the conclusion that since English was the second language of several of my friends at school, and some of my family, that I was made fun of because they had not mastered the English language. I thought they probably had trouble with it and I was being too harsh. My cousins hated and still hate to read and write. I am the one they call when they have essays to type or letters to write. I always asked myself Why? Why the lack of motivation to look up things? Why not try to read? Like I said, I figured it was because English was not their first language. However, Facebook and Twitter proved me wrong. I have several friends young and old, who write in another language online and still misuse it, even when it is their first language. Not only do they misuse the language, but they over-abbreviate and change the sound/spelling of words—purposely! I have tried asking some of my friends and family members why they do it. The answer is usually “I don’t know” or “because it’s boring.”

 I understand languages have evolved over time. Nevertheless, a huge question remains in my head: “Is the way English is being used today the laziest? And, if so, how much will it truly impact the English language?”

 

A quick history about language:

English derives from a language called proto-Indo-European which was spoken thousands of years ago. This original language, one of a number in the world, is the parent of various language families such as Germanic, Celtic, Hellenic, Italic, and Indo-Iranian. ¹

Each branch developed its own dialects over time and English developed from the Germanic branch. As much as it has changed, we have learned to adapt and learn to keep communicating. The history of the human race lies in writings, stories, and translations that have been passed on through the centuries; it is transported through language. The reason behind the huge changes cannot be pinned. Laziness? Transcription error? Was it the writer or the speaker?

Either I am obsessed with language, or I was born into the wrong family/circle of friends, but I seem to be the only one for miles who respects our language. I find that the further in time I go, the more beautiful the English language was—I mean look at Shakespeare, he appears in theatres, poetry class, and in any English class, in general. Chaucer was also a great, poetic-like master of the English language. I can go on and on, and name several writers who manipulated the English language in such a lyrical way. My list stops some thirty years ago. Who will bear the English of our time into another century?

 I simply can’t find anything romantic or poetic about the online slang; here are some examples: “FML” (f*** my life), “SMH” (shake my head), “Ur” (your), “stankin” (supposed to be stinking?), “da”(the), “dope sesh” (cool session), “rok’d” (rocked), or people using k’s instead of c’s or x’s instead of k's.
 

Sometimes, I have to google abbreviations and sayings in order to understand. Other times, I keep on scrolling because I am uninterested in seeing how much time a person takes to change our language, when they should be taking the time to write things the way they are supposed to be written. Technological advancements have impacted our daily lives in several ways (that's a whole other story...), but is the way it is affecting our langauge dumbing it down?

 

Aurora

1. Treharne, Elaine. Old and Middle English c.890--c.1450. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010.

Gagging the Web

What's a COICA? Not an anatomical term, but yet another government sponsored acronym for the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. According to some, it's needed to protect intellectual property, a term which often provokes cynicism regarding the intellectual properties of some intellectual property, but I'll save that for another post.

According to others, like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, quoted in Raw Story this morning as saying it's

"almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile."

As I read it, if any state AG finds something you wrote last year was insufficiently attributed or a thought or picture that belonged to someone else -- you're off the air along with everything else you've written. Is it just me, or does that sound as if it had been designed for misuse? Will any website critical of government or government officials or members of the same party as a State Attorney General be sifted for some infraction that can justify it's obliteration or postpone publication indefinitely? Is this bill far too broad to be safe? Were we all born yesterday?

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed this bit of poorly digested legislation yesterday. (there's a metaphor here, look for it) It was passed unanimously and yet it won't be hanging over the heads of bloggers like some bloody sword just yet and we owe it to Wyden who used his Senatorial option to place holds on pending legislation to force proponents to re-introduce the bill in the next session. I hope that by then the opposition will have made its case and shed enough light on the potential for politically based government censorship.

Don Wyden is a Democrat, but Democrats should perhaps avoid crowing about being the defenders of freedom of the press since the bill was co-sponsored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who described it as a bipartisan effort to protect property rights. Obviously there's no lack of support for putting such things above freedom of speech by Democratic Senators.

A group calling itself Demand Progress is circulating a petition they hope will make a difference, and now that we have a brief reprieve, perhaps it will. Perhaps you will agree.

An unbalanced truth

Seems like yesterday when criticizing George Bush was close enough to treason that the police would get involved. I remember people walking out of a Jon Lovitz stand-up routine when he made some mild crack about Bush's garbled English. I remember tirades on TV when Streisand aired her opinions of the president. I remember grumbling in the movie theater lobby after a showing of "W" about how "you shouldn't criticize a president like that." There were the Dixie Chicks, and there were the Radio bloviators out there bashing liberals as though freedom of speech were some Marxist plot. The word treason, the accusation of "emboldening" and giving aid and comfort to some amorphous enemy was given enough air time to warm the climate for real.

I remember audiences for Bush's town hall meetings being vetted to make sure flattering questions were the only ones asked. I remember protesters being herded into "free speech" zones behind barbed wire and miles from anywhere the President might be. I remember people being escorted from the premises by armed policemen simply because of a bumper sticker on the car they arrived in.

Many people persist in telling us that such things are common on "both sides" yet I do not remember anyone being escorted away from the current president for carrying signs advocating killing "his ugly wife and stupid children" nor for carrying guns. It's perhaps the most false of the false equivalences that constitute political dialogue today.

Of course if you want to tell me the courts share the blame, I'll agree. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of two Colorado residents who were excluded unwillingly from a speech by President Bush in 2005 because White House aides saw them arrive in a car with a bumper sticker that proclaimed: “No More Blood For Oil.”

Do we attribute this slap in the face for the First amendment to the Bush Police State? Certainly it wasn't the only one, but Bush is gone and the highest court seems to think we won't care that they don't care enough to hear the case.

So is it now that the freedom to have a bumper sticker on your car -- that is the freedom to criticize the government, to petition the government, to print your opinions for all to read can simply be washed away by a government that can't be bothered to listen to it? Stare decisis?

I don't know about you, but no matter how conservative, libertarian or just plain ornery you are, I don't see a way to pin this one on Obama or to try to pull a fast one with the "both sides do it so its not so bad" sidestep. If you agree that this kind of presidential power is inappropriate, you'll have to agree that getting away with it because the courts don't care is worse. So can we shut up about "liberal active courts" and recognize that this one at least has come down on the side of the police state and the Liberals had nothing to do with it?

So where's the anger? where's the admission that yes, we supported this administration and its policies and WE WERE WRONG!