Moving On

Dear Friends,

As you may have noticed, this blog has been silent for over a year.  The reasons were twofold: new absurdities and outrages were coming faster than I could keep up with them, and I was worried about becoming more of a weeper than a reader.  T.S. Eliot warned about one of the consequences of aging:

"The conscious rage of impotence at human folly/And the laceration of laughter at what ceases to amuse."

Not wanting to be a full-time curmudgeon, I stopped writing.  But as the great folk-singer Tom Paxton observed, things just keep happening that demand protest and satire.  So here's the deal:

readerweeper.blogspot.com is now a Diary on the Daily Kos (dailykos.com) where it joins a world of political commentary.  This site will soon be renamed and reorganized as a broader commentary on literature and society, with more accent on solutions, celebrations, and general observations.

So if you want to stick around, you can choose the bitter, the sweeter, or both.

Hope to hear from you.

DrReader45

Watch Your Language Before You Watch Someone Else's

            One of the pleasures of writing a blog is that you can comment on subjects without being a verified expert in the field.  I know I do that much of the time.  But there are occasions when a topic is right in, as John Hodgman would say, my area of expertise.  Here’s one.

            Evidently no one today knows the meaning of the word “grammar.” Taking a simple, everyday, and accurate definition of the word from Merriam Webster, grammar is “the set of rules that explain how words are used in a language.”  Thus subject-verb agreement, tenses, negatives, etc, are parts of grammar. So, “You didn’t never” is a grammatically incorrect in mainstream English, while “vous n’avez jamais” is grammatically correct in French.

            But style, punctuation, spelling, and other areas in which a person may err, are not grammar.  You would think that publications like the Huffington Post and the Harvard Business Review would know this, but evidently they don’t.  This is especially disturbing when the writer, or his or her editor, is an alleged judge of good grammar or good writing.

            Here are two examples.  A recent article in Huffpost, called by its author, the site’s book editor, “In Defense of Adverbs.” However, the headline writer for Huffpost Books decided to lure us in with these words: “This Popular Grammar Advice  Is Totally Wrong.”  The advice?  “Never use adverbs.”  That’s not grammar advice, it’s style advice. Adverbs are a normal part of grammar, and can be used wherever it is clear they modify a verb, and adjective, or another adverb.  “You completely misused the word ‘grammar’ in your headline,” “Your advice is totally wrong,” or “Your error is made very often” are all appropriate uses of an adverb. 

            As the editor suggests, this is certainly bad advice.  Just look below at one of America’s most famous texts, which contains no fewer than five adverbs in three sentences.  But it’s not grammar advice.

            “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

            The second example is even worse, because it is entirely the fault of the author, and because one would think Harvard Business Review had pretty high standards. (Adverb alert.) Yet it published a piece by Kyle Wiens, “CEO of the largest online repair community, as well as founder of a software company dedicated to helping manufacturers publish amazing documentation” titled “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar.”  His examples of poor grammar? Scattering commas everywhere, not understanding the use of semicolons, writing “too” for “to,” “it’s” for “its,” or the wrong “their.”  Not one is a grammar error – they are either punctuation or spelling errors.  None are detectable in spoken language, which is the basis for all grammar.

            Fortunately, I and a great many others have been able to lambaste Mr. Wiens for his pomposity and ignorance, because HBR is open to readers’ comments if they sign in.  Sadly, the same is not true for Huffpost, which requires a Facebook account for anyone wanting to post a comment.  (No, Facebook doesn’t own Huffpost, AOL does.) I left Facebook some time ago, and I am rapidly deleting, unsubscribing, or cancelling any online entity that only allows me to approach them through the gates of Zuckerberg’s Hell. I most strongly, vehemently, and urgently advise you to do the same.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

If you listen to the business news even occasionally, you’re familiar with this phrase or some variant of it: “the market doesn’t like uncertainty.”  Entering a few versions of the phrase on Google alone yields over 1.5 million results.  The phrase is as ubiquitous as the sports cliché “we’ve got to play one game at a time.”  But the more you think about it, the more the phrase splits into two parts, one trivial, the other irritating.

            The markets don’t like uncertainty.  Who does?  Does the employee hearing rumors of layoffs or plant closures like uncertainty?  Or the patient waiting for test results, the athletes wondering if they’ll be drafted, the couple trying to have a baby, or the older person concerned about the value of their IRA?  The list could go on interminably, but the message is simple: no human being, and probably no sentient creature, likes uncertainty.  Like the auto in The Phantom Tollbooth, the statement “goes without saying,” even though nearly every financial analysts says it.

            I suppose there are exceptions. Many thrill-seekers do appear to like uncertainty, whether they’re trying a new Xtreme sports trick or gambling everything they have in Las Vegas or on their new software idea.  John Keats even praised the “the Man of Quality” for possessing “Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” 

            But these special cases aside, uncertainty is, perhaps only second to mortality, the most universal and universally stressful parts of the human condition.

            That said, why do the economic pundits sing this refrain daily?  There are, I think, three reasons:

            First, it is a fact, and often a fairly successful explanatory fact.  Given the burdensome task of explaining why the stock market dipped, or why businesses are not hiring, the interviewee reaches for an incontrovertible fact, however bland that fact may be.  More specific attributions, such as concern over some country’s debt, some large corporation’s poor earnings, or simple profit-taking, are more debatable.  No one is going to counter Jim Kramer with the reply, “oh yes they do like uncertainty.”

            A more important reason, or maybe assumption is a better word, is that the speakers have elevated business’s or the markets’ uncertainty to a privileged position.  You and I may have to live with uncertainty, but the business world certainly shouldn’t have to.  After all, a major goal of entrepreneurs, big investors, venture capitalists, and the rest of those whose life is in the markets, is to achieve such a level of financial security that they can personally minimize uncertainty.  Having millions spread among a variety of assets, living in a gated community, being able to hire security guards, afford the best medical care, and possessing all the accoutrements of great wealth enable the a select few to feel secure from almost everything except death, and maybe even, delusionally, that too. 

            So the first unquestioned assumption is that the markets, business, or corporations, despite the Supreme Court’s contention that they are people, should really be free of the uncertainty that plagues the flesh and blood person. And remember, the corporation in all its forms is founded on the notion of persistence beyond the lives of it members.  Too bad they’re not self-aware, so they don’t know they’ve achieved immortality.

            The second, and more insidious assumption is revealed in one of the most common contexts of the phrase.  Very often the uncertainty the pundit is lamenting is an uncertainty owing to government deliberation or action.  Will there be a shutdown?  Will taxes go up?  Will the Fed continue the stimulus?  The hidden critique is that bad old government is upsetting good old business, which is a lamentable state of affairs.  The odd paradox is that, at least in recent times, the party of business creates most of the uncertainty that it deplores, then blames the government it is hampering.  Of course, conservatives can have it both ways: if government can’t get anything done, even if they are responsible for the inaction, then they can point to the fact that goverment can’t get anything done to prove their position.  But that’s matter for another time.

            For now, let’s remember that uncertainty is far more harmful to the average person than to Tom Wolfe’s “Masters of the Universe,” and let’s remind the experts of that whenever we can.

The Law Sir, is a Ass

            Though the law is not always “a ass” (after all, Dickens’ Mr. Bumble was only talking about a specific law), lawmakers all too often belong inside a donkey costume rather than a legislature.

            Two current examples, one from various state legislatures and a lesser one being bruited in Washington, are perfect examples.  In the past few months, nearly twenty percent of the states have proposed laws allowing businesses owners to refuse service or employment on the basis of their religious beliefs.  The legislature in Arizona has actually passed such a law.  The bills vary widely.  Some are honest about their purpose, stating that business owners can discriminate on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, but others simply allow discrimination against anyone at all based on religious belief.

            The mind truly boggles.  There are some cases where sexual orientation is apparent – when a wedding photographer, caterer, or reception hall is asked to work with a gay or lesbian couple.  Leaving aside such distinctive cases, which still raise huge questions about, for example, whether a business, especially one that is formally incorporated, can have religious beliefs, two obvious problems arise:

            First, how would an individual’s sexual orientation, or any other violation of the business owner’s beliefs, become apparent?  “Hi, I’m gay.  Would you please fix my flat tire?”  “Do you have a table for two lesbians tonight?”  One assumes that those with virulent anti-gay prejudice are hardly gifted with excellent gaydar.  Would we have new signs saying “No gays need apply” or “Gays not wanted here?” Imagine the thought process:  “Oh dear, I’m gay and I have a toothache.  Better not go to that dentist though.”  “Whoops, I know we’re almost out of gas, but that station doesn’t allow a Subaru with two women in it to fill up.”

            Second, how can the rules be limited to gays?  Every religion has innumerable bans, some of which are common, others rare.  Just take Catholics: no gays, divorced people, users of birth control. Or Quakers: no soldiers.  Could Jews ban someone who recently ate a pork sausage, Hindus an eater of beef, etc. etc?

(I know some of these apply only to members of the religion, but no doubt some would claim even proximity to treyf is unbearable.)

            More important are the universals.  Take the Ten Commandments and their parallels.  What faith doesn’t list adultery, stealing, lying, dishonoring parents, murder, and the like among sins?  Jesus, after all, spoke against divorce, but never against homosexuality.  Maybe we should rewrite his admonition: “Let he who is without sin among you buy my wares; all others keep out.”  (Of course, the business owner should by rights have nothing to do with himself unless he has never violated any of his church’s tenets.)

            So not only are these bills small-minded, bigoted, and most likely unconstitutional, they are about as unenforceable as any ever dreamed up by ass-headed politicians.

            Not quite so illogical, but still disappointing, is the recent proposal that Olympic athletes should not have to pay taxes on the money they receive for winning.  At first glance not a big deal:  the prizes top out at $25,000, and for most medal winners, taxes on their endorsements and appearances will amount to much more.

            It’s only when you realize that all other prizes, including MacArthur grants and Nobel prizes, are taxed – thanks to a tax hike in 1986 during the Reagan administration – that you start to get annoyed.  Prior to 1986, it was felt that prizes given for achievement, and for which no services were rendered, should not be taxed.  Unlike Olympic athletes, no one explicitly works on a scientific or artistic project, or strives for peace, because a Nobel or MacArthur lies at the end of the trail.  In fact, Olympic athletes are more like NFL, NBA, or MBL players, or indeed like contestants on Jeopardy or The Price is Right than they are like the writers, doctors, economists, physicists, or peace activists, who are awarded the aforementioned or similar prizes.

            So, unless they donated their prizes, which some did, Al Gore, President Obama, and Jimmy Carter were taxed – and the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Aug San Suu Kyi would have been taxed, had they been Americans.  But the first woman to do a backward 1080 on the half-pipe, or the couple who included the best twizzlers in their dance routine, should get a pass?  

            The message couldn’t be clearer: curing cancer, stopping a war, making a breakthrough discovery, are all well and good, but what really boosts American prestige is finishing a tenth of a second ahead of someone on a hill.  What’s next?  The Indy 500 / Wimbledon / World Cup / NASCAR exemption? 

            Of course, guys like Scott Hamilton could have used the extra cash to hire a cab (if he can get one) to take him to a restaurant in Phoenix that would serve him.

           

Happy Festivus

I’ve been away for some time, but now that it’s Christmas / Solstice / Kwanzaa / Festivus, I thought I’d put out a list of grievances.  Have you noticed that Festivus is catching on, from Rand Paul to civic displays?  We are an aggrieved people, and never more so than now (well, perhaps during the Civil War).

            Anyway, here are some things I’ve noticed that have me annoyed and puzzled.

1.     Why is the state of Utah appealing the December 20 ruling allowing gay marriage to the Supreme Court, while still “reviewing” the decision a week earlier of another judge striking down the state’s polygamy ban?  And why does the gay marriage decision draw 67 million hits on Google to 12 million for the polygamy ruling?  This is one time I have to give some conservatives credit for consistency – but only that -- in opposing both rulings. 

2.     Years ago we used to give gifts.  Now we “gift.”  Of course we don’t yet “gift gifts.”  But even reputable periodicals are beginning to use words like “giftees.”  So next we will have gifters gifting gifts to giftees instead of givers giving gifts to recipients.  Yuck.

3.     TV ads are setting new standards for the twin ills of conspicuous consumption and inability to defer gratification.  On any given evening you can watch people dropping their phones in wine glasses, dousing their computers with coffee, and tossing their car keys in a Salvation Army bucket, all so they can get the newer, “better” item, because “two years is too long to wait for an upgrade.” 

4.     Recent polls show two interesting phenomena: 74% of Americans believe that NSA spying intrudes on their privacy rights.  But at the same time, a poll shows that Americans’ trust in each other has reached an all-time low.  Almost 2/3 of us don’t trust each other.  Now one could argue that the two coincide: we don’t trust each other, and we especially don’t trust the government.  But it’s also possible to raise a question: if 2/3 of Americans don’t trust each other, shouldn’t they want government surveillance of all those untrustworthy people to increase?  Or is it a case of “Don’t spy on me, but watch all those other people very carefully”?

5.     I frequently hear sportscasters in basketball and football maintaining that referees shouldn’t make borderline foul calls at the end of a close contest.  The commentator always says, “Let them play the game.” Evidently “playing the game” includes cheating, but only when cheating is very likely to make a difference in the outcome.  A player can be called for pass interference, holding, charging, or a foul on the wrist during all but the last two minutes or so of a game, but down the stretch anything short of outright mugging should be allowed.  Should this also apply to the 72^nd hole of a golf tournament, the foot-fault serve at the end of a fifth set, or the low blow in the final round of a championship boxing match? 

I'll be back soon, maybe even with something cheerful.

They're Playing Our Song

 

 Sorry I've been away so long. Like most people in Boston, I’ve been following the Red Sox closely, and am just beginning to consider what life will be like now that the parade is over.  (The first five artic les in the on-line Boston Globe were about the  Sox, so I guess we won’t exactly be going cold turkey.)

            Among the few thing that got me annoyed during the run were, in fact, two Globe articles.  The first fell into the classic literary form sportswriter faireweatherness.  Because the Red Sox lost two of the first three games, and made some obvious blunders, this reported now saw them as not playing hard enough and announced his disgust with a team he had probably been enthusiastic about for over 170 games.  I just hope he’s not taking credit now for lighting a fire under them for the next three consecutive wins.

            The worse offense, though, was another writer who announced it was now time to retire the tradition of singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” at the seventh inning stretch. A Boston Herald writer said the same thing, but only as a temporary suggestion  for the playoffs, to throw the other team off, kind of like replacing your left-handed knuckleball starter with a fastball righty in the eighth inning.  To which many have replied that you never change anything in the middle of a lucky streak – why not have the Red Sox shave their beards to the next team wouldn’t recognize tem?

            But the Globe guy wants the song gone for good.  Why: 1. It’s been around for over 10 years; 2. It’s not a good song, and 3.  There’s a line about touching that creeps him out because Diamond was writing an ode to the young Caroline Kennedy.

            If obsolescence is a reason for dropping an anthem, why do we have two Civil War songs at the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness (more on that later) and a national anthem that dates from one of our less significant wars?

            Regarding age and quality, The Star-Spangled banner may be the most unsingable national anthem in the world, and its butchery by hundreds of incompetent and egotistical performers is grounds enough for its demise. 

            And if bad lyrics are the problem, let’s look again at “My Old Kentucky Home,” which is a lament by a “darky” – the word is used several times – who has apparently been sold away from his plantation and may be leaving his family behind to die in a strange land.

            Even worse, “Maryland My Maryland” is a pro-Confederacy song that urged Maryland to join  Virginia and “spurn the Northern scum” led by the “despot,” “vandal” and “tyrant” Lincoln, and even includes the words “Sic semper is the proud refrain” – as used by John Wilkes Booth.

            No, sports fans and patriots, there’s no accounting for taste in mob lyrics.  How else can we explain the British soccer tradition  of club songs, ranging from Liverpool’s valiant “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to  West Ham’s bizarre “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”?  The songs have catchy tunes – okay, not the SSB – and a few lyrics that also work – the Fenway chant of “So Good, So good” that breaks up the song – and then they take on a life, as Caroline did, and does still more after Diamond came to the diamond to lead Sweet Caroline on the first game after the Marathon bombing.  Woe to him who tries to apply Mr. Spock’s logic to the most emotional of art forms.

            I wonder if they still sing The Star-Spangled Banner on the deck of the Enterprise?

The Idea of War and the War of Ideas (or Their Absence)

            I’ve just finished reading an article called “What Happened to the Anti-War Movement?”  http://www.nationofchange.org/what-happened-anti-war-movement-1378477752 The author, David Sirota, was lamenting the lack of any serious demonstrations against intervention in Syria, and suggesting that the problem was partisanship: Democrats are against Republican wars, Republicans against Democratic wars. “An anti-war movement,” Sirota said, “is supposed to be a check on such reflexive bloodlust. It is supposed to be a voice of reason interrupting the partisan tribalism.”

            Aside from the simple fact that the current Syria debate seems to be making unlikely bedfellows at both ends of the mattress (John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi siding with Obama; John McCain wanting him to be even tougher?), Sirota’s view, and that of most current voices, suggest that not partisanship, but a decline in the ability to think about complex issues, is an element of what is happening.

            The first question is, how can anyone seriously use the phrase “the Anti-War Movement”?  It never occurred to me that the anti-war movement was an enduring and consistent entity, like say, the antislavery movement.  If the anti-war movement seeks to eliminate all war everywhere, then it’s properly called pacifism, and it’s always been around, but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.

            If “the anti-war movement” is the grandchild of the anti-Vietnam War movement and the anti-Iraq (II) movement (with some distant relatives like the anti-invasion-of-Grenada movement), then it’s almost entirely an American phenomenon, and it crosses party lines: LBJ and Nixon were equally its targets, while 43 was excoriated and 41 pretty much given a pass for Desert Storm, suggesting a variety of nuances.

            If the anti-war movement is local, it may be have any of three roots: anti-jingoism rooted in skepticism about American motives; isolationism, based on a historical “no foreign entanglements” philosophy or a simple lack of concern for whatever happens elsewhere, or not-quite-100% pacifism.

            To be truly anti-war (and yet not a pacifist) would be to condemn many wars, even to the point of being willing to fight some wars to avoid worse consequences.  In my own life I have been strongly anti-war during Vietnam and Iraq II, but not during Desert Storm, NATO in the former Yugoslavia, or Libya.  Looking further back, I have no idea how I would have felt about Korea (though the thought of a Kim-Kim-Kim dynasty ruling over the whole peninsula is not very appealing), pretty sure I would have been pro-World War II (but against the bombing of civilians, and for the bombing of the rail lines leading to the death camps), and against the Spanish-American, Mexican, and First World Wars.

            Should we fight against a leader who has violated the Geneva Conventions, whether he has acted against his own people or another country?  Morally, I lean toward yes.  (If we had actually taken on Saddam and “chemical Ali” when they were slaughtering Kurds, we would have had much better grounds than when we actually went to war against Iraq.)  Can we do so and still keep our hands clean, or at least cleaner than the hands we are slapping?  Not sure, but I’d like to hope so. 

            But the idea that War is a single entity (as, say, land mines, nuclear weapons, or probably genocide are) is absurd.  There are limited military actions, there are wars between formal armies with little or no “collateral damage,” there are wars that have initial moral justification on at least one side, and wars that have none.  There are wars that begin for defensible reasons, and move beyond any reason into disasters even worse than the one for which they were originally fought.

            As a young man I was horrified at the tanks rolling into Budapest, and later at the crushing of the Velvet Revolution, and much later at Tiananmen Square, but I accepted that there was no way to stop these evils without bringing on much worse suffering to many more people.  I was also shocked at the horrors of Rwanda and Darfur, and thought there was at least a possibility that forceful intervention might diminish the sum total of evil.  And in Syria, where we have strong reason to believe even the minimal standards of war conduct set out in the Geneva Convention have been callously violated, it seems more than a little likely that intervention could do more good than harm.

            So I’m not pro-war or anti-war, not this to            me and not in general, and I suspect millions of us feel the same way.  But simplistic thinking – are you for or against – seems to be driving out deeper reasoning, as cheap coinage drives out good.  Partisanship is one contributor to that sort of thinking, but many other causes in our society, from poor education to sound-bite news also contribute. 

            It may be true that standing in the middle of the road too long can get you run over, but it’s the only place where you can look both ways and consider where you should go next.