If you work in the world of business, you know that this isn’t even funny these days.

…so I don’t know if I’m right to bag on DFL-training-ground law firm Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Ciresi for bragging up an award for their “pro-bono” work in blocking an AT&T cell tower near the Boundary Waters…:

The case centered around a 450-foot cell-phone tower AT&T proposed to build near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The tower would have despoiled the scenic and aesthetic resources of the protected Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for miles and would have posed a significant threat to migratory birds. The Friends challenged the project under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, which gives citizens the right to sue to block projects that have the potential to diminish environmental quality.

Our representation culminated in a four day bench trial with 15 live witnesses and 17 witnesses by deposition. After carefully considering the evidence, the court issued a 58-page order, ruling in favor of the Friends and permanently enjoining AT&T from constructing any tower in this location taller than 199-feet.

…while demanding court costs for the case.

I mean, it’s not “pro bono” if they get paid, is it?

Prenege – To go back on a promise even before it was supposed to be accomplished.

It’s been conventional wisdom in linguistics circles for a long time now – America’s dialects, under assault from mass media, are fading.

Only it’s not true, and they’re not (emphasis added):

Although the United States is an international melting pot and the average American makes a dozen moves in a lifetime, regional accents are alive and well. In fact, regional accents are becoming stronger and more different from each other, says William Labov, a professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, although it’s not entirely clear why.

So why would that be?

Well, there are explanations that seem like linguistics, sort of…:

One possibility, says Labov, is that these original sound differences are being exaggerated, like trains moving in opposite directions on two railroad tracks.

Others?  Well they sound like Paul Krugman plain linguistician:

“The other is that dialect differences have become associated with political differences, so that the Blue States/Red States division comes close to the boundary between the Northern and Midland dialects,” he explains.

On the one hand – please tell us what a “Red State” accent sounds like?  Anyone?

On the other – there’s an interesting point there; there is at least a correlation between linguistic groups – maybe:

The “Northern”dialect group covers everything from New York to the western Great Lakes (and on west through the Dakotas and Montana, which kinda scrubs the whole “northern dialect is a red-state dialect” thing.

Labov says that our dialects change little after age 18 and we tend to retain the accent we grew up with. Young people first match the dialects of their parents, but then they often change to match their peers. These changes, though, are unconscious, he explains.

Oh, ya.  You bet.

My “DFL Dictionary” first came out in 2002.

The Dictionary – a glossary of terms that explain the world and English Language as the DFL sees them – has been pretty stable since then.  It’s time for an update.

I made an addition yesterday – “Intransigence: n. When a Republican sticks to their “principles”. (See also: “Princples”)”.

But we need more.

So – for the first time in almost a decade, I’m taking submissions for the DFL dictionary!

Times have changed.  The DFL hasn’t – not since 1972 – but it’s time the Dictionary did!   Please send me any definitions I’ve missed over the years, and I’ll get the update underway!

Leave your entries in the comment section.  Winning selections will be…well, included.

Earlier today, I wrote about an op-ed from over the weekend in the Strib.  Reading it, I assumed that the piece – by “Hinda Mandell”, formerly of Edina – was incredibly bad, overly over-the-top, broad-to-the-point-of-unfunny, stereotype-clogged parody.

Mandell is, in fact, a real person, with a twitter feed of her own; Ms. Mandell is apparently a real mid-level “communications” academic whose brief seems, ironicaly, to include parsing communication so finely for the wispiest hint of perceived victimization that “communication” of any type will eventually be rendered impossible.  The article was apparently on the level.  Not to mention the first thing I’ve ever read that was actually too dumb to be on Minnesota Progressive Project.

Ryan Rhodes figured it out before me – and after almost ten years of blogging, he’s just as worth reading as he ever was, by the way. He commemorated Ms. Mandell’s raving with the gifts of art…

…and fisk.

Who says there’s a higher education bubble? Note to aspiring communication students: Avoid the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, lest you come out of college much, much, MUCH dumber than when you went in.

Anyway – I guess there are a couple of lessons from this whole thing:

• We have too many academics.
• The higher ed bubble is about to explode. And when it does,and if (heaven forfend) Hinda Mandell has to find another gig, wouldn’t it be ironic if she had to get a job as a barrista?

I apologize for the error.

I’m off to tell my farmer friends to stop referring to “Hard Red Spring Wheat“, before Hinda Mandell claims they’re bigoted against Native Americans.

An actor friend of mine tells me that the hardest roles to play are “dumb” people.  It’s easy to play the less-intelligent too broadly, like a bunch of “dumb people” cliches.  Making them sympathetic, nuanced and interesting?  That’s hard.

Parody is kinda the same.

The Twin Cities conservative blogosphere has more than its fair share of brilliant satirists and parodists – people who attack with humor, and by getting inside their targets’ styles, peccadillos…heads for comedic yet pointed effect.

The roll call is long and distinguished; “Sisyphus”, “Nihilist in Golf Pants”, “Wintryminx”, Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci and Ryan “Dirty Shroom” Rhodes are all known quantities who dominate in print (and conservatives going by the names “Spotty”, “MNob” and “Phoenix Woman”, their true identities unknown, do spot-on sendups of smug, overpraised, overwrought “progressive” bloggers); Tom “Swiftee” Swift is by far the most talented, iconoclastic visual satirist in the Twin Cities; and of course, James Lileks is the Segovia of multimedia satire.

Doing good adversarial satire is like playing a dumb person; it’s easy to do badly, and very hard to do well.

So I’m puzzled as to who wrote this Strib parody masquerading as “op-ed”, entitled “The subtle racism around us (even in a cup of coffee)”.  With a stable of satirists like we have in the Twin Cities, we could certainly come up with something less over-broad and hamfisted.

For starters, the “writer” is “named” “Hinda Mandell”, and is purportedly an “assistant professor of Communications at Rochester Institute of Technology”, who graduated from Edina High in 1998.  Why not name “her” “Golda Schimmelfarb-Williams, adjunct visiting scholar in Victimization Studies at Radcliffe”, while you’re at it?  Have her come from North Oaks? Maybe have her complain about her asthma and constantly ask if it’s too cold in the room and start sentences with “oy vey” before nattering about white privilege?   If you’re going to run with the cliché, why not go all-in?

Cliché is not satire, and stereotype is not parody.

Anyway – with that out of the way, the piece is about that ultimate “progressive” cliché, hYpStR coffee!

What do you do when a favorite coffee shop features various coffee blends with racially tinged names?

Just a tangent here; twenty years ago, when gourmet coffee shops were a new thing, and I would order a cup at the Dunn Brothers by Macalester College.  And I’d occasionally ask – “are all you liberals aware that the coffee you’re ordering, from Ethiopia and Java and the Celebes and Peru and Venezuela, supports a lot of ugly, authoritarian regimes?”

They’d stare blankly.

Just a tangent.  Apropos nothing.

Emphasis is added below as “Ms. Mandell” continues:

I was sitting in this beloved joint in New York recently, with its hipster-hippie ambiance, when I overheard a conversation. I’m convinced that the barista and customer, both white, were oblivious to the racially charged nature of their utterances.

Asked the customer: “What type of roast is the Jungle Roast?”

The barista, who looked on the younger side of 20, answered: “It’s a darker roast.”

I sat there flabbergasted. These two women were engaging in a practical conversation — is the coffee a light or dark brew?

But because of the name of the roast — and its richer flavor — they were in fact reinforcing the notion of the jungle and its people as “dark.”

Now, this is funny – but pretty rote.  An overweening liberal petty academic,finding racism in coffee?  It’s freshman level stuff.

Perhaps you think I’m making too much of a simple exchange.

Oy.  To the serious parodist, saying “maybe you think I’m making too much of this” is like waving a sign saying “I’M PRETENDING TO HAVE THE VAPORS FOR COMEDIC EFFECT.  PLEASE LAUGH NOW”.

And, unfortunately, it’s a rookie flub that telegraphs a descent into hamfisted absurdity rather than good parody:

But consider, too, that while eavesdropping I was sipping on a luscious coffee blend that the shop calls Jamaica Me Crazy. It’s seasoned with fresh cinnamon. Maybe that’s what they drink in Jamaica? I don’t know, since I’ve never been there.

But I do know that if the coffee was labeled Protestants A Plenty, Catholics Be Crazy, Jews be Jivin’ or Blacks Be Boppin’, there would be an uproar. Of course, Protestants and Catholics, as part of the religious mainstream, do not typically face the brunt of prejudice in the United States.

As I drank my French Roast this morning, trying to recover from last night’s Irish coffee and Swedish meatballs, I shook my head.  Too obvious.

And most know that intolerance against Jews and blacks is not publicly accepted. Blatant bigotry is easy to spot, while covert bigotry — where an entire group is used to sell coffee — can be easier to stomach and therefore ignore.

Right there – that’s the bit that threw it over the top.

The key to great parody is painting a picture of your target that is just sympathetic enough to be plausible.  It’s the touch that separates a good parody – Dwight Schrute, for example – from a bad one, like Stephen Colbert.  Is Hinda Mandell sympathetic?  About as sympathetic as a turd on your kitchen floor – a turd that nags and hectors you about the racial overtones of the dark stain you used on your bedroom floor!

It’s been nearly a decade since I learned one of my biggest life lessons. Difference is all about perception.

For instance, perceiving that coffee that is roasted to a darker hue is “dark”?

Seirously – calling this “satire” is like calling someone who walks onstage and bellows “Durrrr! I am teh DUMMY!” “acting”.  Whoever is writing this “Mandell” character just swerved past parody into group defamation.

I mean, how is this – “Durr, I am a spoiled, cossetted pseudo-academic who draws lessons that impugn others from my own provincialism!” – any different?

Do I embarrass the cafe manager by saying something? Do I become complicit by ordering a medium Jamaica Me Crazy with steamed milk, please?

Yes, unknown parodist – we got it.  “Hinda Mandell” is tortured by the racism in the mundane.  Let it go.  I’ve given up on finding a reason to like “her”; I’d settle for believing “she” was plausible.

Deciphering these messages might be the easier part. Figuring out what to do with them afterward is a lot harder.

The scary part is, someone apparently wants us to believe we have an entire academic discipline to help people “figure out” “hidden racist messages” in everyday objects – if you believe that “Hinda Mandell” is real.

But I think we all know better.

Caterwauling.

Whinging.

Yapping.

Argling.

Whinnying.

Squealing.

Sniveling.

Screeching.

Sobbing.

Bellyaching.

Caviling.

Grousing.

Kvetching.

Grumbling.

Yammering.

Those are the first fifteen synonyms I can think of for “Whining”.  Which is the sole verb every “progressive” blogger seems to use to describe “any of our opponents talking or writing”.

I can only assume you “progressive” bloggers’ superiors haven’t told you to write anything else…

UPDATE:

Mewling.

Gargling.

Puling.

Gurgitating.

Maladicting.

Frumping.

Eeyoring.

Even simple ol’ complaining!

Still haven’t had to go to a thesaurus.

I”m starting to think the only “smart” thing about “progressives” is the way they branded themselves as “the smart people”.

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life.

If you toss a man a can of bait worms and tell him to figure it out, you feed him for life and give him the problem-solving skills he needs to truly succeed. Or feed him for a day.  One or the other.

Watching yesterday’s saturation coverage of the Kacey Anthony case, I watched a piece on “the nation’s reaction to the verdict”.

The reporter – NBC’s  Jeff Rosson – mentioned that he was in the airport when the verdict was read.  And he said “People were literally glued to the TV”.

No.  People were figuratively glued to the TV.  Nobody was physically adhered to a screen.

It’s time for misuse of “literally” to be, figuratively, killed with fire.

Or maybe literally.

The Good News:  Romney’s right on Israel and Obama:

President Obama “disrespected” Israel and threw it “under the bus” in a wide-ranging speech on the Middle East on Thursday, GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney charged.

The Bad News?  A serious candidate for the GOP nomination used “disrespect” as a verb.

To: All speakers of English

From: Mitch Berg, Self-Appointed Language Cop

Re: Regarding

Dear English Speakers/Writers,

It’s come to my attention that at least 90% of  you use the word “apropos” as a synonym for “appropriate”.  (Example: “I think it’s completely apropos for people to deputize themselves as Language Cops, with all the powers apropos to the job, including lethal force:).

It is not.  It is a contraction of the French phrase “A Propos”, meaning, roughly, “with regard to…”.   While it shares a linguistic root with the term “appropriate” (as well as “properly”, “property”, “appropriate”, “expropriate” and others), its usage is completely different.

While I do try to be tolerant, please be advised that further incorrect use of “apropos” in speech or writing might lead to you being smacked in the face with a sock full of nickels when you least expect it.

Please see to this.

That is all.

XOXO, MBerg

Back in college, when I was still a liberal, I was involved in the elections for the leadership of the Young Progressives.

I campaigned in favor of Rebekah Zildjian-Grothman.  Her opponent, Joshua-Micah Belcher, got wind of this.

“Mitch – don’t drop out of college if I win!”, he said at a meeting.

“I had no plans to”.   It seemed simple enough.

Oddly enough, all his posters had fine print at the bottom; I was standing by the bulletin board outside the cafeteria when Angie Schlegel pointed it out;  “I disclaim responsibility if Mitch Berg drops out of college shoul I happen to win”.

Angie looked at me, concerned; I shrugged my shoulders.  “I have no idea what he’s talking about”, I said, baffled.

The election happened.  Joshua – excuse me, Joshua-Micah – won.  As he gave his acceptance speech, he looked at me.  “And now, we’re going to watch Mitch Berg kill himself!”.  He reached into his pocket and handed me a “Withdraw From College” form.

“Huh?”

“You were going to drop out of college if I won!”

I threw the form back at him.  “That was a story you made up…” I started.

“Don’t change the subject!”, he bellowed.

———-

The DFL’s current “tactic” (scare quotes fully intentional) is, if anything, dumber than my fictional story above.

Let’s walk through the facts:

1. While setting up the 2010-2011 budget back in 2009, the DFL-dominated legislature, using the auto-pilot formula they use for these things, forecast a budget of almost $39 billion.  The increase – 21%, overall – was predicated on inflation (relatively low) and putative increase in demand for services.  The forecast was nothing more than the DFL’s wish list. it was focused entirely – 100% – on forecast increases in demand and price.  Nothing more.
2. The leadership of the then-DFL-controlled legislature subtracted the then-forecast revenues – around $32 billion – from the forecast, and declared that there would be a “$6.2 billion deficit”, primarily to put pressure on then-governor Tim Pawlenty.
3. The GOP – first during the Emmer campaign, and then after the November elections – declared that they could do a budget that would live within what were forecast to be government’s means; as of 2009, that was $32 billion.
4. During the 2010 Governor race, Mark Dayton made it clear that he was going to treat the $39 billion forecast as the gospel for the budget.
5. In response, Tom Emmer made it clear he and the GOP would not raise taxes, but force government to live within its means (and reform the system to help that happen.
6. Once it became clear that revenues were going to rise.  Tom Emmer made it a key part of his campaign; “living within our means” meant $33 or $34 billion.  Not $32 billion.
7. Emmer lost – but the MNGOP swept to commanding majorities in both chambers of the legislature.
8. The new GOP majorities made it clear that they were not going to raise taxes; that living within our means, and reforming our government and tax systems to make that possible were the orders of the day.
9. Time marched on.
10. Mark Dayton released his budget – which was greeted with all the enthusiasm of Vanilla Ice’s sophomore album.  Last week, Dayton had make a grand show of telling the DFL not to vote for his budget when the GOP brought it to the floor – to cover the fact that nobody was going to anyway.

At this point, the DFL knew what was coming; that the revenue forecast was going to show exactly what Emmer predicted, that government’s “means” were going to grow to $34 billion, and the GOP was going to use that fact.

And so they started perhaps the most cynical, transparently-desperate political memes I can remember – worse than my ol’ buddy Joshua-Micah’s, from so many years back:

The GOP’s all-cuts budget is late!  And if it’s not all cuts, then they’ve failed!

Put concisely, it was “the party that released all-tax-hike budgets in mid-April the past four years wants you get outraged that the GOP is releasing a balanced, no-tax-hike budget in March”.

The GOP released its budget last week – a budget that lives within government’s means – those means being $34 billion in revenue.  And the DFL’s chant-bots have been trying to cash that meme in.

House Minority leader Paul Thissen launched a broadside on the House DFL caucus Facebook page:

Apparently, “living within our means” is not as easy as the Republicans made it seem to Minnesotans on the campaign trail. Republicans promised Minnesotans that $32 billion was more than enough to balance the budget and that it could be done holding school children, seniors, and the disabled harmless.

And Thissen is lying.  The GOP never said “government’s means” was $32 billion, now and forever.

Today’s release of Republican budget targets proves that the magic act Republicans promised Minnesotans is running into hard reality. The $32 billion that was enough a week ago is now more than $34.

Thissen, and the DFL’s, plan is pretty transparent.  With a weak governor, no legislative power, and a $39 billion wish list, they are trying to convince Tea Partiers – including the moderate DFLers that deserted the party last fall – that the GOP, the party of no tax hikes and the $34 billion budget, are the spendthrifts.

This is the hallmark of a party that is desperate for a win – and fully confident that the media will not seriously question them about such a transparent bit of spin.

As a result, middle-class Minnesota taxpayers should start guarding their wallets against a Republican pick-pocket budget characterized by hidden taxes.

That’s another oldie but goodie, a very cynical bit of carefully-waterboarded context; “if the government cuts LGA, it will hike property taxes”.  That is, of course, the job of the local governments involved.  It has nothing to do with the legislature.

And hard-working Minnesotans should also guard their jobs. We know that the Republican budget will do more harm to Minnesota’s fragile economic recovery than a balanced approach. Cutting nearly 50% of Jobs and Economic Development, raising property taxes – the largest tax businesses pay already, and slashing the workforce are a recipe for job killing, not job creation.

Another bit of cynical distortion; the “Jobs and Economic Development” spending creates very few jobs and very little economic development, for the money we’ve poured into it.

Republicans heralded $300 million in new tax cuts for middle and lower income earners.

And that is a lie.  The “new taxes” will come from city councils, who can no longer camouflage their own spending by having state taxpayers subsidize it for the.  And as we showed last year, those city councils are run by DFLers.

Playing poker with a pair of deuces, Thissen is passing on the most transparently cynical set of chanting points I can recall in all my years of watching Minnessota politcs.  Thissen can get away with these statements – lies, grossly-waterboarded context – because he knows the mainstream media statewide won’t disturb his narrative.

Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring responded as well;  you should read the whole thing.  Money quote:

I’ll just be blunt. Rep. Thissen isn’t an impressive leader. His credibility doesn’t exist because his constant sky-is-falling predictions aren’t believable. People might or might not agree with the Republicans’ plan. I suspect more do than don’t because that’s how they voted in November and because people understand that spending $34 billion is substantially more than spending $30.7 billion.

Gary’s right.

Worst case?  That’s what the DFL is counting on; the idea that there are enough Tea Partiers who will see “Two Billion more in spending”, and ignore the “that’s what we have”.

Years ago, I heard a great cliche while I was playing poker. That cliche applies to this situation. Sometimes, the best way to throw a hand is away. The DFL’s hand is awful. Their plans aren’t that appealing. It’s time for the DFL to admit that it’s time to throw this hand away and return to the proverbial drawing board. They won’t win this hand with the hand they’re playing.

I wish I could be as sanguine as Gary.  The DFL is counting on there being a majority of the population that pays no attention beyond the chanting points they and their compliant media present for them.  The last election showed he’s a little over 43% right.

The message, if it comes up at the water cooler?  The GOP budget lives within the state’s means, without needing to jack up taxes to do it.  There are hikes, there are cuts – but it’s a sane, sensible budget for tough times.

Thissen, like my old pal Joshua-Micah Belcher, thinks if he can deny it often and loudly enough, people will believe it.

NOTE: I know, I know – neither my college friends Zildjian-Grothman nor Belcher actually existed.

Ryan Rhodes’ baby, Zoey – who was born at about 24 weeks, weighing less than the serving of turkey you probably ate on Thanksgiving – finally topped two pounds the other day.

Not quite ready to try out for Klondike Kate, but it’s a start.

And Ryan’s mind – 1.5 months into the whole process of willing Zoey into growing up enough to be a newborn – hatched a brilliant idea:

So, we’re poised to embark on a stretch of weather that should be above the freezing point, and that enchirpens the soul, to use a word that doesn’t exist, but totally should. In fact, I’m going to try to say “enchirpen” to a complete stranger during the next week, just to see if the person looks a tad more upbeat. I mean, I just said “enchirpen” quietly to myself several times, and I’m feeling pretty close to fantastic.

Just the idea of coining not only a new word, but such a nifty one, enchirpens me.

Please pass it on.

Speed Gibson is writing about immigration in this piece.  But he trips into a much, much bigger issue:

From a recent Minneapolis Star Tribune Editorial: Making the case for immigration reform. The opening paragraph exposes the manifest non-sequitur that follows:

The firings of 700 immigrant workers by Chipotle Restaurants in Minnesota underscores the country’s urgent need for significant immigration reform.

We are clearly not talking about 700 immigrants here. They are (alleged) illegal aliens.

And Speed does what anyone who learned both debate and English does; he defines his terms, in terms of the language we all purport to understand:

To review, immigration is a legal process. Those who engage it successfully are called immigrants and are granted access to the country in question. Among non-citizens, those that are not immigrants are aliens, both legal (tourists, e.g.) and illegal. To again conflate illegal aliens with actual immigrants is obvious deception and insulting to those actual immigrants. But of course liberals cannot win this argument on facts as this editorial again demonstrates.

And Speed’s right.

And yet you will listen in vain for any such logic anywhere on the left or in the mainstream media that carries the left’s water.

Because above and beyond the battle over “reforming” immigration, there is a much bigger fight going on – and the left is kicking our butts at it.  It’s the battle for the language.

One of the skirmishes in that battle has been the 25 year long, largely successful battle to neutralize the terms “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien” in the media.  Both terms are actively disparaged outside overtly conservative circles; calling someone an “illegal immigrant” can run one afoul of some campus speech codes.

The point being if people stop saying illegal immigration is, well, illegal, they’ll stop thinking it’s a crime.

This sort of thing is happening throughout the English language.  I’ll be writing about it at some length in the next few weeks.

While the generally-accepted language will still met me do it…

I thought this was amusing and I hope we’re on the same page. I wanted to take a moment to step out of the box and socialize this theme and seek synergies even though this post probably isn’t mission-critical so we’re not going to expend a lot of our bandwidth on it.

You say, “I love my job.”
You really mean, “I need my job.”

Top 21 Workplace BS Lines

The DEA is looking for Ebonics linguists

According to one posting, the linguist’s duties would include “monitoring varying numbers of communications intercepts during any given shift” and then providing “reliable and accurate transcriptions.”

I heard a morning radio guy scoffing about this.  “It’s not a language!”.

Having taken the class, I can tell you the definition of “another language”.  To wit:

If you can’t understand it, it’s a foreign language.

Oh, technically it might be “cant” or “argot” – secret languages or agglomerations of jargon designed to keep outsiders out and insiders in the loop, like “thieves cant” or Cockney argot.  It might even be “dialect”, a regional or social variation of a language that might be impenetrable to the rest of the language’s speakers (like Schwäbisch is to Germans or highland Scots, or Cajun are to many English speakers).

Still – if people are talking, and you can’t understand them, and understanding them is important, then it’s a language.

But here’s where this is going to turn into a problem:

An agency official, said there is nothing “racial” about the job, and described white rapper Eminem as “one of the best speakers of Ebonics there ever was.”

And so it will be considered a racial thing. and officialdom will crack down on it.

I saw this a while ago, and laughed…

…because (ask my kids) I’ve been doing this for years.

Two conversations with a DFLer acquaintance of mine.

March, 2010:  “Well, of course I call them “teabaggers”.  Some of them sent bags of tea to Congresspeople!  Why, I have no idea whatever you could be taking offense at!   Honest!”

April, 2010:  “Did you hear that Rush Limbaugh calls the Administration “The Obama Regime?   Why, that’s not just insulting – that’s seditious!”

To:  America’s Leading Pollers

From: Mitch Berg, Poll Consumer

Re:  Polls We Can Use.

Sirs,

Via your polling, it’s become a fairly common meme that about a quarter of Republicans have some degree of question about President Obama’s birth certificate (ranging from questions to outright doubt that he’s a citizen), while a little over a third of Democrats believe on some level that former President Bush had advance knowledge of 9/11 (ranging, again, from belief that the President should have reacted to a purported intelligence assessment declaring an attack likely by waiting Jack Bauer-like at the head of a team of Marines at Logan/Newark airports on that fateful morning, to belief that Bush pushed the plunger on a controlled demolition of the WTC and then fired a cruise missile at the Pentagon).

Interesting enough.

But it’s time to turn some new sod.  So I thought I’d turn to you, America’s leading poll jockeys, to find the information we really need.

How many Americans are…:

• Triggers:  How many people believe that Trig Palin is really Bristol Palin’s child, but Sarah is making noises about raising him to…well, I’m not sure what the conspiracy is supposed to say.  It is that addlepated.  Anyway – how many?
• Gaggers: How many Americans still parrot the inane trope the media is “really conservative”, and thus government intervention is needed to ensure enough liberal thoughts get heard?
• Warmers: How many of us believe, despite the exposure of the rampant bad science, bullying and crass politics  underpinning the theory of manmade global warming, that the science is “settled” and “past debate?”
• Toaders: What percentage of people think Helen Thomas is a credible journalist?
• Floozers: The same, but in re Maureen Dowd?
• Reporters: How many people still believe the Administration is “moderate?”
• Tinglers: What ratio of Americans don’t make derisive faces when Chris Matthews appears on the TV?  (See also:  Coopers)
• Dead-Airers: How many Americans still have “Air America” bumperstickers on their cars/bikes/dogs?
• Kruggers: How many people still mindlessly recite Paul Krugman’s infamous, innumerate, context-deprived trope about red states getting more tax money back than they put in?
• Healthers: Who still believes, after a year of fact to the contrary, that Obamacare will cover more people for less money?
• Dumpers: How many people believe that the external manifestations of Bachmann Derangement don’t help Sixth District rep Michele Bachmann’s electoral chances?
• Crashers: How many Americans believe that, despite the fact that government both actively legislated subprime mortgage lending and subsidized the obscene profits (and socialized the now-obvious risks), the current credit crisis is purely a result of free-enterprise and greed?

Thank you for your attention to this vital matter.

That, again, is all.

I laughed my brains out watching this BBC piece about “Fulla”, the highly successful Moslem competitor to the Barbie Doll.

No, not about the doll itself – I mean, cool and all.  Yaaay free enterprise!

The yuks came from the BBC’s video viewer.

I’ll put the spoiler below the jump.

(more…)

My semi-annual Linguistic Hit Lists haven’t completely changed the language – but they’ve made a good start.

My demands for the extinction of the terms”Bloggy”, ”Truthy/truthiness”, “take (something) to the next level” and “Dee di deeeee”have been largely very effective; most are considered signs of bad breeding today.

The war on “Hel-looo” is also proceeding apace; it seems to be on the ropes, although pockets still occur in various hYpStR bars and high schools here and there.

“It Is What It Is” is a stubborn one – something of a linguistic cockroach, or the Taliban in Helmand Province, it’s actually made a bit of a comeback. I will declare a linguistic surge against this piece of language rot.

“Internets” is a somewhat troubling case, inasmuch as like most technology-related terms it is easily replaced by other equally noxious forms – “intertubes”, “interwebs”, “interbloggies” or whatever the fine flaming flexible fowl the “I think I sound hip, but I really sound like I lobotomized myself with a drinking straw” crowd comes up with. This will be a long fight, but I know in my heart we will be victorious.

But while there is a long way to go on some of my previous linguistic hits, we must redouble our efforts.  So I am going to add some new terms for 2010:

1. Processes, when pronounced “prah-sess-EEZ”.  A standard oldie-but-goodie of the not-that-bright execu-drone who wants to sound like he’s talking two levels above his pay grade or education level, this phrase actually would justify a new corporate McCarthyism to actively stigmatize its users.  Worse, an even more malignant dialect version ,”prO-sess-EEZ”, with a long “O”, is appearing, showing that this term may be undergoing an even more pretentious, “one-upping” version.  We’ll need to redouble our efforts to scourge this one.
2. “Don’t Be That Guy”. Within the past year, this phrase, which started with people who auditioned for “Jersey Shore” but were improbably too stupid and shank-headed to make the cut, has made huge inroads into the language.  Preferred responses when confronted with it: “No, genius – I’m THAT guy”.  Extra credit; sing “Single malt, football, war flicks, THAT GUY,  Hot Wings, bratwurst … Is THAT GUYYYYYY – he’s dripping on fresh paint; he’s everything THAT GUY aaaaaiiiiint“.  It usually shuts them up.  This one is going critical, folks.  (Note my clever swoop into retro; “going critical” was on not a few hit lists ten years ago.  Yes, it is a little like playing with old explosives; don’t try it unless you’re a licensed Linguistic Engineer).
3. It Is What It Is – I’m putting this cliche, the favorite cliche refuge of the faux-zen bizspeaker, back on the hit list for a record second time; my goal is that by the end of this year we can look at the phrase and realize it was what it was.

It’s a short list, but an important one.  Let’s keep our language free of this kind of bilge, shall we?

To: Paid “independent” “alternative” water-carriers for George Soros (et. al)

From: Mitch Berg, actual independent

Re:  Your Latest Meme

So first, we had “truther” – people, usually Democrats (including, during the 2004 election, as many as a third of Democrats, according to one survey which, to be fair, didn’t distinguish between respondents with questions and the real true believers), who believe that George W. Bush and the US government were behind 9/11.

Then came the “birthers” – people, usually Republicans (including, during the past election, as many as a quarter of Republicans, according to one survey which, to be fair once again, didn’t distinguish between true believers and those who are merely curious about the flap about Obama’s birth certificate), who question President Obama’s constitutional qualification to be President.

The meme is thus set; taking an oddball conspiracy, tacking “-er” onto the end to connote a sense of unthinking, unreasoning credulity, even insanity.

Which brings us to the latest manifestation of this meme – the “Tenther“.

Of course, while 9/11 and Birth Certificate conspiracies are easily and often hilariously debunked, the Tenth Amendment of the US Constitution has the inconvenient properties of being both part of the United States Constitution and, as it happens, an inconvenient hurdle (for those who see the Constitution as “hurdles” to big government) to the current Administration’s more gigantistic plans (i.e., most of them).
Which explains, I suspect, the Alinskier and Soroser fingerprints on the whole meme.  Otherwise, the left’s most-considered response is “States Rights?  Why, that means you favor slavery!”

That is all-er.

After eight years of dubbing non-Klansman John Ashcroft “AshKKKroft”, comparing emphatic non-Nazis George Bush, Dick Cheney and Arnold Scharzenegger to Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, and calling every economic downturn on a Republican’s watch “The Worst Since The Depression (TM)”, some lefties have found accuracy they can believe in.

“Comparing the Tea Parites to the Boston Tea Party is historically inaccurate”, I’ve heard more than a few lefties insist. “They were protesting against taxation without representation”.

Well, true, as far as it goes.  Of course, the “Tea Party” idiom has grown over the centuries to mean – in regular conversation – any kind of blow against arrogant, wastrel authority, but no matter.  The interesting bit for me is “what did the forefathers of these suddently-accurate lefties do when it was their turn to strike a blow for strict, pointillistic accuracy?”

So I dug through the archives.

May 8, 1945, New York (AP): Bob DeGrasse is having nothing to do with “VE Day”.

“We haven’t defeated Europe”, DeGrasse emphasizes, nervously twisting the ends of his stylized van dyk beard. “we defeated Germany, which in German is called Deutschland.  This observance should be called “VD Day” or, to be completely accurate, Sieg Trotz Deutschland, or “STD”, Day.

“There really is no honest alternative”.

———-

January 31, 1999, Seattle (UPI) – As the world awaits the historic, and possibly fraught, switchover to the new millenium, many worry about possible terrorist strikes expanding on the confusion.

Phoebe Napolitino disagrees.

“The new Millennium”, she enounces carefully, “doesn’t begin until January 1, 2001”.  She perches her horn-rimmed glasses on her nose.  “By which I mean, the first of January, 2001, or New Years day of 2001”.

“Terrorists wont’ strike ’til then”.

———-

June 9, 1933, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine (Tass) – Dmitri Holodomoriuk has had it up to here with Soviet prosecutors.

“All these people being taking away for “right-wing activity”, Holodomoriuk muttered under his breath “are mostly just peasants who never had a political thought in their…”

Holodomoriuk’s sentence was intewrrupted by being grabbed and thrown into a Black Maria, never to be seen again.

Peoples’ Commissariat spokeswoman Zhanina Napolitanska has not returned comment.

History shows the importance of accuracy.

Yesterday and Tuesday, we noted that the left, locally and nationally, is engaging in class-action slander, based around getting people to believe that:

Conservative dissent equals murder.

It’s not an isolated trend.

It’s not new.

And it’s not an accident.

———-

“The dangerous right” is a well-worn trope in American political/media history.  It is also – to invoke Orwell’s aphorism about dictators needing enemies – entirely predictable.

Three weeks ago Philip Jenkins wrote an excellent history about the “Dangerous Right” media meme in American Conservative.  It’s an oldie, all right (emphasis added):

From 1938 through 1941, the media regularly presented stories suggesting that the U.S. was about to be overwhelmed by ultra-Right fifth columnists, millions strong, intimately allied with the Axis powers. (Actual numbers of serious militants were in the low thousands at most.) Reportedly, the militant Right was armed to the teeth and plotting countless domestic terror attacks—bombings in New York and Washington, assassinations and pogroms, the wrecking of trains and munitions plants. Plotters were rumored to have high-placed allies in the military, raising the specter of a putsch. The ensuing panic was orchestrated by newspapers and radio and reinforced by films, newsreels, and comic books. Historians characterize these years as the Brown Scare.

In other words, standing in the way of FDR, the New Deal and the dawn of enlightened “liberalism” and Hope and Change itself was a shadowy, secret army – why, one might almost call it a “vast, right-wing conspiracy”!

And when liberals come to office with big, sweeping, “transformative” plans?  Well, the “enemy among us” needs to be trotted out as well:

After JFK’s election in 1960, the devoutly anti-Communist Minutemen took first place in liberals’ demonology. As in the 1930s, the far Right was supposed to be closely tied to out-of-control military officers. Remember fictional treatments of the time like “Dr. Strangelove” and “Seven Days in May”? Once more, too, the supposed threat from far-Right extremism surfaced in mainstream politics, especially during the 1964 elections…As in the 1930s, the extremists existed, and some hotheads contemplated violence. But once again, a yawning gulf separated the reality of the threat from the public perception.

In our lifetimes – so far – the worst fell during the Clinton years:

Between 1995 and 2001, America suffered the Great Militia Panic, when exposés of ultra-Right violence became a media staple. For liberal press outlets, America was facing a clear and present danger from the militias, from Nazis and skinheads, and even from dissident elements within U.S. Special Forces. Liberals accused the anti-Clinton Right of providing extremists with ideological aid and comfort. An impressive outpouring of books—peaking in 1996—warned of an imminent terrorist disaster. Typical titles raised the shadow of America’s Militia Threat, Terrorists Among Us, or The Birth of Paramilitary Terrorism in the Heartland. One book warned of the Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Only the Beginning.

I always found it ironic how lefties accused conservatives of “wetting their pants in terror” about islamic terrorism after 9/11, after living through the waves of “mommy, there’s a militiaman under my bed!” that swept the nation during the Clinton years

The news media was open to the most improbable charges of right-wing atrocities. In 1996, television news shows discovered a (wholly spurious) wave of arson attacks in which white extremists were allegedly wiping out the nation’s black churches.

As recently as a decade ago, “terrorism” in the American public consciousness meant, almost entirely, domestic right-wing activism…by far the worst consequence of the Militia Panic was the massive underplaying of Islamic terrorism in U.S. public discourse and the disproportionate focus on the domestic far Right. Liberal columnists scoffed knowingly at terrorism experts who warned about foreign militants like al-Qaeda, when every informed observer knew that the real menace was internal.

I remember lefty pundits on about 9/13 furrowing their brows and warning us that right-wing domestic terror was still the “real danger”, as the Twin Towers still burned.  They were – it is hard to remember – that deluded.

By the way – does any of this sound familiar (emphasis again added)?  Elements of this phenomenon anticpate blogging itself by about sixty years:

If the more bizarre accusations sound like the common currency of the show trials in Stalin’s Russia in these very years, that is no coincidence. The main exposés of fascist conspiracy emanated from Communist Party journalists like Albert Kahn and John Spivak. (Spivak himself was an operative for the Soviet NKVD.) Charges circulated through Kahn’s newssheet The Hour before being picked up in the liberal press. The Red agenda was straightforward in that the Brown Scare allowed the Left to discredit any opponent of radical New Deal policies. Scratch the surface of any enemy of the Left, they claimed, and you would find a fascist spy, a lyncher, a storm trooper.

Or a member of a “vast, right-wing” and now “eliminationist” “conspiracy”.
The conclusion is near the beginning, and it is damning (emphasis added):

Based on the record of past Democratic administrations, in the near future terrorism will almost certainly be coming home. This does not necessarily mean more attacks on American soil. Rather, public perceptions of terrorism will shift away from external enemies like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah and focus on domestic movements on the Right. We will hear a great deal about threats from racist groups and right-wing paramilitaries, and such a perceived wave of terrorism will have real and pernicious effects on mainstream politics. If history is any guide, the more loudly an administration denounces enemies on the far Right, the easier it is to stigmatize its respectable and nonviolent critics.

Like me.

Like Representative Bachmann.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Bernie Goldberg.

Like you, you bitter, gun-clinging Jesus freak, you.

———-

When I’d heard that the DNC had hired linguist George Lakoff, I openly worried that the left was embarking on a campaign of violence – violence against the language. It would be a campaign to control how the language itself imparts perceptions about politics.  It’s a battle the Democrats have been winning for decades, if only because they’re the only ones that show up.

The parallels with Orwell’s 1984, where language was being systematically engineered to reflect first political orthodoxy and, eventually, nothing at all, are impossible to miss.

In Mike Judge’s overlooked classic movie Idiocracy, society falls because idiots outbreed smart people.  Despots and demigogues have long known that the best way to take over a society is to win over the thugs and the dolts; the pen is, at least in the short term, not mightier than the sword or, in this case, the truncheon. Noriega had his Dignity Battalions; Mugabe, the Gukurahundi; Hitler and Mao and Stalin, the Sturmabteilung and Hitlerjugend, the Red Guards, the Komsomol, the legions of dedicated true believers who didn’t have to think, just do; to smear the Jew, the Bourgeois, the Wreckers today, and to beat, imprison and kill them tomorrow.  For society’s own good.

And the Big Left today has, on a rhetorical plane, the same basic thing; the legions of the ingenuous, the dedicated but not-excessively-bright, the people who are willing to suspend the rules of civility and decency in service of…

…what?  The meme that “Some of your fellow citizens’ beliefs will lead to mass murder!”?

I’d like to think that continuing to take the high road is the right response to this class-action slander.  I’m less confident in this all the time. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, DHS Secretary Napolitano has tipped the left’s hand.

Let’s try to roll it all together tomorrow.