I may be the only person in the western world who can say this truthfully:  I was converted to conservatism while an English major in college.

My major advisor – Dr. James Blake (easily the finest among many, many fine professors I had at my obscure but talent-rich little college in the middle of nowhere) was so far to the right, he described himself as a “monarchist”, with a straight face; he also introduced me to a series of writers that helped push me along on my journey from left to right; Dostoevski, Solzhenitzyn, Tolstoii, Paul Johnson, and even P.J. O’Rourke. 

Dr. Blake and I weren’t entirely alone; the other upper-division major at the time was a guy named Scott.  We’d been friends since high school; a year older than me, we’d played guitar together in any number of abortive bands; he wrote a column under the pseudonym “Madagascar Red” in the college paper that I edited which, with the hindsight and gauzy soft focus that two decades’ remove grants all things, was as funny as anything in The Onion.  Honest.

Anyway, Scott was another conservative in the English department.  And as my own journey to the right coalesced, the three of us became something of a conservative brickbat-throwing machine at Jamestown.

The school’s library was run by quite a different specimen – a woman who was, in addition to the wife of my History minor advisor, a bit to the left of even the academic norm.  A well-meaning sort, but…well…

She had a “suggestion book” at the entrance to the stacks; if someone wanted to see a book or other resource, they could write it into the book.  There was a column for the librarian’s response. 

One chilly October morning, Scott and I walked into the library.  He looked around, grabbed a pen, and wrote down “Please get a copy of God And Man At Yale“. 

The response took a week or two; finally, the librarian wrote something snarky and dismissive.

Wrong move.

In an exchange that resembled a blog comment section, fifteen years before blogs were invented, Scott and the librarian mixed it up – he making the case for including this key, vital book in the collection, she backpedalling and trying to justify (eventually) its exclusion.

I think Scott graduated without seeing the issue resolved. 

The long and short of it being that the whole fracas was my introduction to the pure, simple joy of being a conservative underdog, duking it out with the leaden, lumpen establishment.

Just saying; without that dust-up on William F. Buckley’s behalf, this blog might never have existed.

A reader sent me this via email:

I missed when you started referring to Democrats as
Tics but I don’t like it. When I see you use Tics I
think of Nick Coleman using the term “Wingnuts.”
Coleman is a jerk and an idiot so I don’t like most of
what emanates from his keyboard anyway.
When he uses Wingnuts I think that he’s run out of
argument and now has to resort to insults.

To be fair, there’s a difference.

…I think it’s funny that the people who whinge the hardest when someone drops the “ic” from “Democratic”, alleging some Rovian conspiracy to insult Democraticicicics (as opposed to just not wanting to type the two extra letters)…

…are the same people who use the phrase “Swift-boating” to mean “character assassination”.  Ironically, at that.

Just saying.

That is all.

Australian Santas-in-training (?) told ho,ho,ho is sexist and derogatory:

Thirty trainees at a Santa course in Adelaide last month, held by recruitment company Westaff, were urged to replace the traditional festive greeting with “ha, ha, ha”.

Thankfully, not everyone is jumping on the sleigh:

A Santa veteran of 11 years who attended the course told the Sunday Mail the trainer was very clear in spelling out no to “ho”.

Two Santa hopefuls reportedly left the course after the trainer’s edict.

The bitch of it the ironic part is that “ho” isn’t even an Australian term, unless you’re gardening:

The term “ho” is also American slang for a prostitute. “We were told it (ho) was a derogatory term for females and can upset people,” said the Santa, who did not want to be identified publicly.

“As far as I’m concerned, a hoe is something you dig the ground with.

“I don’t think you’ll hear too many Santas saying `ha, ha, ha’.”

Tommy Lee Jones, maybe.

Critics have branded the instruction for Santas to use “Ha! ha! ha! Merry Christmas” as nonsense and madness.

University of South Australia communications senior lecturer Dr Jackie Cook said any banning of “ho, ho, ho” was “nonsense”.

“Can we use a garden hoe anymore? Do we have to remove that?” she said.

And if they come for Hoe, pretty soon they’ll come for Whole, Home, Honey…

(more…)

As part of my continuing mission to make the English language suck less, I’m going to continue my quest to have certain words and phrases dragged out behind the outhouse and shot in the face.

Anon:

1. “Political Kabuki” – May anyone that uses this phrase for any non-ironic reason (and most ironic ones, frankly) be forced to commit political seppuku.
2. Fo Shizzle – while it was passé for white guys to add “izzle” to words a la Snoop Dogg even before Mr. Dogg started the trend, I think we now have ample reason to take anyone who carries on the tradition and make them a pizzle. And I’m not talking Snoop-talk.
3. “Brah” – This is the white-trash variant on “Bro”. It happens because the vowel “ah” takes less muscular effort in the face than the more-conventional “o” sound in “Bro”. Its recent popularity shows that Orwell was right; decades of lowest-common-denominator education have begun turning our language into “Duckspeak”, an unintelligible brand of gibberish. Anyway – for the sake of freedom, to say nothing of the language – say “Bro”, or just keep your gabbling gob shut.
4. “Developing” in reference to a “story” on a blog – you are not a news operation, and the story is not “developing”; you just ran out of stuff to write about, and you’re not very bright to begin with.

That is all.

UPDATE: Ed from Eagan writes to note “[Brah] is Hawaiian, FYI. It’s not a white-trash variant on Bro, although it may seem that way when you watch Dog the Bounty Hunter. ;-)”

Very well. Say “Brah” until the poi get submerged in pohoehoe. IN Hawaii. You can hang out at the drop-in counseling center bail bond shop with Dog the Bounty Hunter and say it all day! Just not here on the mainland.

Thanks.

Kerry from Smoothing Plane has the same reaction to the term “closure” that I do; it’s terribly overused, and totally wrong.

Especially as the last bodies are recovered from the Mississippi:

“Families will get closure…”, “Closure…”, “Another body pulled….closure”. Will billboards be pulled onto the roofs of buildings, “Got closure?”…? Relatives and families of the dead will not get closure; they will learn what happened to their missing father, son, mother or daughter. The palpable empty nothing of not knowing will untangle into dense, light cannot escape its gravity grief…All language less than rituals of grief for the dead shame and banish grief, as if it were some drooling cripple, muttering shattered curses, from whom we look away, masquerading the stone in the stomach.

I don’t know what kind of traffic Kerry Hogan gets, but he should get more. 

UPDATE:  The last body was found just after I wrote this.  May God – or the Great Spirit or Karma or random physiology or whatever you choose to believe in – bring peace to the families. 

I’m starting to find my power, here.   A few years ago, I demanded that “bloggy” and all derivatives thereunto appertaining be excised from the language.  I haven’t seen it much lately.  It is a sweet victory indeed, and I claim all credit. 

I’m of two minds about this story, about Alabama’s Stillman College hosting a conference on…not race relations in general, but the “N” word itself:

With a debate swirling nationwide over the n-word, a historically black college in Alabama has set aside four days to discuss the racial slur.Participants at the conference, which began Thursday and ends Sunday, discussed topics ranging from the origins of the epithet to whether juggling a few letters makes it socially acceptable at the NSurrection Conference at Stillman College.

Organizers said the goal of the event is to challenge the use of the n-word “through the use of intelligent dialogue and a thorough examination of black history.”

Debate over the use of the word has escalated in recent months, with comedian Michael Richards racial rant prompting black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and California Rep. Maxine Waters to urge the public and the entertainment industry to stop using it.

Uh…waitaminnit.

Is there really “debate” over the word? Doesn’t pretty much everyone agree that it’s wrong?

Well, of course not; the conference does indeed address the very incongruity that has gone through every thinking person’s mind since they saw Richard Pryor’s first movie; why the “N-word” is the most caustic word in the history of the language when some people say it, and a term of endearment when others do:

“I really think that as far as white people are concerned, the word is almost on its way out,” said Hacker, who is white. “That said, there are a lot of white people who still in the privacy of their own minds think the word even if they don’t use it because they regard black people as genetically inferior and that word categorizes that.”

Kovan Flowers, co-founder of AbolishTheNWord.com, said striking the word from use would help set an example for other races.

“We can’t say anything to Hispanics, or whites or whoever unless we stop using it ourselves,” he said. “It’s the root of the mind-set that’s affecting why people are low, from housing to jobs to education.”

Stillman senior Maurice Williams said he organized the conference hoping to educate his peers about the history of the word. The event includes a community fair, charity basketball game, unity march and discussions ranging from the word’s origin to its use among various ethnic groups.

“I had to understand that a lot of the images that we portray in television, in the media, in the hip-hop environment — all of those things have the same connotations as the n-word itself, so therefore it’s the n-word personified,” Williams said. “Where do you see another culture portraying some of these same images?”

Not just “where”, but “why”?

Rapper Tupac Shakur was credited with legitimizing the term “nigga” when he came out with the song “N.I.G.G.A.,” which he said stood for “Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.”

Stillman English professor Alisea McLeod said she doesn’t buy it.

“It’s hogwash. What this is really indicative of is a heart problem,” she said. “What is coming out of mouths is what is coming out of souls. These are not words that are uplifting and I think (they) point to a bigger problem — a lack of self-love.”

“Self-love”, perhaps.

Self-awareness, as well. Shakur’s “Strictly 4 Ma N.I.G.G.A.Z.” came out in 1993, two years after “N.W.A“, short for “N___z With Attitude”, a group that achieved immense success without the benefit of any radio airplay in the late eighties. It also happened nearly two decades after Richard Pryor released “That N_____’s Crazy”, his first big mainstream success.

Wanna get rid of the word? Stop saying it.