Greetings all of my valueless, soulless brethren!

I have always found politics very interesting because of its use and misuse of language.   Politicians will and have always used the worst language to categorize their opponents. While I find some of the vitriol spewed offensive and/or ridiculous, I've come to learn it's part of the process.  And while I don't excuse some of the venomous attacks given by surrogates of candidates (PACs, religious leaders, etc.), on the left and the right, I know that it too is part of the beautiful process.

I DO NOT excuse the media when it takes on the language spewed by either political sphere.  They are supposed to be the filter to make sure language is fair and accurate.  Leave the flowery language to we activists and bloggers.

There was an op-ed in the Boston Globe today called "Caught in the grips of linguistic paranoia" by a linguist and analyst named Nataly Kelly which really struck home with me.

WHAT MAKES the largest military power on earth tremble in its boots? What causes an entire nation of people - the majority of whom descended from non-English speakers - to shudder in fear? What provokes outrage at debates and town hall meetings in the current presidential campaign? Language, that's what.

Linguistic paranoia seems to have reached unprecedented levels in recent years, a phenomenon that would probably shock our Founding Fathers.

Why are we so afraid of other languages? Assuming you're not the type to be incensed about seeing "French Fries" on a menu, tell me: what bad things would happen if we became a multilingual nation?

More below...

True story. The scene is a Manhattan supper club, circa 1952. Eleanor Roosevelt approaches a table at which John and Elaine Steinbeck are dining. Elaine makes introductions, and then...

Eleanor Roosevelt: "When I go to the Soviets, they ask, 'Does that awful treatment of farmers still happen in the U.S.?’ I say, 'No, my husband and John Steinbeck took care of that.’"

John Steinbeck: "That is the best literary review I've ever received."

-- National Steinbeck Center video archive

August 6, 1945 was the horrible dawn of the atomic age at Hiroshima.

It's also the less well-known debut of an equally iconic, equally American killing technology:  the electric chair, which claimed its first victim on August 6, 1890 in New York's Auburn Prison.

This weird hybrid of penal reformism, naive techno-optimism and cutthroat corporate competition between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse made a nauseating botch of its maiden usage upon the person of otherwise obscure wife-murderer William Kemmler.

Cross-posted from Executed Today

originally posted at Docudharma
Getting Started
Barack Obama said something today that I think is beautiful from a framing perspective:

I mean it's like these guys take pride in ignorance! It's like they like being ignorant.

(hat tip to ruff4life)

I believe this is the counter frame to the Elitist Democrat.

Nobody wants to be ignorant, and depending on leaders who are proud of their ignorance and demand ignorance from their followers cannot be good for the running of a country.

Ignorance is simply not good public policy.

I am an authentic American Negro. I'm descended from freemen and slaves, slave bosses and slave owners, and the Native people who gave them sanctuary, family and hope. I say all this to offer my credentials, my Certificate of Authenticity, so you know I'm qualified to speak for at least one Black person: me. Now, so you don't get confused, that doesn't mean I'm suggesting that I am authorized to speak for all the Negroes of the Great Diaspora (settle!), but as a wise, old white guy (Carnegie, Zigler, Bozo? I'm not sure and don't care to look) said: "I've lived this life and I have the right to talk about it." The current debate over the use of the "n-Word" (that's "nigger," in case you're confused) has become so nettlesome that it has set the flower of fecund, white womanhood tearfully a-twitter.

Pay close attention, people. This is terribly important and very few of my ilk will say this, even in sotto voce.

The "n-word?" Use it. You have my express permission. Let me break this down.

The last few days a topic has been in the news that I have stayed away from because of the political implications. However as a researcher the topic has always been one of interest so I thought I would write a diary on the topic. I write this as I am curious as to everyone’s thoughts on the topic.
The central question of the diary: What power, if any, do words have?

I guess the first distinction would be: Where does meaning come from? Is a tree a tree because it is a tree, due to some inherent "Treeness" to it? Or is it just an artificial label we put on it for convenience sake? I would suggest the second option. I do not think there is anything unique to an object to make it a "True" object of what we call it, we name it what we name it for social convenience.

A tree could just as easily have been called a chainsaw but it would still be what we call a tree today, at least in its properties, i.e. "a woody perennial plant having a single usually elongate main stem generally with few or no branches on its lower part."

So does language matter? If the words themselves are interchangeable might it be argued that words have no power? I would suggest otherwise.

<more after the break>

When this political season is done, if not before, there are some phrases which have crept into our discourse, which should be terminated with extreme prejudice.

I have a few to start with.

• <x> threw <y> under the bus
• <x> was against <y> before he was for it, or vice versa
• flip-flop

Today Lou talked about Barack Obama's statement that children should learn how to speak spanish. Lou did not literally say it, but given his whining about immigration and his focus on Obama today displays that he fears bilingualism.

I have two professions. One of them -- a research academic specializing in language, discrimination and ideology -- has been stagnant for the last years. My PhD is in linguistics, and I taught for ten years at the University of Michigan. For the last eight years I have been writing fiction full time.   Which I still do, but just recently I agreed to revise a non-fiction book I wrote for Routledge ten years ago. It's called English with an Accent: Lanugage, Ideology and Discrimination in the U.S.

It's a well known book in academic circles and still the standard text in undergraduate courses on related topics. It is the pinnacle of my academic career. It has been called a landmark book. And it's very out of date.

I'm writing about critical language studies here because in my experience, even open-minded socially liberal people are under-informed about the less visible role language plays in maintaining the dominant ideology.

I'm also writing because revising English with an Accent, I have to solicit a lot of opinions from a lot of people. This was much more difficult when I was first writing the book eleven years ago. Now I can set things up on the internet and get a wider range of opinions and discussion.

And that's where the challenge lies.

This is messing with my mind. So many of us are saying we are ashamed of America, and rightly so, in my opinion. And yet, many also are in agreement with Michelle Obama's statement that she's never been more proud of America in her adult life. People are getting involved in politics and voting in record numbers. Seeems nearly everyone is determined to take our country back from a brutal administration.

Why do so many politicians and media figures keep saying "Osama" when they mean "Obama"?

Sure some of them are jackasses who think they're being clever.  But what about the rest of them who should know better?  Who know they will be flamed to well-done for making that mistake?

Considering for a moment the Golden Rule, I would like to respectfully suggest that we clean up our linguistic act.
Why? You say you love spitting fire at those dirty so and sos? Well,

I just watched Obama's Press guy on the Joe Scare-boro show.  He was asked about the so-called gas tax holiday and launched into a very accurate, technical, well-thought out, academic, but wholly forgettable response.  

If the Republicans have done nothing, they have zeroed in on the art of short, repeatable answer.  I will grant you, that having a fifth grader in the Whitehouse made this easy and absolutely necessary, however,  Democrats have to learn how to break it down:

Fixing the problems in America requires new thinking and new methods of action, new processes and new organization. People resent the elected offical as master, but until recently have simply grumbled. Many are beginning to find their voice as they join the web. Day by day the processes of reporting, vetting, investigating, refuting or simply commenting expand in scope and detail (quite a trick, that) and ease of availability. It is a tool of fantastic organizational capability. And now it fits in the palm of your hand. And it is changing the national language.

The manipulation of language is always a tricky thing. It's usually done with vagueness & imprecise words that are intended to make things "better." But when you start creating a world where people are obscure in saying what they mean, it makes it that much easier for people to not mean what they say, or deal & talk about the underlying problems the vague words are meant to mask. Whether the motivations or intentions are good ones is a matter of perspective, but what about when it's done in the name of fairness?

In yesterday's Kansas City Star, they recount the story of Tory Bowen. She alleges that four years ago when she was a University of Nebraska student, she was raped by Pamir Safi. The really interesting part of this story is Ms. Bowen's contention that her 1st Amendment rights have been violated by the trial judge that supervised two trials, one ending in a hung jury & the other a mistrial. The problem? Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront would not allow the use of the word "Rape" at a trial about whether a rape occurred, because it might be prejudicial to the defendant.

Let me say up front that this is my first ever diary on a political blog.  Ever.  

I have been reading the Kos for a while now, and have seen how the tone has changed over the course of the election, as it has just about everywhere else.  One of those places has been my own happy Democratic home.

Our marriage, which has weathered all kinds of hell, the likes of which would make Oprah's Book Club faint, is really struggling with the issues raised by this election.  

And yet, just like all those challenges we met and vanquished in the past, we know this is going to make us stronger and more in love than ever.

If we can ever figure out what the hell is going on and how to talk to each other about it without having to put on flak jackets.

Sound familiar?

So. Kossacks.  Follow me below the fold.  My marriage, like our beloved Democratic Party, is in desperate need of intervention.  Because the Party needs unity, badly, and can perhaps learn much from my serio-comic melodrama of a marriage. Whether that means a Party in unity or two factions in two twin beds remains to be seen.