Today we're going all the way back to my 5th grade teacher, Ms. Taylor, and the SRA color-coded teaching method (Skinnerian theory...in a box!) that everyone of a certain age will probably remember, and no one not of that age has any idea about.
Specifically...this is about words. The use and comprehension of them. And WTF has happened to the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer such that the Murrican industry that is, by far, the #1 user of words -- the media -- is no longer capable of using words to explain to their readers, viewers and listeners really important things that are actually happening in the world, what those things mean in context, and how they got that way.
For a fast explainer about how we have come to this doubleplusungood place, let's turn it over to the late, great George Carlin:
"Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that."
He was right. It is as simple as that.
And the concealing words that we'll be taking apart are, by far, three of the terms most abused by political pundits who need to pretend to an expertise they do not have, while at the same time desperately trying to not reveal any portion of an ugly, underlying truth they are being paid to elide.
They are the noun "partisan", the adjective "tribal" and the verb "polarized".
And rounding out the field, the adjective "divisive".
Interested?
Please ask regular big dollar donors to, say, The Bulwark or The Lincoln Project or No Labels to deposit $100 to support the continuation of this post... :-)
While I wait for the donation to pour in (and really, $100 is just a suggestion. If those big dollar donors feel moved to drop $1,000 or $10,000 or more, no one will complain) please enjoy this October, 2016 video of a few smug, greedy, well-fed white Republicans who labored mightily (and profited enormously) by using the language of pundits for decades to conceal the monstrous sins of the GOP as that party sank deeper and deeper into depravity until, at last, it became capable of manifesting a monster like Trump.
And now that the Bad Thing that they all swore would never happen has happened, this is them making still more asinine predictions and arguing over which of them is more Simon pure and blameless.
2 comments:
SRA's, that's a deep cut. I wonder if they were regional, because I remember them from schools in New York, but not Phoenix. When I told my second grade teacher I had read them all he said "That's impossible." Just another brick in the wall / "Wrong! Do it again." And Mr. Le Ray wasn't half bad as they go. Happy father's day, Mr. Glass.
Damn, My eyes! My ears! My Brain! My churning stomach!
Monkeys throwing their shit at each other on live TV.
When they throw shit at the other person and it sticks because their is some stickery truth in the poop.
When they throw their shit at themselves there is no stickery truth.
Why would that be? A morning Joe barrel of monkey poop flinging.
Eye drops to sooth the eyes. Ear drops to cool the ears. Aspirin to chill the Brian and anti acid tablet for the stomach.
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