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Friday, February 19, 2010

Our shrinking Amercian Vocabulary

The English language has a wealth of words; but the Amercian version is lean, primarily because of cultural debasement. Amercians universaly use one crude explicative as a catchall adjective or adverb. Crude is (bleeping) cool. Even Disney, the family company, produces cartoons now that are marinated in the banalities of ghetto-speak and gruff behavior. Can you contemplate the creative types at Disney today producing "Johnny Appleseed," with a theme song "The Lord is good to me; and so I thank the Lord..." ?
Small wonder the mass of our media has taken the low road. The media is a follower, not a leader. The low road is the quickest route to return on equity.
How ironic then that we have the most educated population in the history of the world, if you accept the endorsement of a university degree; and yet we produce the highest levels of lowt, vile, degrading "art." Instead of demanding that artists enlighten us, that they raise our eyes and intellects, we reserve our applause for them that drags us into the gutter. I believe this is because of an ill-conceived notion of equality. Critiques of inferior cultures are forbidden--are condemned as bigotry.
Which leads me to "elucubrate," a perfectly good word which know one with my hearing never has used. Dated 1623, it means to work by lamplight or to work far into the night. What a perfect verb for our younger generation of night owls. My son elucebrated on the computer until three a.m. Alas, here in the USA, elucubrate is eloigned.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

President Obama was part of the process

President Obama on Feb. 9. told White House reporters that the public is rejecting the process that created the Democratic healthcare package, not the package itself. His words indicate (read the transcript for yourself at the White House web site) that he considers himself to be aloof from the horse trading and payoffs that molded the bill. In fact, he was a considerable cog in that legislative wheel, hosting meetings and essentially committing to sign any legislation that crossed his desk, no matter how odious.
He also suggests that Amercians would embrace the legislation if they were not distracted by the politics that created it. The inference here is that Americans do not understand the bill's contents. Let's put aside the point that there yet is no final bill. My view is that Amercians do in fact understand the essentials of the legislation and are unconvinced it will curb costs without reducing quality. Great Recession nothwithstanding, they maintain more trust in the market's availability to supply goods at a reasonable cost than in the government's ability to do the same.