Confessions of a grammar freak

Few things in my life have more succinctly summed up my personality than this cartoon.  Several friends can attest to the stress I had before getting a tattoo on my shoulder recently, should there or should there not be a comma in there?  This debate took longer than picking the tattoo itself and ended up including the guy who ran the tattoo place, all of his employees and everyone who had the misfortune of walking in while I was there.  At least I was entertaining.

This got me thinking.  Why do I care so much about grammar?  I mean, when I was on that business trip to Albuquerque did I really have to boycott a perfectly good restaurant because “unless there is a woman there named Margarita and she’s having a personal special, I cannot walk in” ???  Couldn’t I have just asked them to change their sign? (Truthfully, this was several years ago and that option just occurred to me yesterday. D’Oh!)

I tell myself that poor grammar and punctuation habits mark a devolution in our ability to use our language skills and therefore will lead to an inability to communicate.  I will add that in an era when we need to communicate more rather than less if we are going to survive — the GOP does not have a monopoly on apocalyptic ideas — we need to pay closer attention to this.  You see, it’s not a mere pet peeve, it’s my concern for humanity.

Or I blame others.  I blame my sixth grade teacher for making us diagram sentences for weeks on end. (Side note: he was a mean bastard for sure but the rumor that he once threw me out a window is not true.)  I blame my college roommate, Marsha not Ali, who was a English major whose grammar was so bad it made me sick back then.  She asked me to correct her whenever she made a mistake and I like to think that started all this craziness.

The bottom line is that I will never know what sparked my obsession with apostrophe usage, action verbs and adverb hatred.

I will end with one last idea.  Dear US journalists:  When you add “ing” to a verb, it becomes a noun.  That’s called the gerund.  Unless you are writing a headline, stop doing this and use a goddamn verb.  Does everyone else feel better?  I know that I do.

Conservatism, where art thou?

(from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conservatism)

Conservatism, One entry found.

Main Entry: Conservatism, pronunciation

kən-ˈsər-və–ˌti-zəm

Function:  noun

Date: 1832

1.capitalized a: the principles and policies of a Conservative party b: the Conservative party

2 a: disposition in politics to preserve what is established b: a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change ; specifically : such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (as retirement income or health-care coverage)

3: the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

 

I have several questions about this as a philosophy and a political strategy.  Clearly when candidates say they are conservative they are referring to 2 but even that definition includes a resistance to change, something the McCain campaign claims it is all about.  How can he be both?  Can anyone?  Is this ‘change’ reference to George W. Bush’s policies?  Is change needed because his policies were so bad that people who normally oppose abrupt change have, in fact, embraced something new as a result?  Is this definition even relevant?  It is from 1832.  To get to the bottom of this I dug a little deeper.

This was one site I found, http://www.conservative-resources.com/definition-of-conservative.html — this page says the following:

Just like the definition of liberal, the definition of conservative can be divided into 6 key principles:

1.    Belief in natural law

2.    Belief in established institutions

3.    Preference for liberty over equality

4.    Suspicion of power—and of human nature

5.    Belief in exceptionalism

6.    Belief in the individual

 

Now, I am not a conservative by any definition.  I am a total, unabashed liberal.  I believe our government should do for us collectively what we cannot do individually. What I would like to do, and hopefully this isn’t asking too much, is to hear from conservatives.  What does it mean to you?  Do you fit into any of these categories? Do you feel your beliefs are distorted by the media, covered fairly, not at all?  None of the above?  How does your view of conservatism guide your political choices and how do you think the current GOP presidential ticket fits in.

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Palin: not vetted by McCain, not vetted by the press, how can the public expect to vet her?

 

http://pol.moveon.org/palinclock/

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Barack Obama makes reasonable comment on Iraq, media freaks out

Maybe it is because of the Bataan death march quality of the 2008 Democratic primary process (seriously, over a year of it?  WTF?) that lulled our press into just expecting political news to fall into their laps but now they have gone back to their really lazy ways.  Yes, the national press corps are lazy.  Their job is both 'glamorous' and crappy at the same time.  Political reporters are herded around from campaign event to campaign event where they cover the same speech until they can repeat it themselves.  Back in Washington, DC (and elsewhere) pundits, spoiled from the primary, need to drum up controversy to attract viewers and make themselves feel relevant. 

 

When Senator Obama said he was going to bring the troops home as soon as he got in and put the timetable out there I think most people with a brain understood that the specifics of the timetable were never written in stone.  Any president is going to have some leeway in terms of how to end a war.  Remember the two most dangerous points of any armed conflict are getting in and getting out.  The big deal about Obama's position is his commitment to getting out or Iraq. To harp on the date we get misses the point.

 

Our media are there to keep our government honest and should call a candidate, or elected official, out when they go back on a promise but this is not that.  Our press today prefers the horserace to substance and recent coverage just proves that point.

 

Thank god for the Daily Show and Jon Stewart.

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