Heh, it took me a while to figure out what his problem was with people who live in cities, especially considering he lives in LA. Then I realized he means the educated, the worldly, and liberals. And it became just another piece of divisive tripe. Well written, though.
"And what, really, is a Legion of Narcissists and a Confederacy of Despair against that?"
Umm, against what, exactly? I mean, I have a rough idea. He's talking about all those decent honest hard-working common folk of the great rural American City, eh? Something like that? These National Review articles are always the hardest things to get through. The thought going through my head the whole time is, "What is he talking about???" Everything is extremely vague, undefined, approximate.
I used to be determined to be a common folk...why? I derno.
The City in this essay is a METAPHOR, guys. It stands for American civilization. Whittle is not talking about whether a person actually lives on pavement or on grass. He is talking about American attitudes toward our own civilization, and he's using the city and the country as symbols to illustrate those attitudes.
In the metaphorical City of Civilization, the media, the universities, and the arts should be among the Stewards (metaphoric for the leaders) who inspire the City to grow and achieve. But instead, Whittle thinks that many of the leaders in these disciplines are so preoccupied with national self-loathing that they are tearing down the City from within. (Luke, for a fictional example of the mindset he means, think of Ellsworth Toohey.)
Whittle's "cosmopolitans" are the subset of the American cultural elite that tell us that we deserved September 11, that the government conspired to assassinate JFK or to fake the moon landing or to blow up the World Trade Center, that we are creating environmental holocaust just by existing, that we are cultural imperialists, that we can never redeem ourselves from slavery and the other wrongs of our national history, that the rest of the world hates us and rightly so, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. He says that there are too many people with these beliefs among the leaders of the City who hold the power to influence how all the rest of us think, through the media, the classroom, the movies.
He doesn't mean that the answer is that we should all become good ole down home hillbillies. He means that if we want our civilization to survive, we have to believe in ourselves and in our power to do good things as a civilization. Right now, he says, it sometimes seems easier to find that attitude in the values of the City's metaphorical outsiders (symbolically, small-town folks) than in its cultural insiders (symbolically, cosmopolitans.) He'd define those values as courage, responsibility, will, belief in ourselves.
I don't agree, Caleb, that he is talking about "the educated" or "the worldly." (For one thing, he is plainly educated and worldly himself.) Nor do I think he is talking about all liberals, or only liberals, though his target population certainly includes some. Although he clearly has a political stance, I don't think this essay is aimed so much at any particular POLITICAL point of view as he is at a currently-prevalent CULTURAL point of view -- that is, that we as a nation are The Enemy.
I can see why you might disagree with his clearly-apparent political sympathies, but it's hard for me to believe that any of you really disagree that our own self-loathing as a nation is a greater danger to our future than any "barbarian at the gate" who might attack us from without. The attacks from the outside can only succeed if we, as a civilization, give up on ourselves -- the way some of our cultural leaders seem to want us to. THAT'S his point. i thought the essay was brilliant. I'm surprised that all three of you misunderstood it.
Grammar police here: You asked about "he and I are alright." "He and I" is correct. Alright, however, is not all right. There is no such word as alright. It is two words: "all right." All right?
As for the I and me confusion, the test is simple: just use it in a sentence. You wouldn't say "Me is all right." You would say "I am all right." You wouldn't say "Him is all right." You would say "He is all right." Therefore, it is "He and I are all right." Or "We are all right." All right! Quiz tomorrow!!
You know, Mom, there isn't a consensus concerning alright. Some people maintain that it is correct. You are not the grammar judge and jury. Just the prosecutor. And I am the bailiff. And caleb can be the defendant.
Excellent summary, Mom. I get it a bit clearer now, though I still find it chock full of tired euphemisms.
And I can't really agree that our nation's "self-loathing" (a phrase often used to slur people who speak out against government actions they happen to disagree with) is a huge problem. People who say that we deserved or caused 911 or faked the moon landing are so far out on the fringe of rational society that the vast, vast majority of Americans will never take them seriously. They can prattle on in Universities all day long, and they might win over a few young minds, but most college students will just listen politely, roll their eyes, and go to intro biology instead.
The whole hand-wringing about our "cultural elite" just seems very Global Warming-esque to me. I googled "Santa Monica High School," trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about with students being taught that we're a terrorist nation. I figured there was some controversy at some point, but I found nothing. I'm guessing there was one stupid teacher who said some stupid things, and now the alarmists have another data point to add to the spreadsheet, like a heatwave in December.
I've been to college. It's college. Most people come out of it liberal, then spend 20 years in the real world that shape them much more than their PoliSci 202 professor did. I've watched a couple of the movies he's mentioned. The only people who remember In the Valley of Elah the next day are the blowhards who produced it and the guys who get really angry about it and extrapolate it into a national movement.
Rather than constantly firing the same exhausted accusations and panicked declarations back and forth at each other all the time, let's all go kill Osama bin Laden, OK? OK.
Caleb already appointed me the Grammar Police, or at least he called for the cops and I came running, so what I guess I am, actually, is a witness for the prosecution.
Here's The American Heritage® Book of English Usage on the point: (no time to make links, sorry, but you guys know how to Google.)
"Is it all right to use alright? Despite the appearance of alright in the works of such well-known writers as Flannery O’Connor, Langston Hughes, and James Joyce, the merger of all and right has never been accepted as standard. This is peculiar, since similar fusions like already and altogether have never raised any objections. The difference may lie in the fact that already and altogether became single words back in the Middle Ages, whereas alright (at least in its current meaning) has only been around for a little over a century and was called out by language critics as a misspelling. You might think a century would be plenty of time for such an unimposing spelling to gain acceptance as a standard variant, and you will undoubtedly come across alright in magazine and newspaper articles. But if you decide to use alright, especially in formal writing, you run the risk that some of your readers will view it as an error, while others may think you are willfully breaking convention."
Alright is listed as a word in the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
"Main Entry: al·right Listen to the pronunciation of alright Pronunciation: \(ˌ)ȯl-ˈrīt, ˈȯl-ˌ\ Function: adverb or adjective Date: 1887
: all right usage The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing (the first two years of medical school were alright — Gertrude Stein)."
So yup, yup, Laura, you are correct, there's a controversy, and I didn't know that. I'm just a dumb cop after all. Too busy eating doughnuts to keep up with the professional Grammar Cop literature. However, even knowing that there's disagreement, alright looks all wrong to me, and I think it would be best avoided in any formal or professional writing. Alright may evolve eventually into standard usage but it clearly hasn't gotten there yet.
Wow. Mom, YOU should've written this article, it would've been way better. I understood that the city thing was a metaphor, and I had a rough idea what it meant, but the writing was just so unspecific and vague. I don't disagree that our worst enemies come from within, but I would probably identify them very differently than the author of this article would. Yeah, if the US goes to hell, it will be because of us, not because of people outside our borders.
"You are a common person (if you aren't, you should be, so feel guilty). There are a lot of people who are out to get you and think you are scum, your life sucks (it does), and the world sucks (it does). Don't listen to the media; they're evil. Listen to me. Look at John McCain and Sarah Palin over there. They know what it's like, and they fight it day and night, just like you (unless you don't). That's why you should vote for them."
The 'common people' (which is just another vague political term) don't need someone to paint a picture for them. They need the truth; this is just more media.
I'd rather have someone smarter than me run the country. Maybe I'm saying this in the face of 'mockery,' but I think that someone with an MBA from Harvard will learn about and run a gas station more effectively than any other random person.
SPongy, I'm sure you're WAY smarter than Sarah Palin. She hunts, ya know. I hear she even rides snowmobiles. And her husband's a, get this, oil rig worker! Sheesh. Where do they find these people?
Dad, thanks for the complement, but I was not implying I am smarter than Sarah Palin. My last paragraph was a response to the part of the article that talked about the man with an MBA from Harvard.
19 comments:
City dwellers don't have values?
What a ridiculous concept.
Heh, it took me a while to figure out what his problem was with people who live in cities, especially considering he lives in LA. Then I realized he means the educated, the worldly, and liberals. And it became just another piece of divisive tripe. Well written, though.
That said, he likes McCain, so he and I are alright.
(Grammar Police, is that proper usage of "I" or should it be "me?" Or "We?")
Your alright with anyone who likes McCain?
Thats odd.
Surprise!
(I haven't talked to you in SO long!)
Speaking of grammar police-I meant "you're".
I type faster than my brain goes.
"And what, really, is a Legion of Narcissists and a Confederacy of Despair against that?"
Umm, against what, exactly? I mean, I have a rough idea. He's talking about all those decent honest hard-working common folk of the great rural American City, eh? Something like that? These National Review articles are always the hardest things to get through. The thought going through my head the whole time is, "What is he talking about???" Everything is extremely vague, undefined, approximate.
I used to be determined to be a common folk...why? I derno.
The City in this essay is a METAPHOR, guys. It stands for American civilization. Whittle is not talking about whether a person actually lives on pavement or on grass. He is talking about American attitudes toward our own civilization, and he's using the city and the country as symbols to illustrate those attitudes.
In the metaphorical City of Civilization, the media, the universities, and the arts should be among the Stewards (metaphoric for the leaders) who inspire the City to grow and achieve. But instead, Whittle thinks that many of the leaders in these disciplines are so preoccupied with national self-loathing that they are tearing down the City from within. (Luke, for a fictional example of the mindset he means, think of Ellsworth Toohey.)
Whittle's "cosmopolitans" are the subset of the American cultural elite that tell us that we deserved September 11, that the government conspired to assassinate JFK or to fake the moon landing or to blow up the World Trade Center, that we are creating environmental holocaust just by existing, that we are cultural imperialists, that we can never redeem ourselves from slavery and the other wrongs of our national history, that the rest of the world hates us and rightly so, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. He says that there are too many people with these beliefs among the leaders of the City who hold the power to influence how all the rest of us think, through the media, the classroom, the movies.
He doesn't mean that the answer is that we should all become good ole down home hillbillies. He means that if we want our civilization to survive, we have to believe in ourselves and in our power to do good things as a civilization. Right now, he says, it sometimes seems easier to find that attitude in the values of the City's metaphorical outsiders (symbolically, small-town folks) than in its cultural insiders (symbolically, cosmopolitans.) He'd define those values as courage, responsibility, will, belief in ourselves.
I don't agree, Caleb, that he is talking about "the educated" or "the worldly." (For one thing, he is plainly educated and worldly himself.) Nor do I think he is talking about all liberals, or only liberals, though his target population certainly includes some. Although he clearly has a political stance, I don't think this essay is aimed so much at any particular POLITICAL point of view as he is at a currently-prevalent CULTURAL point of view -- that is, that we as a nation are The Enemy.
I can see why you might disagree with his clearly-apparent political sympathies, but it's hard for me to believe that any of you really disagree that our own self-loathing as a nation is a greater danger to our future than any "barbarian at the gate" who might attack us from without. The attacks from the outside can only succeed if we, as a civilization, give up on ourselves -- the way some of our cultural leaders seem to want us to. THAT'S his point. i thought the essay was brilliant. I'm surprised that all three of you misunderstood it.
Grammar police here: You asked about "he and I are alright." "He and I" is correct. Alright, however, is not all right. There is no such word as alright. It is two words: "all right." All right?
As for the I and me confusion, the test is simple: just use it in a sentence. You wouldn't say "Me is all right." You would say "I am all right." You wouldn't say "Him is all right." You would say "He is all right." Therefore, it is "He and I are all right." Or "We are all right." All right! Quiz tomorrow!!
You know, Mom, there isn't a consensus concerning alright. Some people maintain that it is correct. You are not the grammar judge and jury. Just the prosecutor. And I am the bailiff. And caleb can be the defendant.
Excellent summary, Mom. I get it a bit clearer now, though I still find it chock full of tired euphemisms.
And I can't really agree that our nation's "self-loathing" (a phrase often used to slur people who speak out against government actions they happen to disagree with) is a huge problem. People who say that we deserved or caused 911 or faked the moon landing are so far out on the fringe of rational society that the vast, vast majority of Americans will never take them seriously. They can prattle on in Universities all day long, and they might win over a few young minds, but most college students will just listen politely, roll their eyes, and go to intro biology instead.
The whole hand-wringing about our "cultural elite" just seems very Global Warming-esque to me. I googled "Santa Monica High School," trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about with students being taught that we're a terrorist nation. I figured there was some controversy at some point, but I found nothing. I'm guessing there was one stupid teacher who said some stupid things, and now the alarmists have another data point to add to the spreadsheet, like a heatwave in December.
I've been to college. It's college. Most people come out of it liberal, then spend 20 years in the real world that shape them much more than their PoliSci 202 professor did. I've watched a couple of the movies he's mentioned. The only people who remember In the Valley of Elah the next day are the blowhards who produced it and the guys who get really angry about it and extrapolate it into a national movement.
Rather than constantly firing the same exhausted accusations and panicked declarations back and forth at each other all the time, let's all go kill Osama bin Laden, OK? OK.
Caleb already appointed me the Grammar Police, or at least he called for the cops and I came running, so what I guess I am, actually, is a witness for the prosecution.
Here's The American Heritage® Book of English Usage on the point: (no time to make links, sorry, but you guys know how to Google.)
"Is it all right to use alright? Despite the appearance of alright in the works of such well-known writers as Flannery O’Connor, Langston Hughes, and James Joyce, the merger of all and right has never been accepted as standard. This is peculiar, since similar fusions like already and altogether have never raised any objections. The difference may lie in the fact that already and altogether became single words back in the Middle Ages, whereas alright (at least in its current meaning) has only been around for a little over a century and was called out by language critics as a misspelling. You might think a century would be plenty of time for such an unimposing spelling to gain acceptance as a standard variant, and you will undoubtedly come across alright in magazine and newspaper articles. But if you decide to use alright, especially in formal writing, you run the risk that some of your readers will view it as an error, while others may think you are willfully breaking convention."
Alright is listed as a word in the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
"Main Entry:
al·right Listen to the pronunciation of alright
Pronunciation:
\(ˌ)ȯl-ˈrīt, ˈȯl-ˌ\
Function:
adverb or adjective
Date:
1887
: all right
usage The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing (the first two years of medical school were alright — Gertrude Stein)."
So yup, yup, Laura, you are correct, there's a controversy, and I didn't know that. I'm just a dumb cop after all. Too busy eating doughnuts to keep up with the professional Grammar Cop literature. However, even knowing that there's disagreement, alright looks all wrong to me, and I think it would be best avoided in any formal or professional writing. Alright may evolve eventually into standard usage but it clearly hasn't gotten there yet.
Wow. Mom, YOU should've written this article, it would've been way better. I understood that the city thing was a metaphor, and I had a rough idea what it meant, but the writing was just so unspecific and vague. I don't disagree that our worst enemies come from within, but I would probably identify them very differently than the author of this article would. Yeah, if the US goes to hell, it will be because of us, not because of people outside our borders.
Here is what this article said to me:
"You are a common person (if you aren't, you should be, so feel guilty). There are a lot of people who are out to get you and think you are scum, your life sucks (it does), and the world sucks (it does). Don't listen to the media; they're evil. Listen to me. Look at John McCain and Sarah Palin over there. They know what it's like, and they fight it day and night, just like you (unless you don't). That's why you should vote for them."
The 'common people' (which is just another vague political term) don't need someone to paint a picture for them. They need the truth; this is just more media.
I'd rather have someone smarter than me run the country. Maybe I'm saying this in the face of 'mockery,' but I think that someone with an MBA from Harvard will learn about and run a gas station more effectively than any other random person.
SPongy, I'm sure you're WAY smarter than Sarah Palin. She hunts, ya know. I hear she even rides snowmobiles. And her husband's a, get this, oil rig worker! Sheesh. Where do they find these people?
Dad, thanks for the complement, but I was not implying I am smarter than Sarah Palin. My last paragraph was a response to the part of the article that talked about the man with an MBA from Harvard.
Post a Comment