Number 96
Dave Da Bee forwarded some remarks on voter registration in Ohio, along with several questions, including "is it making life unpleasant, does it look ugly or teapot-tempestuous?" I respond to much political news like the dog in Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon: What we say to dogs ~ "Bad dog, Ginger! Don't do that, Ginger!" What dogs hear ~ "- - - - Ginger! - - - - Ginger!" And Far Side cats, of course, don't even hear their own name. In news on voter registration, I never hear my own name so I hear only about every tenth word, a bit better than a cat.
Anyway, the ugliness of a political situation isn't always related to its reality or importance. This one isn't getting a lot of attention, i.e. it's not on the front page every day. Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell sounds like a sensible man ~ why shouldn't voters be required to vote in just one precinct, as they always have? Next we'll have voting officials going to their homes to save them the inconvenience of going out at all. Deals on Wheels? But I don't understand the provisional voting; sounds like it doubles the opportunities for cheating. Should people be able to vote anywhere and at any time? And finally, is Ohio Senate candidate Eric Fingerhut related to the cheap goods catalogue?
The one question that did register with me came out of someone calling Ralph Nader a dog in the manger. (He's not looking well these days, is he?) Dave didn't recognize that moral from an Aesop fable. Lots of common phrases come from Aesop's fables, which should be part of every child's education. A few I remembered before looking up the fables on the web are, besides the ones Dave mentioned (dog in the manger and sour grapes) are, Don't lose the substance by grasping at the shadow, Don't try to please everyone, and Don't cry wolf.
I did not know that "United we stand, divided we fall" came from Aesop. Fred was commenting the other day on the loss of the old American principle of the "loyal opposition" ~ that is, the losing party would try to work with the elected administration in spite of disagreements: "Let's help this SOB push this boulder up this mountain so it won't flatten all of us." (See Greek legend of Sisyphus.) That breathed its last gasp during the Clinton administration. And as usual, people tend to want a loyal opposition to their own party, while they don't feel so loyal to the administration they oppose.
Meanwhile, it's almost that time. "Hoards of people" are expected to vote. If this looks wrong to you, one reason may be that the writer I cribbed this from meant "hordes." Luckily he didn't write "whoreds." Or, as one writer actually did, "thongs of people." That I would like to have seen.
Aesop will last longer than the present political crisis. A great number of our everyday expressions and ideas come from Aesop, the Bible, and Shakespeare (and Greek legends too). Read them; there will be a test. (I'm reminded of the lady who complained that she couldn't enjoy reading Shakespeare because he used so many quotations.) The great thing about literature is its timelessness. People have been heating themselves up about the same things forever. So whoever wins this election, and whether or not they cheat to do it, let's be loyal to each other, at least.
My 12-year-old French student left me speechless the other day by drawing what she said is a popular French cartoon, a nasty, evil looking spider named something that meant "America" or "American." Very likely she didn't intend to be disrespectful to her teacher, but just thought she it was funny. I'm not about to get into a political discussion with a French child, and she might not have appreciated American jokes about the French, my favorite of which is the one about the French having regular surrender drills. She could see that our class ended on a bad note, though. The next day, she wanted to play Hangman, and her 9-year-old brother jumped in with a word I would have thought beyond his present grasp of English ~ "respect". Perhaps their mother coached him. So we ended happily playing Go Fish, and then watching thousands of migrating birds go by.
How to interpret this? Yes, other countries "don't like us." But the French haven't been allies since Lafayette helped out during the Revolution, and Germany is neither an ally nor a model. This French family is living very well in the USA because the father works for an American company.
By focusing on issues rather than breaking news, and by going deeper into these issues, I hope to live up to the ideal of journalistic objectivity. Many people, probably including you, have grown skeptical of the news media and believe it biased and unfair. Nevertheless, I still do believe in the ideal of journalistic objectivity. But this ideal has degraded in practice into the simple, uncritical presentation of opposing viewpoints, rather than providing independent and well-researched analysis. I don't have the same space or time constraints here that most media have, so I can delve a bit more into issues and their historical context. This way, hopefully, I can give you more information and facts, rather than simply regurgitating opposing viewpoints as equal.
I'll never catch up with all the reading I'd like to do, but I finally got around to the April issue of Harper's Magazine, which is a kind of hipper Reader's Digest. In this issue is an extract from Saddam Hussein's latest novel, Be Gone, Demons ("The Sunni Also Rises," page 24). Did you know he's written several novels? I didn't. Translated by Jack Fairweather, the Daily Telegraph's Baghdad correspondent, this story is about a tribal hero named Salim who fights evil Jews and Romans. The Romans happen to have built two large towers, which are burned down by Arabs. Hussein has a simple, almost childlike expository style. Here's a scene where Salim goes to some woman's house:
Salim entered the house and revealed himself. When Ledher saw him, she noticed that Salim was tall, with dark eyes, a straight nose, and a natural face. "He's so confident," Ledher thought. Ledher asked him if he was prepared to drive out the demon Hescel [the Jew].Salim said, "The intention and power are available. I have made my evaluation of the demon. My forces and I are assured of victory against those dogs."
After a bit more conversation on the situation, Salim says,
"We are most thankful that you, Ledher, are still pure. You are the figurehead of the people. Will you marry me?"Ledher said, "Salim, my cousin. Even if marriage were not dictated to us by custom, I would want to become your wife."
I would count Barbara Cartland among his literary influences.
Fred said that when he was stationed in Turkey many years ago, he read a Turkish novel very popular at the time, called Memed, My Hawk. The plot was entirely about tribal conflict, face-saving, and revenge. While the tradition of the English novel may encompass war and social concerns, it has always been essentially about the development of the individual character by self-knowledge.
Read it and weep: In Walter E. Williams' October 4 column, "Believe It or Not," he reports that Benedict College in South Carolina has a new "Success Equals Effort" academic policy. Freshmen and sophomores can pass their courses if they demonstrate enough "effort," which doesn't mean proving they've made an effort by getting passing grades. Williams reports,
When Professors [Milwood] Motley and [Larry] Williams began assigning grades based upon academic performance, Professor Motley said the administration "told us to go back and recalculate the grades, and I just refused to do it." At that point Dr. Swinton fired both for insubordination.
Williams asks the timeless question, "How would you like people to be certified in any activity that way ~ your doctor, your tax accountant, your mechanic or anybody upon whom you depend for reliable proficient service?"
Here is the logical extension of the policy of rewarding students, supplying them with "success," for simply wanting to be "successful" and for breathing. But it has nothing to do with actual education.
People uninterested in and unsuited for scholarship ought to be taught the value of a technical education to get them out of those fast-food jobs. But considering the way the good manufacturing jobs have been and are still being exported, a skilled tradesman may have no future here either.
Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Feel free to comment in the Guestbook, linked below the back issue links. You're also welcome to e-mail me with comments or queries.
If you don’t want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with “unsubscribe,” “quit,” “enough,” or something like that in the subject line, and I’ll take you off the mailing list.
Return to KeithOps.