Letters to the Editor
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Vise President Chainy, toled of Americans' opposition to the wore, sayed,
"Sew?"
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It Ain't the Ignorance, tho
It's the greed.
Whether a guy can spell or not isn't the problem. It's whether that guy believes he should get out of bed to go to work every day because that's how society works.
The "bad guys" all believe you go to work for a few years until you've pulled the right scam, and then you get to stop.
THOSE are the American values of the post-Reagan world.
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Spelling bee
I couldn't agree more on poor spelling although we have to wonder why we have this epidemic? Two or three generations grown up on TV and not enough books? Teachers who are also bad spellers? Parents who don't care or are bad spellers themselves? I doubt kids become great readers or spellers from watching YouTube. To be a good speller you have to see words in print - only reading can provide this experience. Say what you will about the Harry Potter series not being high quality literature but entertainment, but J.K. Rowling has made millions of kids pick up a book again or for the first time.
It should be pointed out that some children have a knack for language and spelling while others do better with math and science. Still, it's vital that everyone - whether they have a knack for it or not - be given a basic and solid foundation in school in terms of reading, writing and spelling.
The fact that a person like George W. Bush can become President is utterly shameful - the man can't even eat a pretzel without almost choking, let alone put a complete coherent sentence together. What a joy then it has been to listen and to read Obama's words - finally we have a candidate with a great intellect!
NOTE: English is not my native language, but after 17 years in the US I practically dream in English.
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The Flip Flop nation
Greetings
We are comfortable with the current occupant. He's a man we'd like to have a beer, with share a bar-b-que. Dubya's lack of intellectual rigor and curiosity mirrors our own and he certainly won't challenge us (or horrors) make us feel dumb.
Like our favorite Flip Flops, George Bush just feels sloppy and loose allowing us to breath without constraining us in our fun by forcing actual THINKING!!!
Like that spelling thing, wearing those Flip Flops is a symptom of a larger issue but seriously what is with the obsession with bike helmets while you wear those flip flops?
Cognitive dissonance, seriously
Enjoy the journey
WarLord
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It's carelessness, not stupidity
I'm sure there are people who simply can't spell, but for many such as myself, it's not ignorance so much as carelessness.
My brain means to type "he won the prize", but my fingers, having long since evolved their muscle memory to the point where they have some sort of low-grade independent intelligence of their own, occasionally decide to go by the phonetics and type out "he one the prize" anyway.
Most of the time I'll catch that immediately, or if not I'll catch it when I re-read the message before clicking "Send". The trouble happens when I get careless and don't bother re-reading carefully, of course... then I see my dumb mistake visible to all, but there's little that can be done about it at that point. Doh!
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Don't look now, but
the use of Me as a subject has nothing whatever to do with the raging epidemic of poor spelling we see all around us. It's more about not understanding when to use nominative case and when to use objective case (or, indeed, not even understanding what nominative case and objective case are).
Having cleared up that little matter, great little essay!
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spelling
Poor spelling might be forgiven if there were other evidences of applied intellect. But most poor spelling is the result of shall we say, lack of application, and lack of caring.
The two that I find hardest to accept nowadays are "tow the line" and "hoe the road." Causes me to think perhaps such people have never toed a line or hoed a row.
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It's the not minding
That I mind, when I see GWB make a fool of himself consistently and never blink an eye, never show the slightest bit of embarrassment. Just the opposite he seems proud to bursting of every little moronic utterance.
About spelling, it's also something that's become unimportant. I read misspellings in magazines and webzines all the time. I don't mind it in the letters sections, but the actual publications? It's awful. My 16-year-old daughter and I were in an antique store weeks ago and found a spelling book for 8th graders from the 1930s. It was definitely no frills, no pictures, just page after page of lists of words and questions about the phonetic sounds and their letter equivalents, and the meaning of the words, the words used in sentences. My daughter said it looked very strict, (I know) but looking at it you could see they meant business and you would learn to spell from that gray little book. Most of the old people I know are very good spellers, maybe that's why. And yes I've heard people say tough road to hoe, irksome. They must have been brought up in barns.
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Agreed on "It's the not caring"
In our culture, it's not embarrassing to be dopey. That's a bad thing.
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Breathe!
Breathe - that's the verb. Breath - that's the noun. (Please note: earlier poster.) I agree with the fact that we're seeing misspellings in supposedly "edited" professional publications such as books and magazines. As a 30-year teacher it's most distressing. I chalk it up to lack of reading and just plain laziness. And these people will staff our nursing homes! Eek!
Trying to breathe and calm down here...hear?
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reverse snobbery in America
Back when I was in the process of getting married, I had a show-down with one of my bridesmaids during which she revealed that she Secretly Never Really Liked Me. The reason she gave was that I used big words on purpose to make her feel stupid. I've been married 14 years now; alas, I can't remember any of the words she listed as examples, but I assure you none of them would have required an unabridged dictionary to look up. Possibly "assure" was on the list. They were normal, everyday words to me. I'm sure they would have been normal, everyday words to almost all readers of Salon. I certainly wasn't picking them with an awareness that she didn't know them.
Nevertheless, apparently I really did make her feel stupid. What a terrible, tragic world she lived in, suspecting everyone around her of trying to make her miserable, pretending to be a loving friend to people she disliked! I'm not like that, myself. I have no art. Which is why I said, in that moment of honest shock, "No, I'm not trying to make you feel stupid, the problem is that you really are stupid."
The problem goes both ways. Republicans suspect us of trying to make them feel stupid. And we suspect Republicans of really being stupid. They suspect us of being the sort of people who care that they don't know the big words. Which is only fair. We are the sort of people who care that they don't know the bigs words.