Letters to the Editor
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typo
"Bigs" is a typo. I mention since we're talking about spelling errors that it's half past time Salon allowed people to edit their own letters.
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we celebrate spectacular ignorance and make it a road to riches
Ignorance is not only socially acceptable in the U.S., it is preferred.
Or at least that's what I learned by watching "Friends". Recall how the writers made Ross -- the only friend that generally knew anything -- a bigger and bigger ass and loser in the later seasons.
You can find other examples in pop culture. (Why did an Internet sex tape make a hitherto unknown heiress a superstar and not a passing object of pity or ridicule? Why is Lisa Simpson's intelligence and concern always presented as annoying and undermined by layers of hyper-ironic plot twists?)
Pay attention to how many times in a you are asked to excuse ignorance.
Greed and stupidity are consequences of our studied, deliberate ignorance.
What do we do about this?
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Obama tests America's cult of ignorance
that's the title of an article in the STL Post-Dispatch.
here's the url-- http://tinyurl.com/2d9lc6
".....Here is a nation that has been led by that archetypal American hero, the
self-made man: the Lincoln who strides out of the backwoods with an ax on his
shoulder and a book in his hand; the Truman who failed as a farmer, failed as a
haberdasher but somehow, because he read widely and deeply, had the wisdom to
help rebuild a shattered world.
And now, here is this same nation, led by a man who can't correctly pronounce
the word "nuclear" and who once told an interviewer that he avoids reading
newspapers because they're full of "opinions."
This is not to say that President Bush is stupid, only that he is profoundly
intellectually incurious, willing to substitute belief for science, ideology
for fact. And in this, he is typical of his age........."
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Every crisis is always the worst one
Every few years we swine snort. But we always forget the last crisis or that we called that one the worst ever. The world is always coming to an end, tomorrow. The difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives say the future always sucks. Liberals say today always sucks. Me? The good old days, they were terrible.
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As a nation of spellers
I knew we were in trouble clear back in 1975 when my daughter brought home her spelling test graded 100% At the top of the paper, her grade-school teacher had written, "Excellant".
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Us readers must be idiots, too
y elz we needz hiperlinkz 2 liberals n CurrentOccupant? we don no what dey is?
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Lack of History and Imagination
The reason for this RE/financial mess is simple: the folks who changed the rules so that anyone with a pulse could get a seven-figure ARM didn't know or care about why the old rules existed. Nor could they imagine things going horribly wrong.
How many years ago was "Mission Accomplished"?
GK comes from, and speaks for, that all-too-modest part of American culture which says "Don't do dumb things; there may be bad consequences" and "If nobody does it that way, there's probably a very good reason".
Winter does that to a person; it's a safe bet that GWB never went through a real winter in a place like Maine, Minnesota or Syracuse.
Spelling and grammar really are good indicators. Compare a speech by FDR or Winston Churchill with anything from the Current Occupant for an example. Have a bucket handy.
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Spell checker
its it's fare fair site sight weight wait won one two too to know no
there their they're led lead your you're brake break lie lye aid aide
flare flair flour flower pier peer ant aunt gait gate friar fryer arc ark
bare bear red read reed read blue blew slay sleigh capital capitol
coarse course mail male might mite do due dew faun fawn pain pane
or oar ore naval navel pare pair pear weak week dear deer ode owed
And Sew On Spell checker likes all of these. English is an easy language except for the spelling of words from many languages.
German has no spelling difficulties. If you can pronounce it, you can spell it. No exceptions. However, there is noun gender and lots of rules. As Mark Twain said, "in German, a turnip has gender but a young maiden has none."
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Your text editor
Your text editor removed the extra spaces that I had put in to show the pairs and triplets of words.
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The hyperlinks ...
... are not for clarity, but rather to lead readers to a collection of articles on a particular subject (you'll find words such as "family" and "marriage" linked occasionally for the same reason).
And I agree with those commenters who suggest grammatical errors have less to do with educational upbringing and more to do with a lack of interest in accuracy. Note how often a comment (in Salon and elsewhere) that points out another writer's grammatical error is followed by posts along the lines of "Who cares whether its wrong, your all stupid."
(And yes, it took great restraint not to correct the above.)
Recently, I did some quick research on incorrect use of "perspective," as in "perspective students." Sadly, it seems college administrators and faculty as just as likely to use this phrase as the children in their care.
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Garrison, don't even go there
I once posted on a message board my wife and I visit that discusses our favorite vacation spot.
After years of seeing horrible spelling and grammar I submitted a polite post asking that people please try to learn the difference between "their, there and they're." Or to attempt to learn when to use "to, too, and two." I didn't even mention the tough one: "its and it's."
You wouldn't believe the avalanche of indignant and condemning responses I received.
Americans love, and will defend to the death, their ignorance. Any doubt? Look to the Current Occupant and the McCain who will likely occupy next year.
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"Intellectual charity case"...
Methinks thou art too charitable by half.
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German has no spelling difficulties. If you can pronounce it, you can spell it.
I'm reminded of the old joke about why the Germans lost in WWI and WWII.
It takes twenty eight syllables to say "look out for the tank!"..
I read a novel a while back that had as protagonist an individual that worked for a German firm with one of those incredibly polysyllabic names that Germans seem to delight in.
The (non German) employees of the firm called it "bigword".