Apropos of nothing, I came across this old Jay Nordlinger column about Americans and language and wanted to pass it along. I thought it was well done. (Nordlinger, the culture and music guru at National Review, is an extremely erudite fellow, yet I've always admired how he keeps his roots to an "everyman" wordview. I've even had the chance to exchange emails with him a couple of times. Very nice guy.
But without further ado....here's the column.
Sunday assorted links
3 hours ago
Great piece. It contains what has to be the line of the year: "Most of these Americans are young and callow, and grow out of these attitudes. But many do not — and Mr. and Mrs. Obama seem like unreformed college students, in so many ways."
ReplyDeleteIt would be a great line if it wasn't also a cheap shot and utterly meaningless. Perhaps I'm more resentful about the charge than you, Vade Mecon, given that more than -- what? -- three decades have passed since your college years?
ReplyDeleteI kid, I kid -- with age comes wisdom, and all that. I thought the piece's main argument - that America's geography explains the language difference -- made a lot of sense, and I liked it.
What I didn't like were the innumerable (well, only because I was too lazy to count them) pot shots. Like this one:
"Third, would Sharif like to put the general geographical knowledge of the average Egyptian or Arab up against that of the average American? How about simple literacy?"
OK, except it's absolutely ludicrous to compare the world's richest nation with one of its poorest. Hoorah, we happen to have higher literacy rates than a Middle East country -- that'll show you, Omar!
Moreover, study after study has shown a despairingly low number of Americans can point to Afghanistan or Iraq on a map, even though we've lost thousands of brave citizens and spent billions of dollars there.
So, I like his empirical point, but -- as with so many conservative thinkers I see in the National Review -- I don't like the attitude or the nanny-nanny-nah-nah thrust. Why praise ignorance or uninformed citizenry?
And why mock two people who, by all accounts, actually performed unbelievably well in college -- so much so, I'd just about hope they haven't been reformed at all.