Out of The Loop

All right, all right, I’ve had enough. Or, I probably should have written, “Alright, alright, I’ve had enough.”

In days of old, only “all right” was all right. “Alright” was a misspelling. Because I am so adamantly out of the loop, I don’t know when misspellings become alright.

I live in a kind of neo-monastery. No, it’s not a big old stone building on the side of a mountain; it’s a little white house by the tracks. But it has no television set and no newspaper clutters the yard.

So I miss out on things. To my credit. I’m so culturally deprived, I can’t tell you what two teams played in the World Series last fall.

I once considered myself a contemporary, culturally, when I joked about the Budweiser frogs as seen on Super Bowl commercials. So sad, my failure to realize my ignorance. The frogs are way, way in the past. I didn’t know.

I thought I was being humorous, but I was simply out of date, when I said, “I didn’t know Budweiser had frogs. I thought they had big horses.” Big horses? Frogs? Nobody knows from big horses or frogs. Time waits for no man.

The decay

The decay of our culture, marked especially in the degradation of our language, continues. But I am largely aloof from it, in my self-contained little ground-level ivory tower with the peeling paint.

My two best sources these days for what’s currently happening in the language are my high school friend Ralph and Laura’s high school language teacher, Frau Rinard.

In last week’s diatribe here, yours truly took the Denver Catholic Register to task. Both Ralph and Mrs. Rinard immediately wrote to tell me that I am horribly out of the loop.

They let me know in separate e-mails that: A singular personal pronoun at the start of a sentence can now be acceptably used with a plural personal pronoun or two later in the structure. The rules have changed. Take one giant step toward ebonics, Mr. Tommy!

Out of the loop I am. I had no idea the rot had gotten so near to the center of the trunk of the tree.

So when you’re building a sentence, keep in mind it’s O.K. (All right? Alright?) these days to do it wrong. Never mind the rules. Rules mean nothing. Usage is everything. Ain’t that a hoot?

A whole bunch of the beauty and precision of our language went down the porcelain convenience under the influence of the women’s liberation movement. It’s easy to place the blame, to wit:

Chair

In the old days when someone was selected to leadership of a committee or board of directors, he (or she) was given the title “chairman.”

God forbid we should have a compound word with the letters “m-a-n” in it. So now most generally we see the title, “chair.”

“Chairwoman” might at one time have been an acceptable substitute, but no. You see, “m-a-n” is also part of “w-o-m-a-n.” No can do. “Chairman” is a lost word. Gone.

Making a verb out of “chair” is one thing, as in “The Bishop chaired the committee.” The word chairman is derived from situations in which one person is selected to sit in the leader’s chair.

True, “cathedra” means “chair,” and that’s why we call the tall church building the Cathedral; the Bishop’s chair is there. But we don’t call the Bishop the “Cathedral.” The Bishop is not the “Chair.”

The Bishop is the Bishop, and he sits in a chair. Yes it’s a very special chair, but he isn’t the chair. That would be dumb to call him “the chair.” We would say, “Hey look. There goes the Archchair.”

Who vs. That

Why do I pick on the Catholic Register? Because it’s the best. It would be of no use to pick on the Greeley Tribune because it’s the worst, and there’s no hope.

Sentence from this week’s Register: “I know people that have left the church . . .”

Sorry. Can’t have “people that.” People are not “that,” they are “who.” It’s those Libbers again, reducing the human to a thing. (Oooooh, the word “human” has “man” in it.)

Squaw

Squaw Mountain, Squaw Valley, anything named “squaw” was for a time targeted by the Libbers. What’s the matter with Squaw?

It’s an Algonquian word meaning an American Indian woman or wife, or more generally, any woman.

The Libbers went all over the country lobbying state legislatures to change the names of “squaw” places. I can see it all now: “Short Fat Woman Mountain,” or “Short Fat Woman Valley.” How absurd.

All of this difficulty comes from an effort to be politically correct. We have bent over backwards (so to speak) for thirty years making language changes to avoid violating the prejudicial sexist sensitivities of a few harpies.

Having learned from the Libbers’ example, the Muslim extremists are already quite busy forcing political correctness on the media in the name of similar sensitivities. Wouldn’t want to offend a Muslim; they can be mean. Meaner than a harpy on acid.

Since I’ve learned that it’s the usage that matters, this is particularly scary. It frightens me alot. (We used to say “a lot” was two words. Now it’s one: alot. I am catching on.)

Word of the Week: Adjunct. From the Latin adjunctus, a thing added to something else but not essential. A non-essential attribute or a modifying word or phrase. A human adjunct is a subordinate.

Next week’s word: Hierarchy.