Archive for 2022
November 3, 2022
NEWS THOU CANST USE: Whatever Happened to “You”? English sorely lacks a distinction that’s common in other languages. We once used “thou” for the singular, but by the 17th century “you” became common for both the singular and plural (unless thou wert a Quaker). People have kept coming up with new ways to make this useful distinction, like “y’all” and “youse” and Pittsburghers’ “yinz” (derived from “you ones”). But none of them has become standard, the linguist John McWhorter explains, because “their class associations are especially strong, and are felt by pretty much all of the population rather than by just a few pedants.”
English without “thou” has a ding in it. You can likely recall times when you have had to say something amid a group, like “You need to make sure — I mean you all, not just you, Jocelyn — that we make contact with them before Monday.” No one had to pause for little fixes like that when speaking Old or Middle English. It’s a design flaw in the modern language.
And yet notice that no one seems terribly concerned. In contrast to endless attempts to create a brand-new gender-neutral pronoun, such as “ze” or my favorite one, dating all the way back to 1879, “hesh,” there seems to be no push to create a plural “you” pronoun that doesn’t have the class associations of “y’all” and the like. We just accept that in this regard English is pitilessly, eternally and peculiarly unclear.
There is, actually, a lesson in that. If it’s OK that standard English can’t readily distinguish between the singular and plural “you,” then what determines which aspects of our language we single out for criticism and attempt to fix? If we don’t need “thou,” then why all of the agita about using “literally” in a figurative way, when in that case, unlike with “you,” context almost always makes clear what the meaning is without any need for repair? Why sweat about the insouciant redundancy of “irregardless”? Why insist on retaining something as confounding and ongoingly misused as that “lay” is both how you make something “lie” and also the past tense of “lie”? This is the result of an unintended train crash between two words that sounded much less alike 1,000 years ago — but last time I checked we were supposed to keep the distinction going irre— sorry, regardless.
To wit, in the grand scheme of things, what happened in English is an object lesson in how imperfect all languages are, and that this imperfection is both inevitable and harmless. We like our English “you” just the way it is and dismiss all attempts to change it, even though it only got that way because of a creeping notion that everybody should be, as it were, holier than thou. Few things better demonstrate how we can learn to stop worrying and love our language.
Personally, I’m still rooting for a separate plural. Yinz have any opinions?
READER FAVORITE: Cordless Vacuum Cleaner. #CommissionEarned
HE’LL RETURN TO THE 4PM SLOT AFTER THE MIDTERMS: CNN to end Jake Tapper’s primetime show. “According to The Hill, Tapper struggled to achieve good ratings as a primetime host. Much of CNN’s lineup has suffered similarly in recent months, including Brian Stelter and Don Lemon. The former was fired, while the latter was squeezed out of his time slot and moved to mornings.”
WHAT THE PUNDITS AND BETTORS MAY BE MISSING: Could New York Elect a Republican Governor? According to most pollsters and the betting markets, Lee Zeldin is still a long shot to beat Kathy Hochul. But Nicole Gelinas at City Journal says that early voting numbers are encouraging for Zeldin because turnout has been so low in New York City.
SEXUALLY EXPLICIT IMAGES WERE TUMBLR’S MAIN SELLING POINT BEFORE, AND THEY’VE NEVER RECOVERED: Nudity comes back to Tumblr, but sexually explicit images still banned.
Know your platform, people.
EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND:” Is Biden Senile or a Pathological Liar?
THE DAILY SKEPTIC: U.S. Covid Response Taken Over by National Security Council in March 2020 to Impose Pre-Prepared Lockdown Plan. A lockdown was not part of the CDC’s pre-2020 plans for dealing with a pandemic.
LINCOLN BROWN: An Ex-Leftist Reacts to Biden’s Speech About ‘Democracy.’ “Democracy versus autocracy, you say? Who but an autocrat would weaponize the Department of Justice to terrorize his political opponents, cast concerned parents as domestic terrorists, and even try to find ways to criminalize election rhetoric he doesn’t like? Who but an autocrat would freeze energy production in his own country, raid the reserves, and flirt with nationalizing the oil industry?”
Read the whole thing.
(Bumped, by Glenn.)
JUST SAY NO TO MAKEUP FOR MEN: Macho makeup: New research on how cosmetics increase attractiveness in men.
I’M TOO SEXY FOR YOUR SPECIES, TOO SEXY FOR YOUR SPECIES, TOO SEXY FOR YOU: Sex, not violence, could’ve sealed the fate of the Neanderthals: More evidence emerges that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens made love and not war thousands of years ago.
Denisovans, Neanderthals, whatever — none of them could resist that sweet, sweet Homo Sapiens loving.
GREAT MOMENTS IN COSPLAY: The Pretending Can Get Competitive.
A man in Norway is sparking outrage on social media after he was sympathetically interviewed about his decision to begin identifying as a disabled woman… In the interview, [he] stated that he had always wished he had been born a woman who was paralysed from the waist down.
As David Thompson writes in response, “So not just a woman, but a woman in a wheelchair, which confers bonus points…Unsurprisingly, many actually disabled people, whose use of wheelchairs is not recreational or a prop in some theatrical psychodrama, have aired their reservations about this new frontier in the world of make-believe identities.”
JOHN NOLTE: The Atlantic’s COVID Amnesty Request Was a Massive Political Blunder.
Democrats are about to get wiped out in large part by suburban mothers in blue states and cities where the COVID tyranny and human rights abuses were the worst. The Atlantic’s request for an amnesty was a direct, election-eve appeal to these suburban voters to forgive, forget, and vote Democrat. It doesn’t get any more cynical or dishonest than that, but that’s what the Atlantic was aiming for.
Without apologizing or even admitting they did anything wrong, without promising never to do it again, without any contrition or remorse or consequences, these monsters are requesting amnesty.
More proof arrogance breeds stupidity like rats breed plague.
And here’s why we should thank the Atlantic for lying.
This was a MASSIVE political blunder.
One week before a consequential national political election, the idiots at the Atlantic made COVID tyranny front and center again. This gave countless outlets like Breitbart good reason to re-litigate the left’s COVID horrors. One week before Election Day, these desperate and bubbled Atlantic morons put one of the Democrat party’s worst issues front and center.
Better still, even if these suburban moms aren’t reading outlets like Breitbart; they’re not stupid. More than anyone, moms know what these monsters did to their children. So the Atlantic trying to gaslight them in such a brazen and shameless way will only infuriate and remind them of the arrogance and lack of repentance on the part of those who abused their children and aging parents.
Related: From Libs of TikTok on Thread Reader, a “#NoPandemicAmnesty Mega Thread. They want us to forgive and forget what they did during the pandemic. We shouldn’t.”
HEY, IF ANYONE CAN BLOW IT, THEY CAN: CNN and Gallup: Let’s face it, the GOP probably won’t blow the coming rout. “A new report from Gallup shows voters more disaffected from the status quo than anytime in the 40-year history of its survey.”
Not without reason. Plus: “The political environment in 2022 has no real solid model for just how toxic it will be to the governing party. Inflation and crime are both at sustained generational highs, and Joe Biden is simply awful at his job. Even using 2010 and/or 2014 as models won’t work, because the economy was nowhere near this bad and Obama nowhere near as unpopular as Biden, especially personally. Even Jimmy Carter was more likable than Biden.”
Democrats are probably also feeling bad about boosting “loser” Republicans like Kari Lake in the primaries, who now appear poised to win.
DEJA VU: There’s Something Very Familiar About the Midterms, But the Color Has Changed. “I was finally able to put words to this odd feeling after seeing a CBS News poll showing that 80% of likely voters say that the country is ‘out of control.’ CBS News being CBS News, they put the best spin on the numbers as they could, but the dread is real and it’s almost universal. “
I BLAME LISTENING TO LEFTY PODCASTS: Poll: 6 in 10 Americans admit to driving while drowsy.
DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA:
Despite its author deleting her Twitter account, the article is still online at the New Yorker: The Disturbing Rise of Amateur Predator-Hunting Stings.
Somewhere between its narcoleptic “Tiny Mummies” phase that Tom Wolfe wrote about in 1965 and, well, this, would be a good medium for the New Yorker. Hopefully it can still right the ship.
BUT HOW ELSE IS SONNY CROCKETT GOING TO GET HIS FERRARI? California police stole $17,000 from these sisters. Civil asset forfeiture is so unethical that most people won’t believe it’s true.
#HIMTOO? CBS to pay $30.5M for hiding sexual assault claims against Les Moonves.
The settlement agreement follows an investigation conducted by James’ office that found Moonves and CBS attempted to conceal several sexual assault complaints made against the chief executive knowing that if they came to light he would lose his job, which would affect the company’s bottomline knowing that he’d be difficult to replace.
Moonves resigned from CBS in Sept. 9, 2018, after several women accused him of sexual assault and harassment over three decades.
According to a 37-page report by Jame’s office, prior to him stepping down, Moonves and CBS worked to conceal the allegations against him staring Nov. 10, 2017, when an unidentified women walked into the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department to file a report accusing Moonves of sexually abusing her and workplace retaliation in the 1980s.
It’s a good thing that nobody has ever accused Hollywood of being a sex-grooming gang, or anything.