Dude, the first rule of teaching is to never turn your back on those kids, especially when you’re writing something on the board. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Whenever a public speaker or a writer has to discuss a potentially boring topic, it’s a good idea to start off with a joke. Standardized testing is a pretty boring subject, so here’s an anecdote I wrote a few months ago (with a slight change to the punch line).
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It was standardized test time, and a public school teacher who was about to retire was administering the examination to her homeroom. The kids had just begun, and the teacher was emphasizing a couple very important points.
“Remember, I cannot help you with any answers,” she said. “I can only help you with the directions.” As she said this, she pointed to answer A on question #3 to several students.
“Remember to make your pencil marks dark and neat,” she continued, pointing to answer D on question #6 on several students’ answer sheets.
A test monitor peeking in from the hallway saw the retiring teacher and hurried into the classroom.
“Don’t help the students,” the monitor whispered. “If you get caught, you could lose your job and all your retirement benefits.”
“Help the students?” the retiring teacher said in a low voice. “These little monsters have given me so much grief this year, I’m giving them the wrong answers.”
“Remember, the state of Florida has changed the standards,” the monitor said. “These kids will probably fail the test anyway.”
*****
Florida has made news in the last week because of the state’s standardized test results. As a writer, I’m not that interested in Florida’s plummet in math or science or history, but I’m fascinated by a massive drop in the state’s writing scores. In one year, the percentage of students that passed Florida’s writing test dropped from around 80% to around 30%.
That’s the kind of result that even the meanest teacher can’t cause by giving wrong answers.
I pity Florida teachers who’ll have to stare at endless bar graphs with precipitous drops for the next nine months. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From what I’ve read (I actually researched this a little bit!), this drop happened for two reasons.
When it comes to the writing test, Florida uses a rating system where 6 is the highest possible score, and 0 is the lowest. In the past, students would have to score a 3.5 (whatever that means) to pass writing. This year, they had to score a 4 (again, whatever that means) to pass.
Just raising the score needed to pass probably would have led to more students failing the writing test. But wait, there’s more!
Then the state made the test itself more difficult. In the past, essays were graded holistically, where grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes weren’t counted against the student that much. This year, those kinds of errors could hurt writing scores a lot more.
The problem is that it takes more than one year to wean students from holistic writing. Holistic writing is where the teacher gives students a topic and then tells them how wonderful their stories are (and maybe offers a suggestion or two on a good day). The mentality of teaching grammar and punctuation is completely different from holistic writing. Going from holistic to grammar is hard work. In football terms, it’s like going from the wishbone to a West Coast Offence in one season. At the very least, there will be some growing pains.
There’s a case for making a test more challenging. There’s also a case for raising the grade needed to pass (I guess). It’s monumentally stupid to make a test more difficult and then raise the grade needed to pass at the same time. If you can’t foresee a plummet in the passing rate and then predict the panic that follows such a plummet, you don’t understand human nature and you shouldn’t be in education.
This is probably a case where the people in charge of the test (I don’t know who they are) got carried away. Making a test is probably difficult, and maybe the test makers took pride in creating a challenging assessment. When I was in high school, I overheard a teacher bragging about how difficult she made her test. A couple days later she yelled at her classes because a bunch of kids failed that same test.
Me? I got an A because I studied harder, knowing that it would be tough. Eavesdropping pays off.
Writing a good writing test has to be tough. You need to give students a topic they can work with and then figure out how much time they need to do a good job. If you give students too much time, kids will dawdle. If you give them too little time, kids won’t have time to go through the entire writing process (brainstorming, rough draft, revise/edit, final copy).
I once had a teacher who said after you write a rough draft, you should wait six months before revising and completing a final copy. I don’t think any state is going to hire that teacher to design a writing test.
It also has to be tough grading a writing test. Math, history, and science tests are easy because they’re objective tests; the answers are either right or wrong. You can run the tests through a computer and have instant results. Even though computers can grade certain essays (ones written on a computer), humans have to grade the state writing tests. And much of writing is subjective, which means that the score depends almost as much on the person grading it as it does the person who wrote it.
I’m not sure who grades Florida writing test essays, but they’re probably not writers. A writer who grades student compositions will get angry and frustrated at all the bad writing. A non-writer who grades student writing might not know what to look for. And the papers won’t go away. There must be millions and millions of Florida essays to grade, all within the period of a few weeks. When a person has to grade a massive number of essays in a short amount of time, I’m pretty sure the grading isn’t very thorough. And from my experience with state writing tests, the students and parents never get the writing back to see why the students received/earned their scores.
Of course, it also has to be difficult for a student to take a writing test. Even accomplished writers would have a tough time with a writing test because the topics are so bland. Writers need a good topic, and if we can’t get ourselves interested in the topic the state assessment provides for us, then our compositions wouldn’t reflect our true skills.
Oh, you meant THAT kind of camel. Aarrrgh! There goes my writing score.(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For example, if I had gotten the “write a story about a camel” topic that Florida used for one grade level, I would have written a story about the time my older brother gave me my first (and only) cigarette (a Camel). The story would have been hilarious (from my older brother’s point of view), but the state employee reading my narrative would have punished me for being off topic and inappropriate.
My grammar and punctuation, however, would have been outstanding.
The state of Florida is probably doing the right thing by going back to its previous scoring standard, but it’s also probably doing it for the wrong reason: to save their jobs. When student passing rates drop from 80% to 30% in one year, somebody’s going to get fired.
And if you can’t fire all the teachers, then you fire the guy who changed the scoring standard.
And if you’re the guy who changed the scoring standard, then you change it back before the people who can fire you (or get you fired) decide that you need to get fired for it.
If there’s a bright side to this, it’s that 49 other states now know what NOT to do when they make changes to their standardized tests.
I don’t know about you, but if I was a protestor shouting stupid slogans and I saw Vladimir Putin giving me a death stare, I’d probably quiet down. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Russians get grief for drinking a lot of booze and writing really long novels that don’t translate into English very well, but I think they’re onto something with this thing called a silent protest.
First of all, I’m not sure what the Russians are protesting about. It has something to do with Vladimir Putin, and that’s all I need to know. Vladimir Putin is the kind of guy that makes Americans proud of the United States political system. Take the worst qualities of Presidents Bush and Obama, multiply them by ten, and you have Vladimir Putin. Yeah, our politicians suck, but they’re not as bad as Putin.
If Vladimir Putin were our president, or premiere, or prime minister, or dictator, I’d probably want to protest as well. The problem is that I despise protestors almost as much as I don’t like Vladimir Putin, so this is a tough call. The Russians have made this decision much easier by organizing a silent protest, a quiet march through the streets of Moscow.
This is genius. The anti-Putin protestors have taken everything that I dislike about political rallies and gotten rid of them to protest a person whom I (don’t know but still) don’t like very much.
What’s so awesome about this silent protest?
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No slogans. Stupid slogans are one of the most annoying aspects of protesting, and you can’t have slogans if you’re marching silently. American slogans are usually pretty stupid.
“What do we want?”
“No interest on our student loans!”
“When do we want it?”
“Five years ago!”
Every once in a while a protestor thinks of a clever slogan (“Hey, George, stay out of my…”), but then it gets repeated so many times that it becomes annoying. With the silent protest, nobody becomes annoying, unless a bunch of mimes show up determined to ruin everything.
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No violence. Anytime that I’m in a large crowd, I’m paranoid that I’m going to get conked on the head. I’ve been conked on the head before, and it was a horrible experience. I’ve vowed that I will do anything reasonable to make sure I never get conked on the head again.
It’s tough to get a mob riled up enough to commit violence during a silent protest. Most violence is loud, and any noise would be noticed during a silent protest. I would feel pretty safe in a silent protest. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get conked on the head at a silent protest, unless I show up as a mime.
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No property damage. I can park my car near a silent protest and not worry about it getting overturned, broken into, keyed, tire slashed, or defecated on. There’s nothing worse than spending an afternoon with a bunch of shrill screamers denouncing injustice, and then returning to find my car upside down, on fire, with a big load of steaming defecation on it.
That’s the problem with protestors that vandalize. They don’t care whose property they destroy.
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No standing around. The silent protest is a quiet march through a public place. I like walking on a nice day. When people are walking, they have to keep moving and usually won’t cause any trouble. Most problems at protests occur because people are just standing around, and when people are standing around, they get irritable and tempers flare.
During a silent protest, when you’re marching and the police tell you to move, you can smile pleasantly and whisper, “We’re already moving, officer,” and there’s a sense of good will.
If people are standing around shouting slogans and the police tell you to move, some yahoo who just took a dump on the sidewalk will say something derogatory to the cop, and the next thing you know, pepper spray’s flying around and protestors are getting conked on the head (sometimes by other protestors). Like I said, I hate getting conked on the head.
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No defecation. When people are marching, there’s no time to urinate or defecate on the streets. Everybody’s on the move, and anybody who tries to stop to urinate in public is going to get pushed or nudged. Nobody likes to get pushed or nudged while urinating.
I have never understood how a guy could urinate in public during a protest anyway. Even if I wanted to urinate in public during a protest, I’d probably get stage fright and stand around too long in that compromising position, and I’d end up getting arrested for public lewdness.
I wouldn’t want to try explaining that one to the judge.
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I respect the Russian protestors. The Russians have more to lose when they protest than Americans do. If we protest, we might get arrested or pepper sprayed, but that just means we can sue the government and get a cash payout in a few months. Russians risk getting shot or having their families disappear, and I don’t think they have the option of suing Vladimir Putin. Protesting in Russia can have serious consequences, so I respect the Russian protestor.
The Russians could even shout stupid slogans (I wouldn’t understand them if they shouted them), and I would still respect them. That’s how much I respect the Russian protestor.
Related articles
- Thousands take civic action in Russia (todayonline.com)
When President Obama announced that he was personally for gay marriage, millions of Americans realized that they were more evolved than the President of the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
President Obama’s opinion of gay marriage is said to be evolving because he used to be (politically) against gay marriage but now he is (personally) for it. Sometimes, this is called flip flopping.
Mitt Romney has been accused of flip flopping, but I’m not sure what he flip flopped about because his accusers were his Republican primary opponents who had no chance of winning, so I didn’t pay attention to what they said about Mitt Romney. Once President Obama starts accusing Mitt Romney of flip flopping (if he has already started, I missed it), then I’ll start paying attention to Mitt Romney’s flip flops.
When it comes to gay marriage, President Obama is still in the evolutionary process because his position isn’t complete yet. He supports the rights of homosexuals to get married but believes it’s a state issue (It might be the one issue where Obama believes in state rights). From his supporters’ point of view, Obama will not be truly evolved until he can fully commit to federal legislation that grants rights for gays to get married to each other.
Mitt Romney is probably not done flip flopping yet on whatever issues he is flip flopping on because now the Republican primary is pretty much over, and he has to flip flop himself into general election mode. And he’d better watch out, because President Obama is evolving right before our eyes.
It used to be really easy for a politician to flip flop and evolve because until a couple decades ago, nobody could keep track of what a politician said all the time. For example, a candidate could say one thing to the unions and then later that day say something completely different to business owners, and neither the unions nor the business owners would find out what the politician said to the other groups.
But those days are over. Nowadays, every evolutionary flip flopping step is analyzed and used against the evolving flip flopper.
I’m not sure that there’s a difference between evolving and flip flopping, but if there is, it’s this.
A flip flop is when a politician changes his/her position to get votes depending on what’s politically popular at the time. Evolution is when a politician hides his/her opinion to get votes and then eases to his/her real position when it’s more popular. Neither is good. Evolution is thought to be more positive because it implies that there is something noble in the evolutionary change when (most likely) the evolving politician is just as calculating as the flip flopper.
If I’m wrong about the definition of evolution, it’s because there have been so few candidates who have claimed to be evolving; I can only go with the one example I know about. If President Obama’s attempt at evolution is successful, then more politicians will use the term “evolving” whenever they’re accused of flip flopping.
It will be interesting to see if the term “evolving” retains its positive connotation once a bunch of really unpopular politicians (even more unpopular than Obama) start using the term.
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I kind of like the word “evolving.” The next time I lose a nonpolitical argument (it happens a lot), and I have to change my mind (I’m married, so I have to compromise a lot), I won’t have to admit that I’m wrong. I can just say that my opinion is “evolving.”
That’s a lot better than admitting to flip flopping.
No, it’s not the guy who plays Iron Man; it’s Kevin Smith, the guy who wrote that movie about the comic book artist who falls in love with a hot chick who lives an alternative lifestyle. And he just wrote a book with a bad word in the title. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tough Sh*t: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good by Kevin Smith
Before Kevin Smith put the word “sh*t” in his book title, I had nothing against him. But then he had to go and put the word “sh*t” in his book title, and I resent that. It’s not about me being a prude. I’m not a prude, and I don’t have to cuss to prove it. I wrote BEST PORN JOKES EVER, so I don’t have to prove that I’m not a prude.
Using profanity in a book title is a shock device that authors need to grab readers’ attention. Unknown authors need that device. Otherwise, books written by unknown writers will flounder in obscurity with all the other bland prose out there in the publishing universe.
But Kevin Smith is a famous guy. A famous guy shouldn’t have to use a shock technique to sell books. It’s a selfish thing for a famous guy to do. Every book title with profanity in it (Sh*t my Dad Says, Go the F*ck to Sleep, @ssholes Finish First) dilutes the effectiveness of the shock technique. Some poor unknown schlub author with a cuss word in his book title is going to lose readers because a famous guy who didn’t need to use cuss words in his book title used a cuss word.
Just because his last few movies haven’t been very good and his Batman comics sucked doesn’t mean Kevin Smith should have used the word “sh*t” in his book title. Then again, in his Batman graphic novel, he let his name be way bigger than Batman’s name on the book cover, so obviously Kevin Smith doesn’t understand boundaries.
Nobody’s name should be bigger than Batman’s on a Batman book cover. Bob Kane’s name was never bigger than Batman’s on a Batman book cover, and Bob Kane created Batman.
So who the hell does Kevin Smith think he is, anyway?
And don’t try to defend Kevin Smith with any garbage about Kevin Smith not controlling the content of a graphic novel book cover; if President Bush can be blamed for a “Mission Accomplished” banner on a ship, then Kevin Smith can be blamed for his name being bigger than Batman’s on a Batman graphic novel book cover.
Did you get that, Kevin?
YOU’RE NOT BIGGER THAN BATMAN, AND I’M NEVER GOING TO READ YOUR STUPID FLIPPIN’ BOOK WITH A CUSS WORD IN THE TITLE!!!!!!
Phew…. Deep breath… phew!
Aw, it’s not Kevin Smith’s fault. I really wanted to see The Avengers this weekend, and I couldn’t, and I’m really bummed out about it.
Maybe I’ll read Kevin Smith’s book in a couple weeks.
Talking about curriculum standards is really boring, but telling somebody to shut up will get everybody’s attention. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I went to school, the teachers’ most common answer to our questions was “Shut up!”
“Shut up!” was probably the best answer we students deserved because a lot of our questions were whiney and stupid.
“Why do we have to do this?”
“Shut up!”
“What time do we get out of this class?”
“Shut up!
“Does anyone have a pencil I can borrow?”
“Shut up!”
“How is doing this ever going to be applicable to my future employment?”
“Shut up!”
Classic literature was where most of the whining occurred (except for Shakespeare when we had a teacher who would explain the dirty jokes to us). Classic literature was hard, and it was (in our minds) irrelevant. And when other students complained, most English teachers were ready with a quick, “Shut up!”
When it came to really difficult fiction, sometimes our one sensitive English teacher said, “This will broaden your horizons.”
“This broadens your horizons” is a slightly better answer than “Shut up,” but not by much. Smoking weed broadens your horizons. Hanging out with strippers broadens your horizons (not meant as a pun). Broadening your horizons is never a good reason to do something, even when it comes to education.
Some of this might (I stress “might”) change a little bit. From what I understand, new standards in the nation’s public school curriculum (this is where it gets boring) is going to put less focus on fiction (such as classic literature and short stories) and put more focus on nonfiction text, like science and history.
These new standards, the Common Core Standards, are really long and boring. They look pretty much like the old standards with that one notable exception: there seems to be a little more focus on nonfiction to supplement history and science and a little less fiction. But it took about 64 pages to make that point.
New educational standards (and a lot of other government stuff) should be treated like the U.S. Constitution. Whenever there’s a change, instead of reinventing the wheel (yeah, I know it’s a lazy cliché, and I know “lazy cliché” is redundant) every time there’s a new set of changes, just write an amendment (or amendments) to what already exists.
In this case, instead of 64 pages of educational blather about English standards, just say “Add some science and history to align the curriculum, and have students read a little less fiction.”
It would save the government some money, and it would make government documents easier (for me) to read.
Having students read more nonfiction in English isn’t necessarily a bad idea. When I was a kid, students got the most frustrated when we had to read a difficult novel or short story that seemed irrelevant. I wonder how many struggling kids never gave reading a chance because of the dull literature taught in English class. Some of the history and science text will probably be dull as well, but at least it will have a point.
So when a whiney kid complains about a science selection with a question like, “Why do we have to read this in English?” the English teacher will have a logical answer that will make sense even to the biggest dunderhead in class:
“This will help you with your science test next week.”
And then the English teacher can follow through with, “Now shut up!”
“Hope and change” wasn’t supposed to mean “I hope they’re not on my favorite show because if they are, I’ll change the channel.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Republicans complain that President Obama is a celebrity president (in a bad way) because he’s been on a lot of television shows recently. Democrats pretend that Obama is a cool president (in a good way) because he’s been on a lot of television shows recently. Republicans and Democrats disagree on a lot of things, including the positive and negative connotations of the words “celebrity” and “cool.”
Republicans are right that the Obamas have been on way too many shows in the last few weeks. I won’t even bother to list them because then I’d have to do research that would be boring. “Hope and change” wasn’t supposed to mean, “I hope the Obamas aren’t on my favorite show because if they are I’ll change the channel.”
Obama can’t be blamed for wanting to make television appearances. In the old days (before cable), all a president had to do to get on television was to call a press conference. The three networks would preempt their shows, and anybody who wanted to watch television that night had to watch the president. It didn’t matter if the president was boring; everyone had to watch. With cable and the internet, only a wonk is going to watch, so a president has to work harder to get noticed.
The first celebrity president was Bill Clinton when (as a candidate) he played saxophone on Arsenio Hall (yeah, I know, the idea of Arsenio Hall with a talk show is weird, but it happened). The first George Bush would never have done something like that (though he did sky dive, and that is way cooler than playing saxophone, but faux cool people won’t admit it). Now every politician that wants to be successful at the national level is expected to make talk show appearances. And they always suck.
Political appearances on television shows suck because they’re boring. But then again, so is President Obama. Supporters might claim that Obama’s on television so much because he’s cool, but that’s not true. President Obama is on television so much because he’s boring. He needs a celebrity around him to make him interesting. He needs a celebrity to dance with him. He needs a slow jam to keep the audience from nodding off.
I’ve listened to many (too many) Obama speeches over the last few years, and I can’t remember a thing he’s said. Maybe he told students to work hard in school a few times.
President Obama is so boring that he wrote about eating a dog in one of his memoirs, and it took almost twenty years for anybody to notice.
President Obama even made Mythbusters boring. He called them to the Oval Office and then asked them to look into something silly like Archimedes setting ships on fire. Are you serious? He should have asked them to look into his birth certificate. At least that wouldn’t have been boring.
Republicans claim there’s a double standard when it comes to Hollywood and television talk shows, and they may be right. When Michelle Bachmann went on Jimmy Fallon, the band played vulgar ska to insult her without her knowing it at the time. Some Republicans were upset, but they don’t realize that vulgar ska is way cooler than a slow jam. If I ever become a politician and go on a talk show (doubtful, because I shame way too easily), I want the show’s band to play vulgar ska as I step onto the stage.
Having a president (or any politician) on talk shows was a fresh idea in the 1990’s (kind of like using “fresh” as an adjective to describe something new was fresh in the 1990’s), but it’s a bit stale now. And people who say that Obama is cool because he goes on television shows are being disingenuous.
Internet videos? Now those are fresh. If Democrats could release a YouTube video of Obama hitting John Boehner in the nuts with an errant golf swing, I’d watch that over and over, no matter what stupid ad hominem attack slogan accompanied it.
Going on television show after television show? That gets old, and it isn’t cool.
Watching a politician get hit in the nuts with an errant golf swing? That would never get old, and it’s always cool.
Just so you know, this is NOT about Newt Gingrich; it's about realists... kind of. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After taking a realistic assessment last night (or a couple nights ago, depending on when you’re reading this), Newt Gingrich dropped out of the Republican primary. The joke might be that if Newt had “realistically” assessed the situation a year ago, he (or his campaign) might not be four million dollars in debt.
That’s the problem with realistic assessments. People don’t look at their problems realistically until the problem becomes a crisis, and by then it’s often too late. Besides, everyone’s version of reality is different, so a lot of times the realistic assessment doesn’t matter.
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I used to hate arguing with self-proclaimed “realists” (back in my younger days when I had the energy/stupidity to argue about politics with people I barely knew). I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to reason with anybody who thought they owned “reality.” What was I, if I wasn’t a realist too? A fantasist? A perceptionist?
I thought I had a brilliant comeback to a self-proclaimed realist once. When I was probably losing winning the argument, I declared, “The only thing real about your opinion is that it’s real stupid!”
Then the realist explained the difference between “real” and “really” to me.
I felt real stupid… ahem… really stupid. I hate losing political arguments over grammar points.
On the bright side, I lost my political arguments without going $4,000,000 into debt. As far as realistic assessments go, that’s not real/really bad.
Related articles
- Gingrich to ‘Look Realistically’ at Future (abcnews.go.com)
When the computer grades my composition, is it looking to laugh, to cry, or just get the job done as soon as possible? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Even when I was a student, I understood that I needed to write for my audience. If I knew that a story was going to be read in front of the whole class, I made it funny. If I knew that my over-sensitive English teacher was taking it home to read personally, I made up dead relative stories so she would cry (I was almost “fictionally” an orphan by the end of my ninth-grade year).
But now that computers are starting to be used to grade student compositions, the whole writer-audience dynamic could change. What does a computer want in a story, other than perfect grammar and sentence structure? Does it want to be informed, entertained, or does it just want to be finished grading in three seconds?
Do computers understand emotion in a story? If I wrote about a (fictionally) dead relative, would the computer respond with a word of encouragement or instead inform me that it couldn’t find any records of my relative’s demise in the online obituaries?
Would it understand humor? If I wrote a dirty joke without using any forbidden language, would it give me a good grade or send me to the principal’s office?
Here’s a kind of dirty joke presented as a possible current events story (from last summer) to use as a test run. Would I get a passing grade for decent sentence structure, or would I get a week’s worth of detention? When the computer told me the joke wasn’t funny, would it be because a computer has no sense of humor, or was it because the joke wasn’t funny?
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN Dysfunctional Literacy’s “Best Dirty Jokes Ever”!!
IMF French Guy Gets Off
One night during his house arrest, the ex-IMF French guy Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) finished showering and stepped out from his bathroom. When he walked into his bedroom, he surprised his hot young maid, who was fluffing some pillows. He leered at her. She smiled at him.
And a few hours later he was arrested again.
A veteran police officer and a rookie were at the police station discussing the case and the prospects of the ex-IMF French guy going to prison.
“The defense attorney said it’s an easy case,” the rookie said. “The guy’s going to get off because when the maid told him to get off, he got off.”
“That’s not what the prosecution thinks,” the veteran said. “They said he won’t get off because when the maid told him to get off, he got off instead.”
“Let me get this straight,” the rookie said. “This guy might get off because he got off when the maid told him to get off, or he might not get off because he got off when the maid told him to get off.”
“This is worse than ‘Who’s on First?’” said the veteran.
“What are you talking about?” demanded the rookie.
“You’ve never heard of ‘Who’s on First?’” the veteran asked, astonished at the lack of knowledge this young rookie had.
“We already know who was on first,” the rookie said. “We just don’t know how he got off.”
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Ugh. I’m sorry about putting readers through that. My point is that as a student, I never would have turned in a story like that to my human English teacher. But if I knew that my human English teacher wasn’t going to read it, I might have taken my chances with the computer (I wouldn’t have written “DIRTY JOKE” at the top of the paper).
To be honest, I was not the kind of student to turn in that kind of story to a computer, but I was the kind of student who could have talked a friend into doing it.
All in the name of science, of course.
Yeah, she looks like a sweet old lady, but if you got on her bad side, she’d rip you a new one. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It may be early in the 2012 presidential general election campaign, but the rhetoric so far has been really lame. Obama indirectly insulted Romney by saying that he (Obama) wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth while Romney said he’d like to tell Obama to start packing. Sometimes the subordinates in election campaigns say interesting stuff, but the best they’ve come up with so far is about a dog that Romney put on top of his car and a dog that Obama ate when he was a kid.
To be fair, it’s been a few presidential campaigns since anybody’s had a really good political insult.
1988, now that was a great year for political zingers. Most people remember Senator Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle during the Vice-Presidential Debate that he (Dan Quayle) was no JFK. That was a memorable moment. But it wasn’t the BEST EVER!!
A couple months earlier Texas Governor Ann Richards was speaking at the Democratic National Convention (yes, Texas actually used to have Democrat governors, if you can believe it) when she said of George Bush (the first):
“Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”
This might not seem like such an awesome political insult at first, but further study of it demonstrates why it’s in the BEST EVER category. First of all, it was a combination of two idioms. Metaphors aren’t supposed to be mixed, but idioms are another matter. Governor Richards combined “he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth” with “he stuck his foot in his mouth” to say that Bush was both rich and stupid. And she said it without saying directly that George Bush was rich and stupid.
Secondly, Ann Richards delivered her insult with a Texas drawl. I’m not sure if Texans have drawls anymore, but Ann Richards talked with one when she wanted to. Her “he can’t help it” sounded more like “he caint hep it,” and that made the words sound endearing yet even more insulting at the same time.
Finally, the insult was kind of good-natured. It wasn’t delivered in a self-righteous tone that Lloyd Bentsen later used (that really turned off some Republicans) on Dan Quayle. Whether it was funny or not is subjective, but it seemed like a lot of Republicans thought Ann Richard’s insult was funny (I only have anecdotal evidence to back that up). When both Republicans and Democrats think a zinger is funny, then that insult is in the BEST EVER category.
Unfortunately for the Democrats, the BEST EVER political insult had no influence on the presidential election. Bush defeated Dukakis that year, and six years later, Bush’s son defeated Ann Richards to become Texas governor (and then he later became President of the United States himself).
When an insulted politician’s son has to get into politics to avenge a political zinger directed against the father, you know that the insult was a BEST POLITICAL INSULT EVER!!
So if you want to thank/blame anybody for the president that was George W. Bush, you can thank/blame Ann Richards.
*****
Presidential insults might sound great and be momentarily gratifying, but they probably won’t affect a presidential election. Politicians might be better off sticking to their “hope and change” and “morning in America” slogans rather than talking about silver foots and spoons in mouths and who ate what dog that was on whose car.
*****
When I was a kid, I was punished for saying the word crap. Looking back, it kind of ticks me off because now I know…
And here is the true story of my one moment of high school glory!
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James Cameron was married to Sarah Connor, and that was cool, but then he made Avatar, and that was uncool, but if he saves the world by mining asteroids, that would make him cool again. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yeah, it sounds like a bad science fiction movie, and maybe that’s what it will turn out to be. A bunch of corporate guys team up with a loony (but successful) movie director and together they explore space with a bunch of madcap adventures along the way. Maybe somebody pitched this to James Cameron as a movie idea, and he decided to do it in real life.
The name of the (alleged) company that James Cameron and some guys from Google are putting together (or working with) is Planetary Resources (PR), and supposedly the plan is to use private investors to finance space exploration and mining asteroids for really nice reasons (like alternative energy sources and environmental cleanliness) instead of bad reasons (like intergalactic domination).
The first thing a company with such grand ambitions needs is some public relations (PR). So the first thing they do is call a press conference to announce the details (investors, time tables, probably a lot of boring stuff). If PR’s PR is good, maybe this private company can do great things, but if PR’s PR is bad, look for other companies (like Facebook) or the government to fill the void.
Good PR- Technological advances that provide cheap energy and environmentally pure lifestyle.
Bad PR- Smuggling dangerous/hostile aliens just to make money (and die horribly in the process when aliens turn on them).
Any awesome discovery or advancement that’s made by PR is going to be grabbed up by some government, whether it’s the United States, or China, or Russia. Yeah, Planetary Resources will have a lot of high priced lawyers with the law (maybe) on their side, but governments have big guns, and big guns beat high priced lawyers (even if the high priced lawyers are right).
And if the government doesn’t want to use big guns, they can declare eminent domain or interstate/international commerce or public interest or any nonsense they want and lock everything up in the courts until they can find five judges on the Supreme Court to agree with them.
This development has to make Mark Zuckerberg feel insignificant. A few guys from Google create a grand venture to explore the final frontier, and all Zuckerberg has done is create a silly social network that gets people fired from their jobs.
Has anybody that works for Facebook ever been fired for what they put on Facebook?
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It’s easy to make fun of stuff that I don’t understand, which is why I wrote about this before Tuesday’s press conference. I was afraid that if I waited, I would be in such awe of this project that I would never be unbiased enough to mock it again. As a former fanboy, I once worshipped James Cameron (1st two Terminator movies and Aliens made him almost a deity in my eyes), but Avatar was dreck, and I have since punished myself for false idolatry.
If these guys from Google and James Cameron can pull this off and do what the United States government (NASA) can’t do, I might have to rethink my position on false idolatry once again.
Related articles
- James Cameron to Conquer Outerspace with Google (hollywood.com)
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