Amending the First Amendment

Earlier this week, Daniel Larison, whose blog Eunomia is on The American Conservative, posted a story entitled “Insulting Small Towns to Save Sarah Palin.” The story is no longer posted—in fact, it came down less than an hour after I first saw it. I don’t know why; I can only imagine that Mr. Larison discovered some factual inaccuracy which he would naturally not have been willing to propagate. In between the time I saw it and the time it was posted, though, I wrote a lengthy response to one throw-away comment he made. The remark was only tangentially related to his main point, and because the original story is gone I cannot reproduce it exactly, but it was a remark to the effect that we can’t hold Sarah Palin wholly responsible for her inability to use the English language properly because schools don’t teach grammar any more. As a high school English teacher, I am, naturally, likely to react strongly to such criticism, but as a high school teacher, I am also in a better position than Mr. Larison is to know both whether teachers try to teach grammar or not and, if they do, why failure, when that is the outcome, results. Here is the posting that was never posted:

Although I am largely appreciative of the thoughtfulness of your entries on this blog, I must take exception to the cheap shot at teachers included in this particular entry. (Yes, I am a high school English teacher myself.)

Unilaterally blaming teachers for the widespread problem of imprecise, incorrect, and even illiterate language use is an easy, but lazy, way to reduce a serious problem that is the result of deeply entrenched cultural change to glib and simplistic terms that, although easy to understand, grossly misrepresent reality.

A few grammar worksheets will not cure the ills of language misuse in this country. The ability to use correct, sophisticated, nuanced speech is not, and never has been, the result of schooling and nothing but schooling. Students who develop rich, sophisticated language do so not because they have the benefit of an hour a day with a competent teacher who actually knows how to diagram a sentence; they develop that ability because they have life-long exposure to rich language in a wide variety of settings.

Skilled language use is the result of thousands of hours of immersion in rich language--thousands of hours of reading and hearing complex ideas expressed in complex terms. The development of a sophisticated vocabulary is the result of extensive exposure to sophisticated vocabulary--vocabulary used carefully, deliberately, and precisely, not vocabulary dished up in a gallimaufry of words only loosely related in meaning to the words that are actually needed.

If a child has a baseline level of language exposure that prepares him or her to take full advantage of skilled instruction, then skilled instruction can help that student progress quickly to levels of excellence in language use that he or she would not otherwise achieve. But a student who comes to school with a background of language exposure at home that is measured in daily minutes in the single digits comes to school unready to understand the language of their teachers. The child who reads nothing (literally) other than what he or she can be coerced to look at by teachers (who often have to resort to standing over students and insisting that the reading be done in class, as they know it will not be done once the student is outside of their circle of influence), comes to school unprepared to understand the sophisticated relationships between subjects and verbs that confront them in high-level reading assignments. The child whose most regular and reliable language exposure is from sitcoms on television comes to school with a significant burden of disadvantage. No teacher, no matter how excellent, can reasonably be expected to supply, in an hour a day or less, the lifetime of language-rich culture that that child has lost.

That this is a tragedy is undeniable. The ability to use language correctly, well, and even beautifully is unquestionably a source of power in any individual's life. In many ways the self is realized through language, because our ability to define ourselves in relationship to others is most readily, profoundly, and intricately expressed in words. Sarah Palin's poor use of language is appalling because it is a direct reflection of her thinking, as all language use is a direct reflection of the user's thinking. Whatever one might think of Governor Palin's politics (and I am emphatically not a fan), the fact is that her poor use of language has isolated her from the good opinion of many people and has done significant damage to her hopes and aspirations. In my perfect world, no one would have a life so starkly limited by such a dramatic inability to express ideas, but rich language results from rich thoughts, and rich thoughts result from rich experience. Schools can only provide rich experience in tiny doses--doses which amount to a minuscule fraction of an entire life--no matter how hard they try and no matter how much they might wish to be able to do more.

To suggest that teachers should be able to make up for parental and cultural failure to promote intellectualism and cultural literacy, to suggest that teachers could do so if only they were themselves a little better versed in the rules of English grammar, is indeed a cheap shot, unworthy of someone who is normally himself much more thoughtful.

I reproduce the would-be posting here, because there is a further point, which was not relevant in a direct response to Larison, but which is relevant in the context of the egregious linguistic behavior of John McCain and, more particularly, his surrogates over the past several weeks.

The clear implication of the tactics employed by the McCain campaign in their attacks on Barack Obama over the past few weeks is that McCain and his staff are fully cognizant of the problem to which Larison was alluding: the deplorable weakness of the average American in terms of understanding the complexities of the English Language. I reason it out this way:
(1) Because McCain needs to attract a very large number of people to his cause, and
(2) because the strategy he has chosen to utilize is the launching of a large number of blatantly distorted or even false accusations against Obama, and
(3) because meek acceptance of those accusations as truth require listeners to simply take at face value whatever is said, ignoring connotation, imprecision, and pure falsehood,
(4) it follows that the McCain people have been counting on the fact that a large enough number of people would lack the facility with language that would enable them to readily identify the linguistic flaws in the arguments that the campaign has been promulgating.
(5) Which means, in turn, that the McCain campaign has deliberately exploited what it believed to be a weakness in understanding of the people they claim to wish to serve.

Indeed, in pursuit of votes, the McCain campaign members—particularly the surrogates—have, in speech after speech and ad after ad, used language to distort and misrepresent the truth. Here are some examples:

Example 1: I wrote in detail in a previous posting about Sarah Palin’s use of the phrase “pallin’ around with terrorists.” Her language there is misleading not only because of the connotations of the verb “to pal around with,” but also because of the plural. If pressed, the McCain campaign will identify William Ayers as the terrorist with whom Obama has a past association, but they cannot name any additional candidates for the title of terrorist. The phrase Palin has settled upon may be catchy, but it is grossly misleading; however, only someone who is alert to the connotation of the verb, attentive to the use of the plural, and patient enough to do the research to find out what exactly the purported terrorist did and when, as well as when Obama had dealings with him and under what circumstances will be able to make an accurate assessment of the truth value of the statement.

Example 2: A radio ad that has been playing in Richmond over the past few weeks ends with the tagline: “Just as you suspected, Barack Obama is wrong for you.” That “just as you suspected” is a particularly egregious violation of what I consider to be a moral obligation to use words honestly; the construction suggests that the listener already had an idea, before hearing the ad, that something was wrong with Obama—Obama PERSONALLY, not his policies or his plans. Since anyone who did NOT have previously existing suspicions would know that, the language is designed to do two things: one, appeal to those people who did already have doubts, and two, to suggest to those who didn’t have doubts that they have missed something important. Since the assumption inherent in the statement is that ALL listeners suspected something was wrong with Obama, those who did not must have missed the point—they are not part of the club. They are the uninformed. This is the language of the bully, and it preys upon those who lack advanced enough skill with language to recognize the ploy for what it is.

Example 3: “Joe the Plumber,” actually Samuel Wurzelbacher, the man whom John McCain raised from the obscurity of the rope line to such a level of stardom that he [Wurzelbacher] has actually hired himself a manager in anticipation of making vast sums of money for public appearances, has been appearing at McCain rallies and on television as one of McCain’s acknowledged surrogates. The ludicrousness of a ploy which presents a completely uninformed citizen as an expert in the economy and foreign affairs aside, since Mr. Wurzelbacher is now formally speaking on behalf of the McCain campaign, his statements, too, are fair game for a truth value assessment. On Monday, October 27, he drew media attention to himself by concurring with a questioner at a rally that a Barack Obama Presidency would mean the “death of Israel.” When pressed, in an interview with Fox News’ Shepard Smith, Wurzelbacher alternately said that he had his own reasons for believing that Obama is an enemy to Israel (“I’ve done my own research…”) and saying that “"I know just enough about foreign policy to probably be dangerous....”

Wurzelbacher’s refusal to provide any concrete justification—even when pushed—for his claim about Israel followed by his disclaimer about his own knowledge and his suggestion that people go out and find their own reasons to agree with him [Joe] constitute a classic evasion of the type frequently used by people who don’t have any facts to support their arguments, but it is a blatant ploy and even the most unsophisticated listeners might be expected to recognize it for what it is except for the fact that the McCain campaign threw its weight behind “Joe,” establishing him as an expert in foreign policy. The official McCain campaign response to “Joe the Plumber’s” pithy foreign policy analysis was this (view the Fox News video): “While he’s clearly his own man, so far Joe has offered some penetrating and clear analysis that cuts to the core of many of the concerns that people have with Barack Obama’s statements….” This tactic is deliberate, and it was designed to countermand what would otherwise have come off as garden variety ignorance and turn it into bona fide credentials. The McCain campaign, in other words, set out to mislead the public into seeing “Joe the Plumber” as a legitimate authority.

Example 4: On Sunday, November 4, in yet another interview with Fox News (whose editors are apparently indifferent to the fact that the last time they gave him a platform he disgraced himself and the news show by trotting out blatantly contrived fiction as fact), Wurzelbacher declared that “…there’s too many questions about Barack Obama and his loyalty to our country.” When challenged by the interview to clarify whether he is actually doubting whether Obama is a good American, Wurzelbacher said this: “Oh, you know, his ideology is completely different than what, you know, democracy stands for so I have some questions.” He didn’t clarify what Obama’s ideology is, he didn’t justify his definition of that ideology, he didn’t explain how that undefined ideology stands in opposition to democracy, and with the phrase “…I have some questions,” he employed a tactic that the McCain surrogates have been relying on heavily: non-specific innuendo. “I have some questions” without specifying the questions suggests that “Joe” is in the know about some “things” about Obama that we don’t know. It suggests that Obama has not been honest, and it conveys a vague threat that if we don’t find these things out in time, we’re all going to be sorry. Wurzelbacher has rapidly taken on the coloration of the environment in which he has come to rest, and he is just as rapidly mastering the art of ominous innuendo.

One of the nuances that we all need to be aware of is that Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher might very well be motivated by the fact of his sudden celebrity. The fact that he has hired a publicity firm suggests that he is not driven to assist Senator McCain out of purely ideological motives, and it suggests that “Joe the Plumber” has reasons that transcend the election to make outrageous statements that keep him in the media spotlight. Only people who are able to really listen to what the plumber has to say and attend to the words he uses, as well as informing themselves of Mr. Wurlzebacher’s other activities in pursuit of what he apparently thinks could be a substantial windfall and then draw the conclusion that “Joe” decides what to say not based in any particular expertise of domestic or foreign affairs or out of any true interest in serving the public good, but rather based on pure self-interest can be expected to discount fame conferred upon him by the McCain campaign and instead hear the deeply ignorant nature of his remarks. McCain’s people are counting on the fact that relatively few people will have the time or dedication or the savvy to put all that together, and they continue to parade “Joe the Plumber” out at their events like the goose that laid the golden egg. They are clearly unconcerned with any standard either of wisdom or veracity.

Final Example: Perhaps the most insidious ploy of the week past is the one Sarah Palin resorted to on Friday, when she suggested, indignantly, in a radio interview, that her first amendment rights have been violated by the press, members of which have nefariously been reporting that she has been engaging in negative campaigning. Here is the text of her remarks (audio here):
"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."
Myriad assumptions embedded in this claim are false, but unless one is a user of language sophisticated enough to identify the assumptions and assess their truth value, and unless one understands the demands of logical argumentation well enough to know that premises must be both true and valid in order for an conclusion to be true, one is very likely to accept the statement on its face and to believe what Palin clearly wants us to believe: that she is the victim of massive effort on the part of the media to silence her in violation of her constitutional rights. Glenn Greenwald at Salon did the analysis better than I could, so I recommend you read his column for a clear explanation of just how far off-base the Governor is in her interpretation of First Amendment Rights.

Given that Sarah Palin has, in fact, completely misrepresented the First Amendment, we have two potential explanations as to cause. One possibility is that Palin herself believes what she claims, in which case she is woefully ignorant not only of the First Amendment but also of the implications of the language which she herself has been employing in her campaigning effort. The only other option is that Palin knows perfectly well that she is offering a gross distortion of both her own tactics and of the First Amendment, in which case, she has chosen deliberately to wield language as a power against those who are not as adept as she is at recognizing the true implications of words. In the first case, she is far too inept to be taken seriously as a candidate for any position of authority and decision-making, and in the latter case, she is too cruel, for any deliberate manipulation of those who know less is just that: cruel. Personally, I think that Palin is more ignorant than manipulative; but I don’t think the same of McCain. I think he knows what the ramifications of his chosen political tactics are. I think he knows that much of what Sarah Palin says reflects both an ignorance of the true state of affairs and a deeply distressing inability to speak English well. I think he knows that most of what “Joe the Plumber” touts suffers from the same two flaws, and I think that McCain has decided that he doesn’t care—that he wants to win more than he wants to treat people with dignity, and so he has shown himself to be willing to wield both Sarah Palin and Sam Wurzelbacher as weapons against people who understand even less than Palin and Wurzelbacher do what the implications of what the McCain surrogates say. And so I think that McCain is abusing the power of his intelligence and his ability, and I know that any person so clearly willing to do that is not a person who can be trusted with the most powerful job in the country.

Larison chose, as the aspect of a widespread ineffectuality with the English language he wished to highlight, the failure, as he perceived it, of the public school system. I think it’s at least equally important to consider one particularly high-cost result of that failure: the use of words as a weapon against those who don’t know enough to see it coming. The constitution guarantees certain rights pertaining to our freedom to say what we want to say; it does not, and cannot, guarantee that all citizens have the language facility necessary for them to be able to take advantage of the right. The constitution cannot protect those who lack the skill; we have to agree, as human beings, to do that for each other.