THE IMPLICATIONS OF LANGUAGE 101

Today I get to write about politics and language all at the same time, and of the ineptitude with which so many in the former approach the latter. I am not talking about a Bushian butchering of a word or two, or a Dan Quayle misspelling – insert “You say potatoe, I spell correctly” to the appropriate tune here. Today I write about a local political blog, one that seems to assert a reasonable amount of pressure in the area’s democratic politics. While it may, on many days, be a relatively valuable source of information and ideas, yesterday it crossed a line, one that the writer seemingly refuses to recognize, one that has perhaps broken new ground in the violation of tact.

**Note: This would perhaps be far easier to write about if I were to just link to the blog in question, but it seems ethically dubious to do so, thus I will not. Instead I shall muddle through the occasional convoluted sentence with all due determination, and hopefully you will bushwack through whatever grammatical thickets that may entangle my writing.

In the post in question this particular blogger continues his recurrent complaint about too many candidates not being on sites like MySpace. To solidify his point he reveals that a recent MySpace search has, in fact, found someone on MySpace with the same name as a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in our district, and this person on MySpace had committed suicide five years ago. Further, this blogger gives us a link to the page memorializing the deceased, and then proceeds to explain that it is ridiculous that:

when someone searches for XXXX in the busy world of MySpace, they won't find a way to send a donation or volunteer for the XXXX for Congress campaign. Instead, they'll find a touching memorial to a young man who killed himself three years ago.

At face value this post brings up two major questions: one analytical the other ethical.

First, the analytical: does this writer seriously consider MySpace to be a valuable and viable forum for politicians to get their message out. MySpace has emerged as a forum for adolescents, whose online variants for adults usually specialize in dating or cheating. While I agree with the writer that politicians are not adequately utilizing online media, one also must choose one’s online activities carefully. MySpace is a rather beleaguered site at the moment considering all of the problems with online sexual predation – I believe Dateline is up to its sixth episode on this topic. I don’t see this as a particularly useful arena for a politician at the moment, unless they are courting an op-ed piece in a local paper. Further, as I would say if I were actually on MySpace, “It is, like, so a year and a half ago. I mean, the only people there now are a bunch of dweebs and pervs.”

Secondly, there is the ethical issue. Suicide is tragic. Period, the end; whatever one’s moral position on suicide may be. While the writer’s point is made that the candidate in question does not have enough of an online presence – none of them do, tact and decency should win out and perhaps persuade him to choose another of the candidates to exemplify this. I have checked, and other candidates in the same race could have been used to illustrate this point. I have the feeling – and we will get to further evidence regarding this from his comments – that the writer could not help himself but to jump at the comparison to a dead person, and further to utilize the relation to the common phrase of “committing political suicide.” I understand these inclinations, but this blogger is, inevitably, taking advantage of this connection for his own rhetorical advantage. While he may not be intending to be disrespectful, publicly outing this person’s tragic death is not for this writer to do. [The fact that dead boy’s friend has publicly commemorated him does not expose him to the whims of the public domain.] There are myriad activities that are legal, but ought not to be done; this, sir, is one of them.

But, dear reader, it did not stop here. If this were all, I would have merely chalked it up to a misguided effort to encourage greater participation in the realm of online activity, a case of impeccable hindsight. But then I went on to the comments section following this post. Following his first rebuke from a reader, our problematic politico responded:

This other XXXX gave up his life three years ago. I think that a politician who is not only alive, but running for high public office, ought to have more media prominence than a dead man.

Maybe I'm making my point in stark terms, but I don't think it matters to the dead man. He's dead.

I'm more concerned with what the living and breathing XXXX is thinking about putting his name out in public. If he wants to be our nominee for Congress, his campaign needs to show more initiative.

When pressed again, he opines:

To that point: I'm not seeing either of you anonymous commenters writing anything on the substance.

I'd rather be in bad taste than be vapid.

And when another commentor, as someone who has lost someone to suicide, points out the problem of using this relationship – that is, the candidate and dead boy having the same name –our blog-master decides to muscle up with his personal experience instead of facing his problematic writing, responding:

I'd like to point out that YOU just used your brother's memory to score political points.

Do you think I don't have experience with suicide?

I have just as much experience with suicide as you do…

I may not be a professional rhetorician – nor do I play one on TV – but this, my readers, even I can see as problematic. While this blogger is imploring candidates to do better, he is unable to accept the possibility of being criticized himself. He is making the classic mistake of separating form and substance. He firmly believes that because his larger point has validity, his argument remains unimpeachable.

This, at last, leads me to my larger point – if it can be called one. Perhaps it is more of a reflection, or a musing. Anyway, language is, in many ways, substantive. Words are not merely words; they carry meaning, sometimes of great importance; they externalize hopes, needs, and desires; they attach to and produce actions; in extraordinary cases they can fundamentally change the world we live in. How we speak is essential to what we say. Why else would I labor over George Eliot’s prose – happily I might add – while eschewing the simple readerly pleasure of an airport novel? Why else do we recall the speeches of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy, yet be unable to remember a single word Ford uttered? [Thankfully Kennedy chose not to go with, “Don’t ask what we can do for you, but what you can do for us.”]

I would not spend so much time on this particular event ordinarily – blogs are not always the centers of tact, writerliness, or wisdom one would hope them to be. But this seems to be emerging as a prominent issue in my thought and activity as of late: the question of how and why one speaks. This example also reflects the larger mode of political rhetoric in the wider public arena. It is a space where the most extreme example wins out, where perceived efficacy trumps reasoned appropriateness. The problem, in this case, is that this writer has a serious and valuable point to make, but making the point emphatically became more important than making the point well. Far too much of the world around us has become emphatic when, in fact, it is really rather boring. So this candidate is not on MySpace; yawn. Because this topic was important to our blogger, he felt compelled to make it interesting – perhaps some journalism lessons asserted themselves. Unfortunately not every topic is interesting, or at least emphatically so; and not all efforts to make them so are appropriate.

It reminds me of a question I received at one of my recent campus visits. I was asked -- I shall paraphrase: “With all the media and noise out there, how do young designers cut through it all to be heard?” I could have given a sexy answer involving faster computers, bigger toys, and enlarged phalluses, but, instead, I responded, “By having something to say.”

Perhaps I do not live in a world where that is enough, but I think it is a risk worth taking.

**Note: If you really wish to find the blog in question, it shouldn’t be too hard to do if you have any Google skills. To the writer in question, I apologize for taking quotations from your blog without citing you, but please see the note above concerning the reasons for doing so.