Mark Twain wrote, “Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Michelle obviously has never read Twain or else she figures Affirmative Action is a free-pass on international journalism as well.
At first glance, I thought the article was a hoax, but US News & World Report, doesn’t have the personality or wit to do satire. The article was real, Michelle was making an appeal for teachers and trying to explain the importance of quality instruction in the classroom. Fair enough, this is simple, how could anyone screw this up. Everyone knows we need good teachers, it is commonly referred to as a “no brainer.” Unfortunately, Michelle took the distinction literally.
The first sentence that caught my attention was: “My girls are making new friends, tackling challenging new subjects, and moving closer to becoming the strong, confident women I knew they could be.” Hmm, interesting complex sentence structure, there are several errors, “tackling challenging,” a common error. Overuse and misuse of the comma, oh well, another common error. The phrase, “confident women I knew they could be,” oh well, she would have flunked the journalism assignment for that week, but hardly worth becoming excited.
I read on with an open mind, was I in for a surprise. I was about to read creative writing or perhaps I should say creative punctuation, syntax, and grammar that is unique to the English language.
Michelle has an affection for starting sentences with And and But, this one began: “And when we think about the qualities that make an outstanding teacher-boundless energy and endless patience; vision and a sense of purpose; the creativity to help us see the world in a different way; commitment to helping us discover and fulfill our potential- we realize: These are the qualities of a great leader.
After reading this sentence with disbelief, I realized the First Lady doesn’t have a clue about punctuation or constructing a sentence. If this is the result of Affirmative Action, I’d say, the program is a forlorn hope.
With more prose, that under the present political situation qualifies for a Pulitzer, she writes: “Much work lies ahead, and it wont be easy.”
Yes with Safe School Czar Kevin Jenning, promoting the homosexual lifestyle in our schools, endorsing the two daddies and two mommies text books and the condemnation of Romeo and Juliet because it promotes heterosexual love, much work does lie ahead. The total destruction of the moral and cultural fabric of the United States, can be considered “Much work.” Just finding teachers that are willing to promote this garbage and compromise their integrity in the process is no simple chore.
Yes Michelle, you have your work cut out for you, but may I make a humble suggestion? You should learn how to write or have someone help you before you embarrass yourself and the United States by exposing more ignorance of the English language by publishing in a national magazine.
For those that are interested: Eats, Shoots, And Leaves is a great book on punctuation, grammar, and syntax; and it is a funny read.
A professional horseman for over 50 years, Skook continues to work with horses. Skook has finished an historical novel, Fifty Thousand Years, that traces a mitochondrial line of DNA from 50,000 years ago to the present. The story follows a line of courageous women, from the Ice Ages to the present, as they meet the challenges of survival with grit and creativity. These are not women who whimper of being victims, they meet the challenges of survival as women who use their abilities without excuses or remorse, these women are winners, they are our ancestors.
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Just be happy that she didn’t revert to Ebonics. This really could be a lot worse than it currently appears.
Look for a teleprompter in her future. It runs in the family.
Be assured that MicHELLe is a shining example of Affirmative Action. It’s the bastion of letting expertise, natural aptitude, and intellectual prowess slide into the abyss of mediocrity. This is what you get when you let some perceived disadvantage overrule established common standards.
She’s the argument for dismantling Affirmative Action.
Remember, most people in America don’t speak English, we speak American.
That’s not a viable excuse.
English is not her first language, and the mental gymnastics of converting it from Klingon is tough.
Michelle’s letter is an eloquent testimony to the effectiveness of Affirmative Action.
Please remember that she held an administrative post in a Chicago hospital for a salary of $280,000.00 per year. The letter published in USNWR is probably indicative of the services rendered by her for her salary.
Reminds me of an old bumper sticker:
ILLITERATE? WRITE FOR FREE HELP.
Michelle (MEchelle) was Ivy League Scool educated. . .I think it is time to re think the quality of an Ivy League label.
Example: me, the President, and Oprah — I was given this type of example to correct in fourth grade in a military base school in Wiesbaden, Germany.
Speaking of no-brainers, it’s a no-brainer to put in the last name of the person you’re discussing SOMEWHERE in the article.
You have a non-restrictive relative clause in there. According to the standards you are holding Michelle to, it should be “which under…”.
@Chris of Rghts . . .we know who Michelle is (MEchelle is like Madonna, Cher, Fergie,
j lo, Prince, Angelina, Rahm, Hillary, Bill, jimmy, Teddy, Abe, Brad, Diana. . .) want more examples? or is sarcasm enough?
Mark Twain was not required reading for Affirmative Action students in any school in Chicago or at any Ivy League school. Karl Marx was. So was Friedrich Engels ( Das Kapital).
Things not on the Required reading list:
*Articles of Confederation
*Federalist Papers
*Bill of Rights
*US Constitution
*Anything related to Economics
*Anything related to US History after the LBJ Presidency
Hello kids, thanks for reading the essay. It was written at 3 AM, before leaving for work. I didn’t take the time to sharpen my eviscerating knife, so my treatment of Michele Obama was subdued.
I realize that punctuation evolves (reading 18 & 19 century literature confirms this) and there are few articles published without at least a debatable mistake. This is part of the fun of writing, some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you; when you write, you expose yourself to some brilliant people, thankfully, most of them are willing to excuse the odd grammatical mistake. Otherwise, these cyber pages would become like grade school English Class; but there is an unspeakable category, we should term Gross Negligence.
It is excusable for one of us from the great cyber peanut gallery to occasionally publish Gross Negligence, after all, some of us have no editorial help at home.
Michelle Obama has access to the best editorial help in the country.
Doe she write with contempt for the rest of us or is she so ego-centric that she regards herself as infallible?
Old Trooper, Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital before his death. The second two volumes, published after his death, have been attributed to his ever faithful friend Engels. He is the only one who could have made sense of the massive amount of complex writing and notes. Unlike Obama, he read everything related to the subject before writing anything. He was a brilliant writer, with a peculiar and complex style, from McLellan p.315
“By means of an artificially hidden sewer system all the lavatories of London spew their physical filth into the Thames. By means of systematic pushing of goose quills the world capital spews out all its social filth into the great papered central sewer called The Daily Telegraph.”
Please remember, English was the third language of Marx.
Thank you Old Trooper, you have inspired my next essay, I will have it ready tomorrow or the day after.
Lawdy… this is what we have for news today? heh That’s good. Lightweight stuff is a welcome tangent from the heavyweight issues of late.
Since everyone’s putting in their two cents worth, I wanna play too!
Skookum sez:
Somewhat awkward I’ll admit, Skookum. But not seeing validity in your criticism. Unless I’m really rusty on my grammatical rules, “My girls” is the subject(s), tackling is a verb relating to the girls, and challenging is the descriptive adjective for “new subjects”.
Nor do I believe it is unacceptable to use the past tense when describing the girls becoming “confident women”. Perhaps it would roll off the tongue more smoothly had she said “becoming the confident women I know they can be”. But using the past tense is an error? Don’t think so.
I am also unaware of any unbridgeable threshhold for commas within a single sentence. In fact, counting them seems to be a serious distraction from the content. But in your cited source, I will disagree that the commas are misused, abused and/or ill-placed. Granted, there are other punctuation marks that could be utilized to prod a reader into visualizing a cadence… much like music compositions have text descriptions (i.e. adagio, allegro, dolce, etc) for passages, as well as crescendos, decrescendos, rests and hold markings for interpretation.
But Michelle wasn’t going for “soaring rhetoric” here.
It gets even more silly if you consider at A. Linguist’s comment about the OP:
Technically there is no rule about ending sentences with prepositions. That’s an old school myth. But it does make for an awkward sentence. Should we say to A. Linguist, “According to the standards by which you measure Skookum, should you be ending a sentence with a preposition?”
But then, I think I get your point, Skookum. We all get A. Linguist’s point, too. Well gosh darn… ain’t that what writing is all about? Conveying thoughts, images, ideas? (uh… do any of you require a noun for the preceding sentence?? LOL)
Which sorta/kinda brings me around to my primary point… that being it’s all “just words”. Guess it’s a trait that runs in the O’family.
The First Lady is obviously no Saul Bellow. However when I read her op-ed, it’s quite believable that she is the authoress. The phrasing and structure are distinctly her oratory style. When you’re not trying to impress or appear pompous … and Bill Ayers isn’t handy to ghost write for you… conversational composition is a very effective way to get your point across to your target audience.
Considering the poor reading ability of our graduates, not to mention most of the nation, perhaps the First Lady connects better with the masses by not utilizing speech writers, but by conveying it in her own style. Then again, she may consider herself a gifted writer. oh NO!
Then again, you do have to appreciate the irony of a First Lady, Ivy League educated, using mediocre and sophmoric grammatical skills while pleading for quality instruction. DOH! Mercy I miss Laura.
Tho this banter about American English has been fun, I must say this as a finale: PatVann… again the cyber tongued devil of twisted wit … wins the day with his comment #6. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH :0)
Mata H, why did you skip over the sentence that employed every example of punctuation? This is a truly unique sentence within English literature. No one has shown an ability to correct that one with a simple band aid.
I hope I don’t appear as a snob, I try to encourage people to write and enjoy the experience. Through the internet, I have helped several foreigners acquire greater English writing skills by recommending authors to study. They were appreciative of the encouragement and one Iranian said he learned more from me than several tutors he had hired. A nice gesture, but I just said, “you can do it my friend, go ahead.”
I was lucky to have been able to write for the hunting and fishing industry, I developed my modest skills writing for their magazines and trade periodicals. The only reason I did well is because the competition was not intense, yet I didn’t make it to the top. I realize my skills are limited and I should never take it upon myself to criticize the journalism skills of others; however, this sanctimonious self-sacrificing attitude along with substandard prose, irritated me.
The line “Much work lies ahead, and it wont be easy.”, I don’t think meets the qualification for a sentence, but I was actually referring to the content and the contradictions within the administration.
Yes, MO’s literary style isn’t exactly hard hitting news commentary, but some argue that BO’s authenticity isn’t important either. Perhaps Bill can help her in th future with email edits.
Now, that Bill Ayers is a dang good writer.
@Skookum:
This thread made me nervous, wondered, are we also being judged by punctuation? Thank you for being more clear in your last comment.
When my memory was erased, so were my writing skills, I’ve come a long way since then, but doubt re-learning grammer, punctuation, sentence structure, and spelling, is it ence or ance, ent or ant, etc? is possible. Definately will look for the book and try, thanks for including it.
As far as Michelle is concerned, it’s the content of what she writes or says that concerns me.
“Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Well, If Mark Twain said that, then he plagiarized the idea from Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
Missy, I often forget spelling or punctuation and need to look things up, I use hard copy to avoid mistakes, not that I don’t make enough of them.
The book Usage And Abusage is a great reference book to look up the little complex features of English. It is late 19th century, but many of the greats have referred to it in their writings. It is hard to go wrong with classical definition.
The book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves is written by a Brit and there is a slight formal division; but how many people can write about grammar and make you laugh. I think you would enjoy that one and find it very useful.
Please think of punctuation as mortar and words as stones or brick, the mortar serves to bond the stones or bricks together to form a pattern that eventually becomes a structure. There are many different patterns available and the really creative people are still devising new and logical methods of expression. Do not, I repeat, do not be intimidated by me. I am the last person you should be concerned with. I do carry a sharp knife, but I can recognize the difference between a pretentious sanctimonious fool and a friend.
Rick Z, I was aware of Lincoln’s use of the phrase, but you realize the two men were contemporaries, at least until Mr. Lincoln’s death. All literature and knowledge builds upon the work of others, Twain was known for developing old regional stories or folk-lore and turning it into classical American prose. Lincoln was a genius with his wit, it is a shame he didn’t live into retirement and write his memoirs with that stiletto wit. It is the world’s loss. These were two brilliant men of the 19th century (Twain lived well into the 20th century), I am sure they respected each other more than enough not to insult one another with dubious accusations and innuendo.
Over the years, I have needed to use different writing styles for different audiences. I’ve done patent writing, which is very different from what I use for corresponding with customers and colleagues in various countries of the world, for example.
The fact that those customers and colleagues learned English as secondary tongues, makes it imperative that I utilize very basic terms and form, and leave out the colloquialisms that make communicating with American-English-first persons smoother.
In blogs, and personal correspondence I aim for the personal-conversational, and try to get across my own speaking style, which is at times what my Dad once labeled as: “gluteus intellectulus”. He, of course being professor emeritus in my training.
(As Mata has so nicely pointed out in #14 :-))
When writing in this manner, I break the rules a bit…(like right there…those silly 3-in-a-row periods denoting a pregnant pause greater than a comma.) I will also use quotation marks more often than necessary, and other idiosyncrasies to create my own “style”.
I went through 10 years of Catholic school, and one WILL learn how to speak and write while under their tutelage, and to this day I can diagram a sentence. My Dad was always pushing us kids to learn new vocabulary and “esoteric verbosity”, simply for the fun of it.
In any, and in all of these examples, there are rules that I endeavor to adhere to; Spelling being paramount of these…It’s too easy to download ieSpell nowadays, and have it one right-click away for your correct spelling pleasure.
I find the most common trouble I have, is the correct use of colons and semicolons, and I sometimes misuse the apostrophe, but in those case where I don’t feel solid in their use(‘s), I’ll make sure I look up the rule(s) to refresh myself before looking like a twit.
Unless a writer/commenter is clearly abusing my language through laziness and shear stupidity, I don’t pass any sort of judgment. I feel that as long as they are getting their point across in a relatively concise manner, why should I distract from that point by focusing on grammar.
If, on the other hand, the writer is of “well-known personage”, I have no mercy…especially when that writer is a spoiled, pompous, earned-nothing bitch, pontificating at those of us of in the “lesser” classes.