Diary of a Mad English Professor

“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

—George Orwell
“Politics and the English Language” (1946)

oday was one of those days. Rebel Girl’s head cold continued to linger, a blizzardy winter in her skull occupying what should be a sunny So Cal spring but instead perseveres as a drizzle-filled season of no-name.

I drove home, picked up the mail, heated leftover pizza, and read Patricia J. Williams’ column in my latest issue of the Nation (May 15, 2006), standing up in the kitchen, warming myself by the stove.

Last March, Red Emma was in Chicago, attending the Conference on College Composition and Communication (aka the 4 C’s) courtesy of UCI and his own talents. He bought me Williams’ latest book, Open House: of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons and the Search for a Room on My Own. I’ve been making my way through it in the evenings since.

It’s a wonderful and inspiring mix of the personal and the political. Williams is a professor of law at Columbia University and holds a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Harvard Law School, but I know her mostly through her regular columns in the Nation, which appear under the heading: “Diary of a Mad Law Professor.”

This week’s column is titled, “The Deciderator” and begins with the epigraph below courtesy of President Bush, followed by the text I quote after:

“I hear the voices, and I read the front page and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense." —President Bush, April 18

“I wish I could stop over-analyzing everything President Bush says, but since his pronouncements so often require deciphering, I just can't seem to stop myself at plain meanings. For instance: What on earth's going on with his self-inflicted depiction as our fearless ‘decider’? A preference for Germanic rather than French suffixes? A penchant for verb-lers rather than noun-atives?”

A moody English professor who seems to be in perpetual despair, I identified with William’s tendency to over-analyze the President’s rhetorical stylings.

Naturally, I kept reading. A few lines later, Williams admits that her “worry is not solely about language.” She points out, “This Administration has circumvented the thoughtful, the consultative, the diplomatic with phraseology so twisted that one indulges the temptation to laugh at it as meaningless rather than to unpackage the purpose behind the mangled mots.”

She cites Bush’s endorsement of “affirmative access” over affirmative action during one of the presidential debates, describing it as “an artful dodge…a refusal to engage as well as a refusal to commit.”

“That maneuver,” she writes, “has in it the ingredients of so much of what I find troubling about this Administration: there’s a whole lot of decideration and precious little consideration. This is an Administration that has leaped without looking, that has prized efficiency (or the idea of it anyway) over equity and enshrined secrecy over communication at every turn. Competence is unquestionably sacrificed in that kind of bunkered, blinkered governance. And accountability—which is, after all, what we should be debating when it comes to Rumsfeld’s performance—is not even on the table.”

My impulse is simply to present you with her entire essay. But there are laws against that kind of thing, and besides you can pursue Patricia J. Williams yourself: buy the Nation, find it in the library or read as much as they will let you online at: www.thenation.com)

But some of you know where I’m going with this. Of course. Perhaps you recognize the syndrome too. For indeed, as much as I found myself nodding in agreement with Williams’ assessment of the Bush Administration, I also found myself seeing the sorry state of our college district reflected in her words:

“…there’s a whole lot of decideration and precious little consideration.” —Yup

“This is an Administration that has leaped without looking, that has prized efficiency (or the idea of it anyway) over equity and enshrined secrecy over communication at every turn.” —Oh yeah.

“Competence is unquestionably sacrificed in that kind of bunkered, blinkered governance.” —You got that right!

“And accountability…is not even on the table.” —Uh-huh.

And, in terms of the “mangled mots” uttered by our own local fearless leaders, well, dear reader, simply cast your eyes to the sidebar of this blog, where Chunk usually has the doozies posted. “Stop living in an ivory castle!” Indeed.

This regime—the board and Chancellor, the administrators in charge of the commonwealth, public education, our cultural and political lives—have done to language what they have done to our nation, our state (Der Terminator) and our county. They are foolish people for whom language is something less a tool than a destroyerator of tools. As Orwell claims, “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

“Pure wind.”

Brrrrrr.