This week, it was reported that Harris did a poll (which I sadly cannot find to see their data). Anyways, what the poll found was that 74% of respondents age 18-34 “were irked by” bad spelling and bad grammar on social media.
Interesting, no?
No?! Well consider this... we’ve been told that modern generations since mine (Xers) have been taught that things like spelling and getting math answers right don’t matter so long as we stroke up some self-esteem in trying, right? I’ve heard this crap for decades now treated as gospel by Talk Radio. In fact, this little claim has been the Alpha and Omega of Talk Radio’s attack on education in America. And their counterparts on the left seem to celebrate it.
But do you know what? I’ve never seen any evidence of this. Sure, sometimes, you get a moron liberal administrator who will say this line, but I’ve never seen parents or students or even teachers accept it. Now we get this poll.
This poll tells us not only that at least 74% of the public never bought into this argument, but 74% are actively bothered when other people can’t spell or use proper grammar. That is super telling. Why? Because that means that this issue is so important to supposedly brainwashed Millennials that even though they aren't supposed to care about grammar anymore, seven in ten actually get pissed off when they run across someone who does it wrong. So much for the brainwashing. Even better, we’re talking about social media which is notorious for mouthbreathers saying things like: “he done loosed the game when there qb thru the ballz their’re.” In other words, in the land where we’ve been told people are most tolerant of the idiotic misuse of language, more than seven in ten people get pissed off about the misuse of the language!
Why is this important? Because it means that those 7 in 10 people get angry when people fail to conform to a societal normal that we’ve been told has been wiped out by liberals. That is damning for the idea pimped by Talk Radio that society is going to hell because no one respects the rules anymore and it shows how little progress the self-esteem types have made.
Further, keep in mind, those 7.4 in 10 are the ones who get upset. They aren’t the only ones to whom good grammar matters. In fact, the other 2.6 should break down into three groups: (1) the anything goes crowd, (2) those who didn’t express an opinion, and (3) those who don’t like people being wrong, but who don’t get angry about it. That means that we are probably looking at 8 or 9 people in 10 who respect grammar and spelling rules.
So much for the collapse of society.
Now let me add some anecdotal evidence to this. In the 1980s, when it was becoming clear that a significant chunk of black kids couldn’t speak English because black culture had adopted 1970’s pimp speak, the black establishment tried to hide this by declaring “ebonics” a real language and saying it should be accepted as being the equivalent of English. At the same time, the left was pushing the idea of educating Hispanic kids in Spanish, with English only as an extra field of study.
Both of those ideas have all but vanished these days because black and Hispanic parents didn’t want their kids being handicapped. As proof of the difference, look at the NFL and compare the black players who joined the league in the 1990s and who needed to be translated by reporters into English, see e.g. Mike Vick, with amazingly well-spoken guys like Russell Wilson, Colin Kapernick, and RG3 today. Watch Hard Knocks on HBO, which is following the Texans this year or the Falcons last year, and you will see a group of black athletes whose English is excellent and whose interests are stunningly erudite: painting, classical piano, visiting museums, nerd pursuits. None of these guys is a ghetto gangbanger. Ditto for the black characters you see on television, black actors and even black entertainers... where nerds and businessmen are becoming the new “in” thing for black characters. And show me a single news agency who has hired people who don't speak excellent English. Even ESPN and the NFL Network are drifting away from the gibberishers and replacing them with guys like Eric Davis, who speak clearly and intelligently.
This is not the world we were told was coming in the 1990s when we were assured that black kids would be taught ebonics, Mexican kids would never be taught English, white kids were taught that spelling and grammar rules didn’t matter, and when we were assured that “r u their lolz” meant that future generations would be imbeciles destined for welfare.
Add this to the polls I showed you about race not mattering to anyone except increasingly small fringes on either side... to the fact our education is actually world class... to the fact our economy is world class... to the fact our military in unique in the history of the world... to the flood of advances today in all fields... and to all the polls that continue to show that Americans still believe the things that made America great.
Finally, let me throw one more thing out there. I’ve been talking to one of our friends of the site about the state of modern “art.” There is this perception that modern “art” has gone to crap. And to the extent that we are talking about the “pure art” crowd, yeah, that stuff is garbage and they know it. But that’s only a tiny fraction of modern art. Think about this... there is amazing modern classical music being made by the likes of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, modern storytelling as seen in films over the past few decades and video games far exceeds the quality of all but a handful of classic tales, modern image art as seen in book covers or online or what ends up on film is absolutely stunning, the sculpture work done for presidents, sports heroes or by guys like Fernando Botero or local but world renown cowboy artist Michael Garman are amazing, check out “So You Think You Can Dance” for amazing modern dance in all categories, etc.
This is a time of amazing achievement, and the current generations are strongly demanding that everyone obey the rules that keep society cohesive. The end of America not only never came, there’s not even a foundation upon which that dystopian jerk-off fantasy can be built. America is not going down hill. There are just people who tell you that because it serves their purposes.
Thoughts?
