Royal Wedding William AND Kate Midelton: WE LIVE IN AMERICA -NOW SPEAK ENGLISH

IT HAS MY BUTTONS PUSHED IN ALL THE WAY

About a week ago my cousin who lives abroad and owns a Saab automobile asked me to get some prices and availability on some car parts so he sent me an e-mail with the name of the part and the part number. When I made the inquiry to several places that sell these I just copied and pasted the information he sent me.

Wouldn’t you know it, one of the respondents sent me back the request asking for an English translation. Mind you the only words that were different were: “transmisión and partes”. The numbers for these parts are the same in both languages with a variation in spelling of course. What I would like to know is how different the words are in English that this Tea Bagger xenophobe could not understand.

Mind you, in this case I am the customer and as they say, the customer is always right but put that aside and think that this asshole is willing to forfeit the opportunity of making some profit over his askew concept that everyone should speak English.

Chances are this ignoramus didn’t even finish the 7^th grade and he is allergic to eñes and accents…I can imagine what would have happened had my cousin sent me the request in French with a Ç the son of a bitch would have gone into convulsions as he embarked on an acute attack of apoplexy.

If we really think about it; maybe we should even change our numbering system…after all, the numerals we used were given to us by Arabs and aren’t they the ones who attacked us on 9/11? So that 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. should be replaced by:

Or something clever like that. The way I felt was that next this asshole was going to ask me for my citizenship papers.

And don't think these people are not serious or on the level...I knew of a Libertarian turned Tea Bagger now and he told me he was so against government and the post office that he wrote zip codes in Roman numerals.

ARE WE TO CELEBRATE IGNORANCE AND ILLITERACY?

English is not my native language and as such, I have put a great deal of effort to speak it correctly. I am particularly concerned about spelling…my own and that of others. It is very disturbing to me when I hear the English language being butchered. It is even more alarming when I hear it from a public servant.

I think a good example of Bush's challenged elocution was best demonstrated when my mom, who hardly speaks English was watching President Bush and her comment was: "Dat ees not hau joo sai dat"

I remember how I used to cringe every time I heard former President Bush speak. He was not one of our most articulate Presidents in recent history. It is hard to say what Andrew Jackson may have sounded like but I suspect he was probably folksy and informal in his every day speech.

I began to notice it a while back when I heard Vice President Quayle make some embarrassing errors while talking to some children. I began to notice a pattern; it was mostly coming from Republicans who were beginning to discover the magic of populism, the inference that “being one of the boys” would gain them favorable approval and therefore votes.

But in the process, it became sufficiently clear that there was a segment of our population who would actually vote for some person whom they thought it would be fun to have a brew or two rather than voting for somebody who was actually qualified and educated. It almost became an obsession with them to find these people charming and down to earth.

Conversely, I detested President Bush for many reasons; I was appalled at the lengths he went to discredit any of his critics, following the advice of his closest advisors like Karl Rove or Cheney. I resented the fact that he was trampling over our Constitution and I could not forgive him for having embarked on an unnecessary war with a country that did nothing to us. I was furious when I found out that there were no WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. But I was almost always annoyed when I heard him speak. It was that fake Texas twang; it was his inability to express himself, his incoherence and most of all his arrogance.

I equally recoil like a snake under attack when I either see or hear Sarah Palin speak. She represents to many of us exactly that which we find abhorrent in a person and irritating in a politician: her tone, her modulation, her folksiness and most of all her ignorance. Don’t get me wrong…I think she is smart…she has been able to gain fame and fortune with a very meager education.

Is this going to become a permanent trend in America that we celebrate mediocrity? Is this an indication of where we are heading as a nation? If it is, then please somebody pinch me and tell me that all those years I spent in college, all those endless hours I spent reading the newspapers in front of a tape recorder and playing it back to improve my English and my pronunciation were not spent in vain.

I often get comments from right-wing nuts or religious fanatics that are riddled with grammatical errors. I doubt seriously if they are even aware that they have a feature on their computers called “spell check”; but I am particularly alarmed when I see these Tea Baggers carrying signs in demonstrations and they are dismally misspelled. Oh, don’t get me wrong on this either, it is possible to make a mistake or two, and I am not immune from those…but when you see so many of those signs you begin to ask yourself: W.T.F.?

I really do hope that these people can eventually make their life-long dream come true…the one that is most likely to be able to finish the seventh grade…perhaps even be able to take a remedial English course in the process.