Does Anybody

Care?

by D. J. Herda

Does anybody in America know the English language anymore?  Does anybody in America know anything?  Does anybody care?

I was watching an NFL football game the other day, and one of the announcers (and I know these guys are the literary gurus of our age) actually said of a certain player, "If he's not the fastest guy in the NFL, he's one of the fastest."

I mean, as opposed to what?  "If he's not the fastest guy in the NFL, he's one of the slowest?"

Where do they get these people?

And sports commentators aren't the worst.  Not by a long shot.  I picked up a copy of The New York Times Magazine special issue called "The Other Cleanup" The Other Day.  The cover blurb of the thing read, "…But in the wave of gulf-spill litigation, they're struggling to not get cut out of the action."

"To not get…"?  Is that it?  "To not get..."? 

Are you kidding me?  Miss McGillicuddy, who taught our third-grade English class back in Chicago before the advent of electricity, is pulling her hair out by the roots--or what's left of it.  A split infinitive?  You have got to be kidding.  And in The New York Times?  Mercy.

But not all gaffes are related to proper use of the English language.  Some, by people who should simply know better, are an example of a classless society.  Take news anchor Rosanna Scotto who sullied a recent edition of Good Day New York by inexplicably, and apparently proudly, calling something "soy jizzum."  Class act, Roseanne Roseannadana.

I mean it's not quite so ludicrously classless as former presidential candidate John Kerry saying that he had voted for the war in Iraq before voting against it.  But it comes close.

I don't know.  Maybe I grew up in the wrong era.  Maybe, instead of being born a baby boomer, I should have been born a Reconstructionist.  Maybe--just maybe--had I been born in the antebellum South, I would have fared better.  I would have fit in better with the times and not felt so often and so markedly out of synch, the last Catholic in America, the bottom of the barrel, the final act, the illegitimate son of the queen. 

Perhaps, by not having been born to an earlier day and age, I missed the boat.  I'm still walking around shaking my head at addle-brained morons thumb-texting their way through meaningless drivel while driving 80 miles an hour down the Dan Ryan Expressway in the middle of rush hour.  (On the shoulder, no less.)  I'm still shuddering in awe at the highly overpaid professional football player who scores a touchdown and spends the next 30 seconds imitating a baboon in heat, as if scoring touchdowns wasn't his job.

But then again I think, maybe every era has its dolts and conundrums and space-heads.  They simply didn't call them that back then. 

After all, wasn't it Groucho Marx who once said, "I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member”?

Maybe, I think to myself sometimes, maybe that's my problem.  Maybe I should never have joined this club we call the twenty-first century.  Maybe, in fact, it's time I resigned.

And then, from the least expected of sources, I hear the voice of reason, the heart of compassion.  I see a preserver thrown to me upon the stormy sea of life.  And from, of all people, former speaker of the house Nancy Can't-Keep-Her-Tongue-In-Her-Pantsie Pelosi, who raised my spirits forevermore with her compassionate peal when pushing through the House of Representatives' least popular healthcare bill ever: "We have to pass the bill," she opined in an open message to the American people, "so that you can find out what's in it."

Brings tears to these, mine old eyes, even now.

And I haven't even touched on the inherent brilliance and unabashed chutzpah of the one person who has brought this great country of ours closer to societal and fiscal bankruptcy than any other social-climbing politico in history.

Or hadn't you noticed, Mr. President?

And I…am D. J. Herda.

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D. J. Herda is President of the American Society of Authors and Writers (http://amsaw.org), an organization made up of authors, writers, editors, publishers, agents, directors, producers, and other media professionals who rely upon the printed word in the creation of quality literature and entertainment.  He is a member of the Author's Guild, a former member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and a former member of the National Press Club.  He has published more than 80 books and several hundred thousand articles, short stories, columns, interviews, plays, and scripts.
 

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