I wrote the following piece in 2005 when I was in graduate school in Chicago. It was fun to research and write, but I never had the opportunity to do anything with it. However, with baseball season just around the corner, and this correspondent already getting excited, it seemed like a reasonable moment to dust off this essay about the colorful history of a neighborhood park where the neighborhood guys still get together to play ball.I.On the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, a school teacher, a real estate agent, a bartender and a legendary record producer played baseball on the grounds of an old cucumber farm.The cucumber farm is now better known as Winnemac Park, and among its many purposes, it serves as the home field for the Winnemac Electrons, a perennial basement dweller in the Chicago Metropolitan Baseball Association, an 18 and over men's baseball league. But the park is also a high school athletic facility, an urban nature preserve, and the preferred spot for pickup games of soccer, baseball, Frisbee, and anything else people can think up.Before the ballplayers arrived on that May morning, the park was serene, but by no means empty. Joggers shared the park's gently curving paths with dogwalkers and the occasional cyclist just passing through. The park sits in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago and is bound by Foster Avenue on the north, Damen Avenue on the east, Argyle Street on the south and Leavitt Street on the west. On the park's northeast corner sits Amundsen High School, a dense brick building that dates back to 1930.From the back of the high school, one has a pretty much unimpeded view of the sturdy brick grandstand of Jorndt field, a smart-looking high school football stadium that runs along Leavitt Street on the west side of the park. The fenced-in field is less than a year old, and it was named after Louis C. Jorndt, a teacher and coach at Amundsen from 1930 to 1953.Twenty yards to the east of Jorndt field, the game between the Electrons and the Chicago Aviators got underway about twenty minutes late because the umpire got stuck in traffic. The Electrons typically don't win, but they liked their chances in this game. Ryan Rezvani, a computer lab teacher at Patrick Henry Elementary School said that when the Electrons first started out "we got our ass kicked the whole year." He pointed to the Aviators players warming up on the field, "they're the new us."Also on the bench was Steve Albini, who is known to many music fans as the producer of albums by some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and 90s, including The Pixies and Nirvana. His company, Electrical Audio, is one of the Electrons sponsors, and gives the team its name and logo, a maroon lowercase "e." Albini had arrived on an old bicycle wearing coveralls with a big version of the "e" logo on the back. At 42, he's the oldest member of the team, but he also epitomizes the team's playful spirit. "We all got such a kick out of playing baseball after not playing for such a long time," he said of their first season in the league in 2003.Before the game, Electrons coach and first baseman Al Stern gathered the team under the paltry shade of a young oak tree and told them not to take the Aviators lightly, even though they were widely regarded as the league's weakest team. Stern read off the starting lineup, and the team gave an earnest round of applause after each name.Pitching for the Electrons was John Federici, known to his teammates as "J. Fed," who has the same build as David Wells, the sturdy pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. According to Rezvani, the hardest thing for these teams to find is good pitching, and in Federici, a bartender who many speculated hadn't gone to sleep the night before, the Electrons had found their ace. He allowed a run in the first inning on a single to left followed by a double to the gap in right, but he would hold the Aviators scoreless for the rest of the seven inning game, striking out 13.
II.It costs about $3,000 to field a CMBA team, $1,100 of that is dues to the league and the rest goes to uniforms, equipment and umpires. One significant outlay is for baseballs. Every ball that was fouled beyond third base and over the locked fence that surrounds Jorndt Field elicited groans from the players. Beyond the first base line is a patch of knee-high prairie grass, and each time a ball landed in the thicket, one of the Electrons went bounding in to retrieve the ball and save the team some cash.The patches of prairie that sit in the middle of Winnemac Park aren't the result of negligent groundskeeping; they're a part of the $2 million renovation of the park that was completed in 1999. The prairie, crisscrossed by paths, is a reminder of what the park once was, and laminated signs posted by the Chicago Park District help visitors identify the plants that grow there.After the original prairie was cleared away, this land was a cucumber farm, but as far back as 1837, the 40 acres that constitute Winnemac Park have been in the hands of the city. A man named Charles M. Pettit was the last private owner of the land, and he lost it when the Chicago's Commissioner of Schools foreclosed on a loan for $1,500 he had made to Pettit out of school funds. Pettit had used the property to secure the loan.The archives of the
Chicago Tribune offer a sketch Winnemac Park's history, one full of sporting events of every kind and at every level. But before the games could be played, the facilities had to be put in place. From the June 6, 1912,
Tribune: "Commissioner Charles Bock obtained the [park] commission's consent to allow young men and boys to play baseball in Winnemac park at Foster avenue and North Robey street. Six baseball diamonds will be laid out."By 1920 plans were being floated in City Council meetings to put a high school on the land, but it wasn't until 1930 that Amundsen opened, named for the polar explorer Roald Amundsen who had died on a rescue mission to the North Pole two years earlier. A 6,000 seat stadium, now replaced by Jorndt Field, was put in soon after. For much of the 1930s the park was the site of WPA projects where workers improved and regraded the land, but by the 1990s the park had fallen into disrepair. Winnemac Avenue, which at the time bisected the park from east to west, was the site of drag races that were accompanied by nightly beer bashes. The drainage systems underneath the fields south of Winnemac had never been properly connected to the city sewers, and after strong rains the park would turn into a muddy lake. The park's athletic fields, especially the ones used by the public and not the high school, were in disrepair.The latest incarnation of Winnemac Park is something of an oasis on the North Side of Chicago. 2,000 new trees were planted along with the prairie, and Winnemac Avenue was closed to traffic and converted into a pedestrian path. The paths through the park are now accented by old cobblestones and decorative lights and fencing. The park seems to be a favorite destination for neighborhood residents who flock there on summer evenings and weekend days, but not everyone is happy with the new Winnemac Park.Ron Markowicz, president of the CMBA, described Winnemac Park before the renovation, as a "wide open sports complex." Markowicz used to have two fields available for games, but a new parking lot took away most of right field in one of them. Markowicz isn't just a disgruntled taxpayer though; over the years, with the blessing of the city, he has spent league money hiring independent contractors to improve the baseball diamonds at Winnemac. Still, Winnemac is the perfect spot for city baseball players who don't want to trek out to the suburbs for games, and each season four or five teams in the CMBA use Winnemac as their home field. "We love it because it's local," Markowicz said, "not having to drive all over hell's half acre is a big selling point."Though the CMBA has worked to keep the field in good shape, it's no Wrigley. Winnemac "has a notoriously irregular field," Steve Albini said. The bad bounces caused by the pitted infield are so frequent and so noteworthy that the phenomenon has been dubbed "The Winnemac Hop." As the Electrons and the Aviators battled each other, both teams faced a few Winnemac Hops, which the scorekeepers ruled were base hits and not errors.
III.By the third inning, the Electrons were already pulling away. They came up to bat in the bottom of the third with a five to one lead, but before the inning could get underway, the Aviators catcher, a wiry fellow who sported a mohawk haircut, got tagged in the nose with an errant warmup pitch. For some reason he hadn't been wearing his catcher's mask. There was a brief delay as he tried to staunch the bleeding, but that wasn't by any means the first blood spilled at Winnemac in athletic pursuits.In 1940, Bob Sparks, left fielder of the Ace Staplers, broke his leg above the ankle sliding into second, and in 1956, Jerry Buechel, - the "star senior halfback on Tuley High school's football team," according to the
Tribune's report the next day - was knocked unconscious for 20 minutes in a game against Amundsen. Far worse, however, was the fate of fourteen-year-old Aleck Isheksen, who died on the way to the hospital after being struck in the head by a line drive at the park in the summer of 1919.The same Aviators catcher who got tagged in the nose in the third had gotten yelled at by the ump in the first for stepping on Electron first baseman, Al Stern's leg as he reached first base on a ground out. "It's a point of contention," said Stern, of the fact that only one ump calls the games. But most games it works out fine. "If the ball beats the runner there, the ump's going to call him out, which is what he should do," said Stern who is a real estate agent during the week.Players have been grumbling at officials in games played at Winnemac for decades now, but on occasion tempers have really flared. In the summer of 1956, a semi-pro soccer game had to be cut short after fans of a team called the Falcons rushed the field and tried to attack the referee for kicking one of their players out of the game. The ref escaped harm. But two years later a halfback for the Eagles, Kas Iwanicki - "address unknown," according to the Tribune report - knocked 60-year-old ref, Eli Korer to the ground with one punch. Iwanicki was disputing a goal scored by the Falcons (the ones with the rowdy fans), and Korer ended up in the hospital with ten stitches.Luckily it appears as though, on at least one occasion, the right of an official not to get slugged was held up in the court of law. From the July 2, 1921,
Tribune: "'So long as a base ball umpire has nerve enough to stand by his decision. I'll do all I can to protect him,' said Judge John R. Newcomer in the Sheffield avenue court yesterday in assessing a fine of $3 and costs against Harry Kullander of the Winonas, who was charged with attacking Umpire George Le Marsh during a game at Winnemac Park last Sunday."The Electrons and the Aviators, however, managed to play their game in relative peace. As the game wore on, the clouds thickened as they moved in from the west. To the south of Jorndt Field a pair of tennis players were dashing around the public court, and pickup soccer games had sprung up on various empty patches of grass despite the threatening weather. On a weekend walk through Winnemac, one is likely to encounter several different sports being played, but these are only a tiny fraction of the athletic endeavors that the park has hosted.Soccer, football, and baseball have been the most frequently played sports at Winnemac. Soccer was once the top draw. As many as 7,000 people came to the park to watch men's amateur and semi-pro soccer games in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The park has also hosted football games for Amundsen, Senn, Lake View and several other high schools. The Chicago Bears even worked out there in the 1950s to spare their home turf at Wrigley Field. And baseball, from pickup games, to little league, up through high school, amateur and semi-pro leagues, has been a near constant summer presence at Winnemac for almost a hundred years.But other sports have been contested there as well. There was once a skating rink in the park that hosted events called Ice Skating Derbies in the 1920s and 1930s. The "National Amateur Athletic union 25 kilometer walking championship" was held there in the 1950s and the park has often been the finish line for long distance running and bicycle races. Games of rugby and cricket have been played there, but perhaps the strangest of all was the Girl Scout Olympics in the summer of 1940. According to the
Tribune, "A medium sized raw potato, a bean bag, a troop flag and the Stars and Stripes will be the necessary items of equipment for each of the 92 troops participating."There were no potatoes on hand as the long-threatening clouds finally doused the park with rain, and the Electrons drubbing of the Aviators came to a close with a final score of 13 to 1. Some of the Electrons raced off through the downpour to their cars in order to make it to holiday barbecues or to head home for a nap, while others strolled triumphantly, if damply, to Gio's, a nearby sports bar that co-sponsors the team. The joy that the Electrons derived from this hobby of theirs - the one that allowed them don uniforms and bat the ball around an emerald oasis in the city - was plain on their faces.As Steve Albini, the patron saint of this plucky club put it, "Baseball for all of us is not the most important thing in our lives, but it's important enough for us to do it."
In a Slate piece published back in the fall, Kitty Burns Florey took on the unenviable task of diagramming the utterances of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Florey, the author of Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog, clearly has a unusual predilection for sentence diagramming (which I’m pretty sure the Army Field Manual prohibits as a form of torture.) Nonetheless, her project was more journalistic than aesthetic; she suggested that diagramming a sentence “provides insight into the mind of its perpetrator.”
Perhaps, rather than having some grammatical genius that allows him to seem for confident and masculine than he may actually be, he is merely a product of several years of Warriner's English Grammar.
These are not even the words of Obama, but that of his speech writer, whose job is to make him look good. Therefore, diagramming a sentence from his speech should say nothing about the Messiah.
Kirk, Tx.
Kirk,
What we think we know can often prevent us from learning new things. Last year's Time piece on Obama's speechwriting process:
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837368,00.html
Neil
Kirk,
Are you saying Obama's speechwriter is scripting not only his prepared addresses, but ostensibly spontaneous responses to press conference questions (which was the context for this sentence)? I'm not sure I follow your line of argument, but would be happy to know more…
Neil,
The article does mention "the 27 year old wunderkind," Favreau who helps him with his speeches, so which are Obama's words and which are Favreau's?
Garth,
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Obama rehearses his answers to questions that he anticipates. He is the slickest politician since…well, Bill Clinton, so polishing answers just as with speeches would be easy to imagine. After all, any politician who can convince the American people that a trillion dollar spending bill is going to stimulate the economy certainly gets props from me.
Kirk, Tx.
PS Garth, at least we agree on Bolano.
Goodness. It must be hard work, Kirk, patrolling the entire internet for instances of flattering or admiring statements about the new President of United States which can be turned into sneering implications that those who flatter or admire him have switched off their brains.
How do you find the time?
@Goodness. Or rather, how does someone find the time to diagram the president's speeches?
Kirk,
A speechwriter can only do so much. Like Obama, George W Bush had a team of 3 competent speechwriters yet he couldn't even put together two words coherently. The job of a speechwriter is to write in the speaker's own voice, not be the voice. If you're implying that Obama is just a voicebox, you're sorely mistaken. You've got to be pretty good with language to make the president of the Harvard Law Review.
What troubles me about this sentence is not its grammar, but its content. Obama sees the important issue of bringing to book people who abused executive power under Bush administration as "looking backward"? Ethics are at issue here, and unfortunately Obama has failed to live up to his own pre-election standards on the question of accountability. Check out the delays and settlements he recommended in the subpeona of Rove and the nod he gave to the Justice system to basically uphold security certificates and such from the Bush era. He is not willing to deprive himself of the vast and unconstitutional powers that he inherited from the Bush administration. This will be the most serious credibility issue with his presidency.
Could we have some similar diagram also for Bush speech? please.
I totally agree Obama is a great communicator, which in most instances today means he reads well from a teleprompter. And I concur that Bush was perhaps the worst communicator we've ever had. Laughable. But actions speak louder than words, so after all of Obama's campaign promises he has a mountain to climb.
Kirk,Tx.
Kirk,
It's your cult that wanted Bush's War, so that they could act out The Left Behind series, for "Jesus". I'm not surprised that logic and facts are regarded as the enemy.
Sorry I don't fall into your category of Republican Evangelical. I am an atheist that happens to be a conservative in most cases.
If you think that the Bush administration regarded logic and facts as the enemy you aint seen nothin' yet!
Kirk,Tx.
I don't think magic-talking is a sign of respect. If american people were to be treated as adults the truth would plain and clear (adults can handle the truth, right?). Instead everybody is left to draw his own conclusion (magic talking alert!). The wrongdoers will be prosecuted, or not? Keeping an eye on the future is more important than justice or not? The same political-correctness-BS just in a nicer package.
This MUST be put up side-by-side with a Bush quote. Please, I'm begging.
I've met Obama (I was at the University of Chicago when he taught there). This isn't from a speechwriter; he's always spoken like this.
The sentence analyzed exposes one of Obama's serious weaknesses – lack of precision and clarity.
When Obama's finally gotten to the period at the end of the long sentence, the listener has no more insight into Obama's views or probable future actions than they did before he uttered the first word of the sentence. While a casual observer (or an Obama worshiper) thinks the question has been answered, it was not. He could either prosecute everyone in sight within the Bush administration (of course, only for "clear" violations), or he could do absolutely nothing (of course, in the interest of "looking forward").
I am hopeful that Obama's seemingly intentional ambiguity and failure to take a clear position is a political technique he reserves for dodging domestic issues and that he lets experienced people craft his messages for the international stage. In international matters, failure to communicate effectively and clearly can have serious consequences including unnecessary escalation of tensions to the level of warfare.
The article makes fun of Bush 43 for the statement: "You're with us or you're against us" [I believe the author used a fragment of Bush's sentence here, but that's not material to this discussion]. However, the purpose of speaking is to communicate. It is reasonable to agree or disagree with Bush's position, but it's impossible to not better understand Bush's position and attitude after hearing this statement – he views sitting on the sidelines on the issue of terrorism to be equivalent to supporting terrorism.
If you watch his many interviews or read his two self-authored books and countless articles dating back to his law school days and early marriage life and on through the present, you will see that Obama has always talked this way. His themes, views, syntax and delivery have been remarkably consistent. Say what you want about him, but his voice – with or without a speechwriter's help – is authentically his. To say otherwise is mere ignorance or delusion.
To all who believe Obama's statement is obfuscating but that there's clarity in Bush's "you're with us or you're against us" statement: You are wrong.
Obama here says we will enforce the laws, but he's not about to set the government toward consuming itself with second-guessing all dubious Bush Administration decisions; that should evidence emerge of clear wrong-doing, your title and your friends will not save you from justice, but that his administration is not about to launch a comprehensive witch hunt. This is pragmatic.
Bush's alleged clarity is anything but pragmatic. If an overall long-term ally like Mexico or France opposes our invasion of Iraq because they find our charges of Iraqi terrorism-abetting to be unpersuasive — are they now "with" the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11? Is Russia "with" the terrorists, or Syria — or Hamas? It would seem they are. And yet we permit them to go on existing — which makes us "with" the terrorists, doesn't it? Sorry, but I never saw the clarity in Bush's black-vs-white jingoism.
I am pleased to have a president with an adult ability to examine the world and address its complexity. That serves the national interest well.
Logosfera, I would argue that letting people come to their own conclusions is, in fact, treating them like adults–especially when compared with the paternalistic alternatives that you offer.
Secondly, in Obama's answer you can find answers to every question you raised. Will wrongdoers be prosecuted? He says yes, when it is clear that they in fact did wrong. Is keeping an eye on the future more important and "justice" (which, in fairness, is not synonymous with "looking backward" which is what he actually said)? Yes, he says he's more interested in looking forward than dwelling on the past. These are not contradictory–He's more interested in the future than the past, but when clear wrongdoing is occurred then those accountable should be prosecuted.
I think you do a great job showing how Obama's brain works as it is manifest in his construction of syntax and design. He's a remarkable thinker, strategist and writer. I think his sentence structure demonstrates all the complexity he brings to the issue, his understanding of opposing ideas, and an aesthetic sense of parallelism and rhythm.
It's an odd world we live in when sentence structure *is* construed as indicative of morality, but actions aren't.
Stop addressing Kirk the Texas troll. Internet 101, people.
The commas are misplaced in that sentence. Here I fixed it for you!
"My view is also that nobody's above the law and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen but that, generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards"
Unfortunately this quote didn't contain the one mistake which I observe fairly regularly in Obama's speech: the use of "a" before a noun beginning with a vowel. For example, he says "launch a attack" instead of "launch an attack." I've also heard several friends who were raised in Hawaii speak similarly, so maybe it's a local Hawaiian thing?
The semicolon was correct. When the first clause contains commas, the punctuation mark before the conjunction should be a semicolon for the sake of clarity.
Yr pedantic trivia for the day
Anonymous @ 6:01:
It isn't clear what you hope to imply about the comparative morality of the actions of Presidents Bush and Obama, if anything, in this thread about clear communication.
No one here is claiming that sentence structure indicates morality, only that it indicates a person's thought patterns. Sentences that become complex without becoming unclear indicate something very promising about the mind producing them. That's all.
Using "a" for the *unstressed* article in all positions is hardly localized to Hawaii; I've heard it all my life. I say it – and I've never been to Hawaii. Many people do it, even if they wouldn't write it; it's simply a phonological feature of a large number of English dialects. You may call it a "mistake", but the difference between "an" and "a" has been a fluid one in English for a long time.
@Ridger–
I think it's the glottal stop that arises between the "a" and following vowel sound that reminds me of the spoken Hawaiian language. Hawaiian is replete with consecutive vowels that are separated by glottal stops. I was just wondering if that found its way into English as spoken in Hawaii.
As for it being a "mistake," I was taught that it was incorrect, both in speech and writing.
Why does it matter that it's unstressed??
What with all the sentence diagramming? He still didn't say anything. Typical politician – platitudes and no substance.
The second "that" clause isn't really parallel to the other two, because it's subordinated to the "if" clause
In my experience as an applied linguist specializing in the American accent, "a" and a following vowel sound overall tends to be more of a male characteristic, and then secondarily, a sub-30 trait.
"I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Obama rehearses his answers to questions that he anticipates."
Non sequitur; you asserted that these were Obama's speech writers words, not his — strongly implying that they were part of a speech. Your response simply confirms what was evident from the first — that you're a grossly dishonest person.
Can we go easy on Kirk, folks? He's been commenting here for a while and is a Bolano fan, which is two marks in his favor, and while his first comment did strike me as a bit piquant, I'd like to invoke (invent?) the law of proportional snark.
Beautiful, how elegant, like a flower!
Thanks Garth!
Nothing against Obama or his supporters. His English is that of a well-healed Ivy Leaguer, I just don't agree with his policies.
Bolano Rules!
Kirk, the "Texas Troll"
Sheesh … You would have thought that Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) would have ended on January 20, 2009, but clearly, it hasn't.
"You would have thought that Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) would have ended on January 20, 2009, but clearly, it hasn't."
Seeing as his two wars and 5 trillion dollars of national debt are still with us, I see no reason to let up.
Kirk,
You are welcome to disagree with Obama's policies, but your critique is not based on much more than unexamined assumptions and rigidified bias, with a liberal (muahaha) dose of snarkiness thrown in for good (read: bad) measure.
This, unfortunately, is a dire disease of the conservative mind. The previous President and his slavish followers being prime examples. Listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh only releases more toxins into the body politic and offer no cures at all.
"Bush Derangement Syndrome" not letting up? That's nothing — 8 years later, conservatives are STILL blaming stuff on Clinton.
Kirk, Obama's been in office a few weeks. Bush was in there screwing things up for 8 years. I'm not willing to talk down the new president, on whom we all depend, for a few years yet.
I want him to have his chance to make things better, and I'll support him in much of what he does in his early days in office.
Considering that conservatives spent 7 years shrieking about how unAmerican it was to question the president — calling the rest of us traitors and haters (and a lot of you are still doing it) — I'd think you guys would be willing to give THIS president a little leeway.
@Kirk: "If you think that the Bush administration regarded logic and facts as the enemy you aint seen nothin' yet!"
Really? This administration is going to play looser with logic and facts than the *Bush administration*?! Now we *know* you're a troll.
There is everything to respect about the wise words of a thoughtful, respectable and intelligent president of the United States – something we have not enjoyed for a while.
But the sentence in question is remarkably simple; so much so that if it represents such cause for celebration by the author, one would wonder whether he too shared this property.
I refuse to believe that we have reached the stage where anything uttered in public that is not incomprehensible garbage is reason for elation. Things have surely not grown that bad yet.
I never said anything about Bush…
As I stated before Obama is an eloquent communicator but what he is communicating is his desire to make us a socialist nation.
After 7 years of the New Deal, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau said that all the money that had been spent had not worked. Trying to spend our way out of recession is an exercise in futility.
Kirk, Tx.
I'm thinking Bush supporters are just jealous that our president is no longer as stupid as they are.
@Kirk, that's a "well-heeled Ivy Leaguer", not "well-healed".
– a not-so-well-heeled Ivy Leaguer in VA
i kinda like your post! :D love it. thanks for posting :D
I chuckle every time someone uses the phrase "socialist nation" or even the word "socialism" today, in reference to Obama. It's right out of the GOP playbook.
The funny thing is, the GOP lost this election, and they're not bright enough to notice they continue to lose ground. Their talking points just aren't getting any traction, except among the very small number of Sarah Palin syncophants.
Keep on digging in your heels, Republicans, and do your best to wreck the country even more than George Bush managed. Stay right out in the open, spreading your lies, where we can see you. The rest of us will get on with business while you squabble in the mud.
Hank,
Obama wants to "spread the wealth," how is that not Socialism?
I believe that the GOP message is getting traction…They're certainly not going down without a fight about this "stimulus" package.
Again, George Bush is no longer in the White House!!!
But I would rather have the country wrecked by Bush than utterly destroyed by Obama's policies.
Furthermore, I believe that those that pulled the lever for Obama will live to regret it when they are giving half of their paychecks for programs that only make individuals and businesses more reliant on government.
Texas Troll
I'm sorry, but I just find it hilarious that Obama making the US a "socialist nation" (which I don't think will happen) is regarded as a bad thing. I, personally feel that we should work to close the ENORMOUS gap between the rich and the poor, and since those who are well-off obviously aren't doing it themselves, I think the government should assume more responsability for that.
"I chuckle every time someone uses the phrase "socialist nation" or even the word "socialism" today, in reference to Obama. It's right out of the GOP playbook."
Sorry, but there are more than knee-jerk conservatives who think that running a huge deficit is fundamentally immoral. The impulse to control and direct is not unique to the right; you on the left employ the same tools for different ends. The real issue is individual liberty vs. statism, *classical* liberalism versus collectivism, whether progressive or conservative.
Nationalization of the banking sector doesn't amount to socialism? Read some Von Mises. Please.
Very erudite, I’m sure. I think by now we’ve all concluded that Obama is a thinker, that he doesn’t go off half cocked like Bush and his ball-and-Cheney. But what bothers so me about Obama’s use of language is his frequent grammatical mistakes. He says things like: America is doing our duty. Correct version: American is doing ITS duty or We are doing our duty. He says things like: President Bush has invited Michelle and I to the White House.
How can someone who has attended Harvard and taught constitutional law not be able to master such mundane and fundamental concepts as which pronoun agrees with its noun? I honestly can’t understand. His grammar is helping to dumb down America.
Even Mrs. Obama uses this construction. She said, “I am a woman who loves my husband.” She too has been privileged to receive a wonderful education, but helps to dumb down the language.
Come on, Obamas! Start cracking those grammar books with your kids!
Mae
Socialism aside, I’m no “grammar queen,” but this sentence needs a lot of work. Too many “that’s,” a useless “also,” and if one moves “forward,” why would they not alternatively move “backward” (minus the s).
For example:
–My view is that no one is above the law. But if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, people should be prosecuted as ordinary citizens. In general, I am more interested in looking to the future, rather than the past.–
If Obama could put together a really great string of words off the cuff, then, he might be considered a great speaker. Otherwise, in my opinion, he needs all the help he can get–including a teleprompter.
I’m anxious to see an update to this article. How does “word salad” fare in the realm of sentence diagramming.