It's On

Have you heard about the "job creators" who, in a fit of toddler-esque spite, are laying off workers in the wake of President Obama's re-election.  Ostensibly. they can "no longer afford" these workers due to the onerous taxes that the Obama administration has not actually imposed, to say nothing of the mandates of the Affordable Care Act.  Papa John's CEO John Schnatter, for example, ominously warned that, once Obamacare is enacted, customers may have to pay up to 14 cents more for a pizza. . . .

I'm sorry, that doesn't quite capture things:

UP TO 14 CENTS MORE PER PIZZA!!!!!

There, that's better.

Anyway, Schnatter has now said he will reduce workers' hours so as to avoid having to provide them with health insurance (a requirement that kicks in when employees work more than 30 hours a week).  To put it another way, Schnatter will charge you more for pizza AND force you to pay for his employees' health care when they show up at emergency rooms and/or sign up for taxpayer-sponsored insurance policies.

Mr. Schnatter, I personally have no problem paying an extra 14 cents for pizza if it means people get healthcare.  In fact, I'm willing to pay up to--oh, I don't know, an extra 28 cents!  Maybe even 43!  But guess what?  I--and I suspect many other like-minded folks--will not spend a DIME on your pizza if this is your attitude toward the public good.

By the way, to whatever audience I have: Please pass along any information about companies that are responding with similar petulance to the thought of having to, y'know, contribute to society.  Not so much to ME--rather to Facebook and any other outlets that have a wider reach.  If these folks don't like the cost of doing business, let's try to make sure they have considerably less business to do.

And When Did THIS Start Happening?

As bad as "on accident" is, there's another linguistic tic even more nails-on-a-chalkboard-like: "agreeance." As in "The committee met for three hours in order to reach agreeance on the best course of action."  Of course, I know what that sentence means. . . or meant. . .or MENT.  (See what I did there?)

According to Dictionary.com, "agreeance" has a track record dating back to the 16th century.  Now, however, the usage is "rare," and the word itself is described as a "bastardization of 'agreement.'"  I'm no linguistic prescriptivist, but when one's choice of usage prompts the appearance of the word "bastard," I submit there is a problem.

Advice to New Teachers: Know When You're Beat

Every teacher, no matter how scintillating, must deal with distractions.  In a class of thirty, about ten students on any given day will be preoccupied with personal dramas.  Whether earth-shattering tragedy or mundane young-adult angst, these concerns will distract roughly a third of your audience in every class.  For their sake, you can only hope their classmates take good notes.

But sometimes the distractions are external, and these provide teachers with far greater challenges.  When world events intrude into the classroom sanctuary, teachers must bear down.  Remember, you have a job to do: You are there to provide instruction, and you owe it to your students to remain focused--and to keep them focused--on the task at hand.

I've conducted classes during blizzards and nor'easters.  I conducted a class the week of 9/11.  I even managed to keep my students relatively engaged just a couple of nights ago, even as the news was sweeping the campus that President Obama had just been re-elected.  But even I have to admit when a distraction proves too overwhelming for even the most giffted of teachers to resist:

When a family of raccoons is frolicking on the lawn outside your classroom window, you might as well just let the kids go early.

Post-Mortem

I doubt I can add much to the commentary about the quite satisfying results of yesterday's voting, but I've been harping about the election for so long, as so many of us have, that I can't be expected to leave the day behind without at least offering my own post-election thoughts.

The ever-shrinking part of me that clings to optimism (currently occupying the space between tip of left big toe and first toe-knuckle) wants to think Republican leaders will learn the right lesson from yesterday's drubbing: that the country as a whole has little tolerance for. . .well, for intolerance.  Certainly GOP dead-enders will claim Romney lost because of insufficient conservativism, but, while Mittens was undoubtedly a flawed candidate, no lack of ideological purity caused his downfall.  Does anyone truly believe ultraconservatives DIDN'T vote for Mitt in large numbers?  If the argument is that an uninspiring candidate depressed conservative turnout, then that means a substantial number of Tea-Party true-believers felt more comfortable with the a second Obama term than with an imperfect but at least SOMEWHAT more ideologically copacetic Romney administration.  I don't buy it.  I personally suspect Tea Partiers turned out in droves for the chance to turn out Obama.  I suspect, indeed, that this is the ONLY reason Romney racked up about 50% of the popular vote.

Republicans keep trying to convince themselves and us that there is this tremendous demand on the part of the majority of Americans for some return to mythical conservative values when the facts--the observable if much maligned material of the reality-based community--are so clearly opposite.  Are Republicans blind to the fact that, in five of the last six presidential elections, a majority of voters expressed a preference for the other guy?  Or they could just look at yesterday's Senate results!  If there is such overwhelming preference for red-blooded conservatives, why did Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin in Republican-leaning Missouri and Richard "Rape Babies Are Just God's Way of Making Lemonade Out of Lemons" Mourdock in reliable Red State Indiana, both lose?  Why was Allen "Obama's a Communist" West tossed out in Florida?  Among a certain Republican subset, Romney may conjure the image of a Rebublican-in-name-only, but no one could accuse Akin, Mourdock, and West of holding anything but the purest of conservative credentials.  As Edward G. Robinson might snarl, "Where's yer groundswell, now, eh?"

Part of me hopes the GOP doesn't wake up.  Let the party devour itself in internecine bickering until it goes the way of Whigs and Tories and Bull Mooses and other extinct political fauna.  At the same time, I worry that, if the Republicans DON'T come to their senses, and something bizarre were to happen, we could end up with a President Ryan--a thought that should appeal to no one.  Maybe Boehner and company will face reality and we can get something like civility out of our elected leaders--to say nothing of governance.  I won't hold my breath.

In the meantime, we can all breathe a little easier today and, perhaps, for the next four years.  And by 2016, maybe Elizaabeth Warren will be ready to take a shot at the office.  A boy can dream, no?

Sticker Shock

Forget in-person voter fraud!  There's absolutely no evidence that it's happening, and to whatever extent it IS happening, it's highly unlikely that a sufficient number of people in any one state or congressional district are engaging in such activity to make any difference whatsoever in any race's outcome.  I DID, however, personally witness a case of in-person voter-sticker fraud, and I think this poses a significant threat to the Republic!

At my polling place this morning, what I assumed to be a father and son stood on line, waiting to sign in.  The son was about six years old.  As the pair approached the sign-in table, one of the elderly volunteers asked the boy if he would like a sticker. . . .AND THEN SHE GAVE HIM ONE!!!

Now, I am mildly concerned at the thought of what a savvy Republican operative could do with optics implying that a clearly underaged young man was allowed to vote at a polling place in a heavily Democratic precinct, in flagrant violation of any number of election laws.  But I am MORE concerned by the fact that the child was given the sticker before his father voted!  After all, if faced with the prospect of standing in an hours-long line, how many people would just give up and go home if someone offered them an "I Voted" sticker: They'd get all the warm approbation for having done their civic duty without actually having to wait around to vote!!! 

Now, THIS is a job for the ACLU!

"Your Brother Pats Paraplegics on the Head"

Today, as I stood in the mailroom, waiting for the microwave to heat my coffee, I idly scanned the bulletin-board clutter, and I noticed a document entitled, "The Ten Commandments of Communicating with People with Disabilities."  Surprisingly, commandment number one was NOT, "Thou shalt not say, 'Hi, Disabled Person!'"

The one that struck me was number 5: It begins, "Treat adults as adults. Address people with disabilities by their first names only when extending that same familiarity to all others."  So far so good.  Then it continues: "Never patronize people in wheelchairs by patting them on the head or shoulder."

Now, I'm obviously no expert, but is this a major problem?  Is there an epidemic of well-meaning but ill-mannered folks going around patting the heads of people in wheelchairs?  Admittedly, the wheelchair-bound are adorable, and it's all I can do to resist the urge not only to pat their heads but also to pinch their cheeks.  Yet, resist I do.

I will, of course, do my part to spread the word about the social unacceptability of head patting.  I can't help but wonder, though, if it might be better for people who HAVE been patting the heads of wheelchair users to CONTINUE doing so.  I mean, put yourself in the place of one of the patt-EEs: "Gee, Bob used to pat me on the head every day.  Now he's stopped.  I wonder if I've done something wrong?"

By the Barricades!

Linguistically speaking, I tend to caucus with the descriptivists.  I have no problem if someone wants to willfully split an infinitive.  If someone selects a favorite preposition to end a clause with, who am I to complain? You may consider this a questionable position for an English teacher.  Of course, I do spend countless hours correcting grammar mistakes (or "mistakes").  But I make corrections not so much because of some belief in a Platonic ideal of English usage, but rather because I have a responsibility to equip my students with the tools of upward mobility, one of which is an ability to produce correct (or "correct") English sentences with something approaching consistency.  On a fundamental level, though, I am much more concerned with clarity than with unbending adherence to often-arbitrary rules.

It is with some dismay, then, that I find myself forced to admit a certain nails-on-chalkboard reaction to "on accident."

Have you heard people saying this?  Do you say it yourself?  I first noticed some of my students saying it, but I chalked it up to second-language interference or perhaps petit mal seizures.  Then, I noticed some of my tutors--ostensibly smart-ish people--saying it.  Today, I heard a character in a movie saying it--and not as if the screenwriter had incorporated the phrasing as a way of indicating the characters' relative lack of linguistic sophistication.  Apparently, "on accident" has gone mainstream.

Why is this happening?  Painstaking investigation--OK, a Google search--reveals that this very subject has been the subject of linguistic research.  As mentioned on the Grammar Girl website, a linguist at Indiana State University found that whether one says "on" or "by accident" depends largely on one's age.  Children under the age of ten generally use "on" while people over the age of 35 almost universally say "by"; those between 10 and 35 may use either phrasing.

So, there you go: People say "on accident" because they are younger and therefore idiots.  The terrifying implication is that, as we proper speakers die out, the official acceptance of "on accident" will prove inevitable.  Might as well just go hole up in my mountain cabin with my freeze-dried rations and a copy of Strunk and White.  I'll hold out as long as I can.