Saturday, March 04, 2006

I Can Use "Pariah" In A Sentence

Have you heard about the guy whose job is being threatened because he advertises the fact that he's an English-speaking American? This infuriates me. You may think me a racist or a bigot or whatever for being pissed off about it, but I really don't care. Have you seen commercials for lawyers or doctors or whatever, and at the end they proudly proclaim "Se Habla Espanol"? Nobody rails against those businesses. They are applauded for their efforts in "reaching out". I realize that the U.S. does not have an official language. (I don't like it, but I know that's the way it is.) It is, however, the language that has been predominantly used in this country for 200+ years. I would think that would give it some extra clout, but instead it makes English a pariah. More concessions are made for people who do not speak it than those who do, and many of those who do speak it don't understand it enough to spell or use it correctly. (See also: the mind-numbing prevalence of using apostrophe S to denote a plural rather than possessive.)

The day I'm put in charge of everything, I'm going to mandate an English test. If you pass it, you get to eat. If you fail, you don't eat again until you pass. Don't worry about all the dead bodies, as they'll be cleaned up by my army of flying robotic electro-death monkeys.

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