Morning Fog

Still Dithering Over The Misquote On The MLK Memorial

Recall the shameful misquote on the Martin Luther King memorial sculpture that was unveiled to much fanfare back in September?  Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has announced that it will definitely be "fixed," and Washington Post reporter Rachel Manteuffel, who broke the story, has written a smarmy self-congratulatory followup with a very rosy tone.  I was pleased, on reading the headline, that the issue was finally being dealt with, as I and many others had called for. 

But on reading further, I found it's not being dealt with properly.  Not at all.  Salazar is only passing along the promise of the memorial's chief architect that the misquote will be replaced by an "alternative wording," by which he seems to mean a more accurate paraphrase of what King actually said (and ergo, another misquote).  The nominal reason is that the full quote could not be fit retroactively on the slab of granite where it now resides without destroying the monument.  

I find that a rather dubious excuse.  First, officials of the Foundation that funded the memorial are even now admitting that the shortening of King's words occurred only because the sculptor (Chinese) and the architect thought a shorter quote looked better aesthetically -- NOT because they didn't think there was room for it.  Second, if you look at the expanse of surface available on the monument, it certainly looks as if there's space enough to put the entire Constitution of the United States.  (Photo below is the Washington Post's)

So once again it appears that we'll settle for a compromise that entirely overlooks the main point:  this is history, and a quote should be exactly that, not a paraphrase.  I think this monument, and therefore the memorial of which it is a part, is destined to be an object of ridicule for a long time to come; not of King, but of our country's cavalier approach to language, education, and history. 

(An interesting sidelight on our teaching of these things is that the Post's writer, explaining the real meaning of the remark, says that it was originally in the "conditional tense" -- another goof, because "conditional" is not grammatically a tense, but a mode, also sometimes referred to as mood.)

It's unfortunate that we find ourselves in this mess, thanks to an architect and a sculptor, neither of whom seemed to have much sense of history.  The quote itself isn't a particularly good one anyway -- it's long and not especially memorable -- so I'd suggest the right solution is not to re-paraphrase it, but to substitute a different one.  Perhaps it would even be one that "looks right." 

 

Getting The Small-Business Myth Out Of Bed

Isn't the word "debunk" great?   First, it's one of those that has no "positive" form, like "unkempt."  So if you debunk something you can never rebunk it.  And how did it get bunked in the first place?

Second, it sounds a lot like what it means:  throwing something/someone out of a comfy bed.  Sometimes ideas take root and form a body of knowledge that everyone "knows," yet which is false.  That's the origin of "myth," something that in time grows larger than life through the overemphasis and exaggeration of certain perceived characteristics in which there may be a kernel of truth.   For example, the strength of Atlas or the patience of Job. 

Every society has its own myths. The U.S. is no exception.  We tend to share a mental image of our farmers, for example, as self-sufficient families tilling the soil of a few dozen acres of land they own.  This was true once but it's been untrue, in the main, for at least two generations, as the share of farming done by agrobusiness concerns has grown by leaps and bounds.  Still, we cling to the idea of the small family farmer, which makes realistic adjustment of our agricultural policies very difficult.

Another myth from which we suffer in making public policy is that "small business" is the engine of our national economic prosperity.   We hear "small business" and, egged on by our politicians who know that giant corporations don't evoke the same warm, fuzzy feelings that "family businesses" do, we think of the mom-and-pop store.  But those aren't the businesses that statisticians are referring to when we're told, for example, that "small business" creates the great preponderance of jobs in the U.S.  That statistic is based on inclusion of businesses whose annual sales may be in the multimillions. 

Occasionally, economists attempt to correct this false impression.   A recent example, and one well worth reading, is James Surowiecki's "Big Is Beautiful," in The New Yorker of October 31.  Among Surowiecki's telling points:  (1) Small businesses generally are less productive than those giant corporations with their economies of scale.  (2)  If "small business" (however defined) truly creates many jobs, it also destroys most of them because a huge percentage of small businesses don't survive their first year; and those that do often aren't really interested in becoming supercompanies, they're just looking for a basic income for their family and an independent way of life.

Nothing wrong with that.  As a matter of public policy, we may indeed want to facilitate small businesses if we believe it is desirable that this avenue to independence be open and accessible.  We should not, however, base planning for our economic recovery and growth on false assumptions about the role of small business in our economy.  The small business myth has found a comfortable warm bed at the heart of our political thinking about economic matters; it's time for it to be debunked.

Fix The MLK Monument

I'm not sure why it took them so long to reach what I think is the only possible conclusion, but the Washington Post editorial today finally offers the opinion that the bowdlerized quote on one face of the monument should be corrected.

Otherwise, we condone in big, bold, chiseled letters the kind of sloppy literacy that is such a problem among so many of our college graduates these days.

Planning For The End

A friend pointed out to me a recent CNN piece which is truly an excellent reminder for all of us - old and young alike - about the value of planning ahead for a loved one's death, or even your own. 

In today's busy world, many of us have trouble thinking ahead even about positive things, like what sort of life we'll want in retirement, let alone the more unpleasant topics like DYING.  It seems there's a tendency to think that "it can't happen to us," although the odds are heavily against that.

The article highlights a serious political point, too.   The author, Kristi Guillory, notes how the Obama administration's seemingly worthy efforts to focus attention on such planning have now been abandoned.  The whole issue of end-of-life planning became a political football when a certain former Alaska Governor decided that discussing such matters with your doctor equated to "death panels."  This foolish nonsense was picked up and echoed by other Republicans, who -- lacking rational arguments for opposing universal access to health care -- were desperate for any pretext to fan the flames of irrationality to kill the health care legislation. 

On this issue, at least, that tactic succeeded.  End-of-life planning became pure political poison, and will remain in legislative limbo for the foreseeable future.  The fact that it won't be provided for in any version of health care, of course, is not a reason to overlook doing such planning.  (You may want to hurry, before the GOP starts legislating against any sort of EOL planning, even on the state or private level.)

Meanwhile, the whole episode should be a reminder, as we have just emerged from a minor skirmish over budget issues and face more serious ones in the near future, what serious consequences the willful misrepresentations of a relative handful of extremist politicians can have. 

"Ignorance" is an interesting word, used contemporarily almost as a synonym for "uneducated."  But its root of course is "ignore," suggesting that the ignorant person knows certain facts, but chooses to overlook them.  In that sense, some of today's politicians are truly ignorant.  They should truly be ignored. 

Pitfalls Of Translation

In a recent feature article in the Washington Post, I learned that the programmers behind online translation services like Babel Fish and Google Translate, frustrated with the efforts of linguists to resolve the countless pitfalls of translating from one language to another, are turning increasingly to mathematical models instead.  By counting off words, comparing existing translations, and various other means, they hope to be able to create better and quicker translations.

I wish them luck.  Certainly the difficulties of mutual understanding across different languages, involving not only translators but interpreters (a related endeavor that demands very different skills), has long been a barrier to many forms of human intercourse, from commerce to diplomacy.  It's also one in which very little progress has been made.  Translating from one language to another is hardly less quick or reliable today than it was 100, or even 1,000 years ago.

That's where the computer-based services come in, hoping to offer a speeded up solution.  Unfortunately the examples cited in this article don't seem to offer much hope -- they may be quick, but they are unintelligible.  Perhaps they'll improve as work progresses. 

If seeking to show off their work, Google and Babel Fish may have used the wrong examples by selecting a passage from a literary work.  In literature, language -- whether English, Hindi, or Japanese -- is the medium, like acrylic or oil in painting, or iron or marble in sculpture.   You can't translate paint or marble.  Better, and presumably more successful, examples might have been chosen from commercial texts, international law, or treaties, which undoubtedly lend themselves more easily to machine translation and which happen also to be the places we really need them.   

As developers continue to try to perfect the art or science of translating, I wonder if their efforts will succeed before they are overtaken or overshadowed by other less technological developments. 

Specifically, I have in mind the continuing and accelerating spread of English as a common global language.   The process probably began with the use of English throughout the far-flung British Empire; it speeded up after World War II as the U.S. became a global power and also simultaneously a net exporter of its language.  In the twenty-first century, North America is wallpapered by English speakers; the South Pacific and India likewise; in Europe, it's difficult to find people who don't speak English; in many African countries, it's the lingua franca among people who speak many different tribal languages; in China, the world's most populous nation, government is teaching children by the millions to speak English.  This natural, self-generated development seems very likely to obviate translation services within a few decades, if not sooner.

Interpreting The Law

In his "The High Court" column recently, Robert Barnes describes how the work of the Supreme Court often boils down to interpreting a word or two in a law.  The law has always been very much a word game, so it hardly comes as a surprise that the Supremes play it too. 

What's surprising, if Barnes's depiction is accurate, is that the justices seem to spend a lot of time trying to determine the exact meaning of some word or phrase.  Yet the reality is that there is no such thing as an "exact meaning" for most words (the exception may be a few words that describe simple concrete objects).

Instead, the thing that makes two words of similar meaning different is often something we know, or perceive, but that isn't ever in a dictionary.  One of the cases described in the article involves whether the plaintiff "filed" a complaint when he told his boss orally.  The justices reportedly batted around the question of whether "filing" requires something in a written form. 

If we think about it, however, filing might be written, but the concept that distinguishes it from "telling" or "announcing" is that something has been presented at a higher level to a person or body that might be expected to act on it.  It's not the same as telling your buddy over a cup of coffee, or even griping to the press.  So in this case, when the worker told his supervisor that a certain act was illegal, there is no question in my mind -- that's filing!

Legislators who write the laws play the word game too.  They're often more interested in political hairsplitting than in clarity.  This gives justices the best opportunity to "make law."  And make no mistake, the conservatives and the progressives both do it.  Barnes describes the court attempting to decide if damaging side effects from a drug are "unavoidable."  Strictly speaking, nothing is ever "unavoidable," and the writers of the law probably knew that language could easily be challenged.  Most of us recognize that that word means "unavoidable under existing circumstances," while lawyers will argue it means "unavoidable under any circumstances."  Depending on their own political predilections, justices will arrive at an interpretation based on whether it benefits the plaintiff, the defendant, or an abstract concept of "The Law."

I'll wager the justices have fun with these arguments; there is no profession better suited to grammar geeks and wordsmiths than jurisprudence.

 

Deceptive Words

Words, like statistics, can lie.  It's irritating when people who should know better use a word, whose meaning we suppose we know, to lead us astray.

Two recent cases come to mind.  First, a report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation telling us that up to 25% of U.S. households don't have access to banks.  Generally, we think access -- the ability to obtain something -- is a good thing.  We believe Americans ought to have access to a good education, for example; and at least some of us think everybody ought to have access to health insurance.  So should we be alarmed when so many of us don't have access to banks? 

But there are banks on every corner.  How could so many possibly lack "access" to banks?  It turns out that the people the study calls "unbanked" (i.e., who have no bank accounts) or "underbanked" (i.e., have bank accounts but don't use them for any or all banking functions) do have access.  They choose not to use it, but they have it.   I suspect this is self-serving exaggeration on the FDIC's part, intended to show that it has an urgent mission.  That's how budget increases are justified.  Whatever the reason for the research, it's fairly meaningless. 

In another recent example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a study purporting to show that more than 16 million Americans suffer from "food insecurity," up from only about 12 million just a couple of years ago. The temptation for most of us, and especially for headline-hungry journalists, is to assume that "food insecurity" is the same as "hunger."  This implies a very serious crisis; people starving in America because of the bad economy.  Well, we do know that hunger exists in the U.S., and that it's growing, because nearly every food kitchen and food assistance program in the country has reported an upsurge in numbers of applicants over the past year or more.

However, the USDA study actually tells us very little about the increase in the ranks of the hungry.  Charles Lane has done an excellent job of debunking the study, and the meaning of the term "food insecurity."  It's worth a read, but to cite just one of Lane's examples, people were asked if they had ever worried about running out of food - not whether they ran out, just whether they worried about it.  If so, they could be counted as "food insecure."  If they lost weight, perhaps only a pound, they might be called "food insecure."  Another case of "garbage in, garbage out."  What real purpose can this sort of information serve? 

Short Takes For Summer

With summer fully and officially upon us, another small collection of non-sequiturs and self-deceptions from current news and events: 

Palin's Failin's:  Pride of place surely must go to today's disclosure that Sarah Palin will resign as Governor of Alaska in order to....who knows! ... I'm betting on something iffy that may come to light soon.  If not, will she try to garner support to run for President?  Is it her self-delusion, or am I myself suffering from delusion?  Unfortunately, past history demonstrates that lack of qualification is no bar to getting elected President, so perhaps Palin hopes to steal a march on those dirty ol' Democrats and their "national-media" allies by becoming the first woman to run for President.  She may want to consider whether the staunchly traditional Republican core can be expected to support a woman for the Big Job.   

The Oscarmom: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that in future, there will be 10 Oscar nominations for Best Picture, rather than just 5.  Huh?  It's a rare year when Hollywood produces even five excellent movies.  Presumably the Academy is responding to critics who have complained the annual Oscar show is not long enough.

Fruits of Health Care:  Anyone who may doubt that there's always a way for a creative corporation to find a way around the spirit and letter of a law may want to read "Cherry-Picking" in this week's Forbes, which describes how health insurance companies work hard to select only the healthiest, least costly population to insure, and flatly predicts that even if reform legislation mandates HMOs to cover anyone who applies, it won't happen.

Franken Sense:  The Minnesota Supreme Court has finally got around to certifying a winner in last fall's Senate election.  It's about time (see "The GOP and Democracy" among my Short Takes about a month ago).  Some see this as a milestone because a 60th Democrat in the Senate supposedly makes the party filibuster-proof, but I expect it will mean little in practice.

Republicans to U.S. Public: Buzz Off!   For a couple of decades, Republicans have been busy mastering the art of relabeling issues and proposals they don't like but can't defeat with reasoned argument.  (Sample: "inheritance tax" becomes "death tax.") The game continues, as this article reports, but I was impressed by the hubris by this attitude attributed to a GOP terminology advisor, who "conceded that the public wants real reform and ... the only way Republicans can defeat Obama's plan is by co-opting the language of reform."  So if people want it, the GOP needs to defeat it?  Can this be good politics?  It worked once; let's see if we the people have sense enough to not allow ourselves to be deceived once again.

Unpopularity Contest:  The Washington Post editorializes today for our senior military to provide the President its best advice without trying to second-guess what he wants to hear.  Absolutely right.  They think the generals should be asking for more troops.  Maybe.  But the editors get addled when they admit that "a larger American force could prompt a backlash by Afghans," but "that is not the problem at the moment," because most Afghans still support the U.S. presence.  So I guess the answer is to increase troop presence until we do get backlash?  Let's not forget that no number of troops we could field would allow us to provide absolute security in Afghanistan's rugged hinterlands.  The whole premise of the administration's approach is a limited-size force with limited objectives.

Survey: Know Any Curious Slogans?

A few days ago on television I heard the story of Hardin, a small town in Montana with a big, brand-new prison that for various reasons hasn't been put into use.  Hardin's officials (unlike Montana's two U.S. Senators and many other Congresspeople) were actively campaigning to have the detainees from Guantánamo transferred to their high-security jail, figuring it would bring at least a few jobs to the town.  Now, that's the good old American spirit of enterprise!

This report also reminded me of my father's home town, Leavenworth, Kansas, which boasts three major prisons within the city or its environs: one federal, one state, and one military (at Ft. Leavenworth), plus several smaller ones such as a Federal Marshals Detention Center.  Although a century and a half ago Leavenworth was considered a good bet to become the region's "big city," upstart Kansas City, a little farther downstream, eventually outstripped it.  As far as I know, the prison facilities are the town's main economic activity nowadays. 

The town's official motto now is "The First City of Kansas" (meaning the oldest).  But a few years ago I happened to pass through there and picked up this visitor's guide with the slogan "How About Doin' Some Time in Leavenworth?"  Well, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, but still, this seemed to be a less-than-perfect catchphrase to attract visitors.  

I began to think about the possibilities for other counterintuitive mottos.  My own "town" (actually a county)  - Arlington, Virginia - is mainly famous outside our immediate area for Arlington National Cemetery, though we also have the Pentagon, Reagan National Airport, and lots of history.  Now, a national cemetery is more prestigious than your run-of-the-mill one, but still, you have to admit, having a cemetery as your town's main identity is a bit of a downer.  I tried to think of a motto...hmm... how about "Arlington - Not As Dead As You Think!"?  Maybe I'll try that one out on the county board...

I'd love to hear comments from any readers, if you've got an idea for a lemonade-type slogan for a town or maybe a company (will GM need a new slogan?).  Use your imagination for a town that doesn't have a motto, or let 'Morning Fog' know about a real one you've encountered.