Viewing the evolution of language positively

Geoff Nunberg, a linguist who gave frequent commentaries on NPR’s Fresh Air radio program died recently at the age of 75. I enjoyed listening to his views because, although not a linguist myself, I enjoy exploring the nuances and quirks of the English language and Nunberg’s opinions were always interesting and informative. He was not a scold, trying to police people’s speech. Instead he explored how and why language evolves and what its use tells us about ourselves and the state of society.

Consider his take on the ‘singular they’, something that I too wrote about recently. Nunberg writes about his mystification to the opposition to its adoption.
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Even Trump’s sister despises him

Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece who has come out with a bombshell book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man that slams him, seems to have decided to burn all her bridges with her family. While Trump’s late brother who died recently defended him and criticized Mary for writing her book, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, has been silent, at least in public. But she has not been as reticent in private and Mary has released secret recordings in which Maryanne slams her brother.
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How Republicans became the White Grievance Party

As Trump’s ghastly performance as president continues and his fortunes slide, more and more Republicans are willing to openly discuss the phenomenon of how Trumpism took over the Republican party.

Stuart Stevens, a veteran political consultant for the Republican party who worked on the campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, is the latest in that long line. In his case, at least he did not support Trump in 2016 and did criticize him then, for which he was attacked by Republicans in turn. He has published a new book It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump where he argues that Trump is the end result of a long process in which the party abandoned its policies of fiscal restraint, personal responsibility and family values. He argues that he now thinks that the party never really believed in those values, and he acknowledges that he too was partly responsible for taking part in that charade
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Stop making these types of apologies – they only make things worse

A sportscaster during a baseball game used a homophobic slur when he thought it was during a break, not realizing that he was back on the air. Some time later during the broadcast, when he was made aware that his remarks had been broadcast, he issued an apology and later left the booth to be replaced by someone else. His apology included the following evasive statements that are commonly found is such mea culpas:
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This does not seem like a good idea

It is true that China has managed to curb the spread of covid-19 by taking draconian measures such as completely shutting down regions of the country, especially the city of Wuhan where the first major outbreak occurred. As a result, reports say that life has gone back to pretty much normal, something that I have personally heard vouched for by people I know who live there.

But I was still startled to see these photographs, one of which is reproduced below, taken in Wuhan over the weekend, one of many showing a large number of people crammed together at a water park.


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John Oliver on how black jurors get excluded

He shows that thanks to a mixture of incompetence and outright racism, people of color are much more likely to not make it into the pool of potential jurors and even if they do get there, are less likely to be actually allowed to serve as jurors. Prosecutors especially find ingenious ways to circumvent the prohibition that people cannot be excluded on the basis of race by finding other reasons, even though studies suggest that diverse juries are more thorough, thoughtful, and arrive at more just verdicts.

Bad news – Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act cancelled

Minhaj announced that his show has been cancelled by Netflix.

When Time magazine named Minhaj one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019, fellow comedian Trevor Noah praised the “whip-smart commentary, charisma and sincerity” the Muslim presenter used on Patriot Act.

“We’ve needed Hasan’s voice since Donald Trump came down that golden escalator and turned immigrants and Muslims into his targets,” Noah wrote at the time.

Minhaj’s series ran for 40 episodes across six seasons from December 2018, with the host riffing on the news stories of the day.

It is not clear why this action was taken. It definitely could not be because it was of poor quality. It was slickly and smoothly produced even with all the pandemic restrictions. I thought that his show, along with John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight and Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal were three of the best weekly shows, providing well-researched, informative, and topical programs on important issues, but with a lot of humor woven in so that they were lively. They were all must-see TV for me. It is interesting that all three hosts are alumni of The Daily Show during the time when Jon Stewart was at the helm. Other ‘correspondents’ on the show such as Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Jessica Williams all went on to have successful careers.

Netflix does not usually release the ratings for its shows so we do not know if low ratings were the reason for the cancellation. But the timing is bad. We are heading into an election season and we need all the hard-hitting, investigative programs we can get so that we do not drown in trivia.

The wall grift exposed

It is a safe assumption that anything associated with Donald Trump and his associates is a grift whose main purpose is to line the pockets of the well-connected. The arrest today of Steve Bannon, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and former close associate, and three others exposes the fraud behind the allegedly non-profit, “fully volunteer” organization called We Build the Wall that raked in millions of donations from the rubes supposedly to help build the border wall that has become the great white whale of Trump and his supporters.
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The bizarro world of the stock market

I have long been saying that the US stock market seems to have almost no connection to the general state of the economy but instead seems mainly related to how the very wealthy are doing and this week brought more evidence of that. In March, the market plunged as the country shut down, which made sense. But since then the market has risen again, thanks to the actions of the government and the Federal Reserve to prop it up, even though things are very dire for most people who are suffering from loss of jobs, income, health insurance, and facing evictions.
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