The Jumping Frog of White Trash County

I am now and then confronted by people who think that computers can translate. Often these are people who want to underpay me for a translation (that they surprisingly couldn't get a computer to do).

At any rate, just for fun, I looked up my last post on google.fr (le French Google) and had it e-translated into French. Then I cut and pasted it into babelfish.com and had it e-translated back into English.

It's very funny. The joke about the noun and the verb is actually much better without the lame puns. It's got a sort of exuberant literalism that the original lacks.

Is it "the white refuse" a language?

Today somebody asked with polished curiosity what is my first language. It is English. What we were both speaking.

One of us better than the other, apparently. Ampèreheure, well.

I wonder which language which it thought was my mother tongue. Anacolouthian? Fragmentese? Babbleonian? Is the gibberish a true language? It was probably my first language, come to think on top.

I do not think that this dialectal difference returns to me inintelligible. The differences are subtle: for example, whereas many people observe television or the teeVEE, I Always observe "TEEvee." with the definite article.

I also say "different do not employ whom" rather than "different of" And I the subjunctive when I speak and I employ a negative double from time to time. Not when I write, at the moment even where I speak. Or if I howl at "TEEvee" when the play above. I also like the modal double. As in: "Feemus, would not owe you must howl at TEEvee."

It is always English, however.

Here a joke of linguist for you: Which is a language? A dialect with a gun.

Here another: What the verb do they say to the name? I would ask you to combine, but I am afraid which you would refuse.

Ah, ha ha ha. My god, I am a bundle. I think that I now must fight upwards.

I think my favorite bit is: "if I howl at 'TEEvee' when the play above."

Now there's some poetry for you.

Here's Mark Twain's proof that things go just as wrong without computers.

Is "White Trash" a Language?

I always thought of it as more of a dialect.*

Today someone asked with polite curiosity what my first language is. It's English. Which we were both speaking.

One of us better than the other, apparently. Ah, well.

I wonder what language she thought was my native tongue. Anacolouthian? Fragmentese? Babbleonian? Is Gibberish a real language? It probably was my first language, come to think on it.


*I don't think this dialectical difference makes me unintelligible. The differences are subtle: for example, while many people watch television or teeVEE, I watch "the TEEvee." Always with the definite article. I also say "different than" rather than "different from." And I don't use the subjunctive when I speak and I occasionally use a double negative. Not when I write, just when I speak. Or if I yell at "the TEEvee" when the game's on.

I also like the double modal. As in: "Feemus, you shouldn't ought to yell at the TEEvee."

It's still English, though.

Here's a linguist joke for you:

What's a language?
>
>
>
A dialect with a gun.

Here's another:

What did the verb say to the noun?
>
>
>
I'd ask you to conjugate, but I'm afraid you'd decline.

Oh, ha ha ha. My god, I am a nerd. I think I now have to beat myself up.

A Wise Man Once Said...

Congressman William J. Jefferson (D-LA) was allegedly caught on tape receiving $100,000 from an FBI agent. Most of these marked bills were later found in Jefferson's freezer. To prove that shamelessness is the one political attribute that truly is bipartisan, Jefferson is running for reelection.

My favorite voter comment:

You find $100,000 in your freezer, I ain't voting for you.

I think that's sound political wisdom.

Willie Horton, We Hardly Knew Ye

In Kerry Healey's campaign for governor of Massachusetts, she asks this question of her opponent: "What kind of man would defend a rapist?"

Um...the kind of man who is a defense attorney?

The ad is just stunning. Typical Boston, too: as Kerry Healey is saying "brutal rapist" the camera pulls closer to Deval Patrick's black face. Black face = brutal rapist. Res ipsa loquitur in Beantown.

I don't just say this (just) because I'm a leftist crackpot or part of the "victim culture" or whatever. It's true. Boston has some serious (and seriously unexamined--thanks, liberal complacency!) race problems. For 12 years, 12 years after Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers the Red Sox management refused to integrate. And if they hadn't really needed a pinch runner, I wonder how much longer old Pumpsie Green would have stayed on the bench.

Part of the problem is that Boston's solution to race relations has been to keep the races as separate as possible--it's a heavily segregated city, and it's segregated along race lines (rather than class lines). This segregation makes a black face a convenient bogey man. Healey is as savvy as she is cynical in showing Patrick's black face with the voiceover: "brutal rapist."

In this town, that's all most people need.

This is the town of Charles Stuart, after all. Remember Charles Stuart? Had a wife and couldn't keep her, so he pulled the trigger at her head, and said a black man shot her dead.

And so Boston's finest started sweeping Roxbury and Dorchester and roughing up 63 year old mamas on the strength of this description: medium build, jogging suit, black. Vague much? Then there were the unsettling facts: Charles Stuart had been pressuring his wife to have an abortion, he'd taken out huge sums in life insurance, he claimed that the gunman shot him in the stomach from the back seat of the car, the police picked up William Bennett and considered the case solved.

William Bennett was, after all, black. And he had a jogging suit and a long rap sheet. And he lived in Mission Hill. Res ipsa loquitur. QED.

Except, of course, that he didn't do it.

But the police response to the Charles Stuart case is precisely why people like Deval Patrick were so vigorous in their defense of "brutal rapist," Ben LaGuer. Although it now looks as though LaGuer was at the scene and is likely guilty, the facts of the case for a long time seemed to add up about as well as the case against Willie Bennett. The whole case against him rested on the eyewitness testimony of the 59 year old white victim who suffers from schizophrenia. Eyewitness testimony is not terribly reliable and the victim's mental illness further complicated matters.

LaGuer's case became a kind of cause celebre, and his supporters included dozens of lawyers writing amicus briefs; Noam Chomsky; John Silber, the president of Boston University; and the novelist, William Styron, among others. It is because of these people that the DNA test which points toward LaGuer's guilt was done at all.

It was not unreasonable to think that LaGuer might be innocent, given the history of the case and the history of police work in 1980s Boston. None of this, of course, is mentioned by Healey. Just that Deval Patrick defended a "brutal rapist."

What is perhaps most disturbing is where I started this overlong post: the fact that Healey doesn't seem to know that the "type of man" who defends rapists is the type of man who is a defense attorney. Have we really drifted so far away from our country's values that we no longer believe that the accused have the right to a defense?

What type of person vilifies a man for upholding the Constitutional rights of the citizens?

Addendum: Maybe if LaGuer were Irish, Healey wouldn't mind that he had a vigorous defense. The Romney/Healey administration gave a citation to Edward MacKenzie for his involvement in civic activities. Eddie Mac's civic activities used to include being an enforcer for Whitey Bulger. He boasts in his autobiography that he once chewed off and ate a man's finger. Healey described the convict as "a nice man."