The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney focuses on two of the six men vying to become chairman of the Republican Party – the two who are black, to make the case that the GOP is in the throes of a struggle “to avoid shrinking into a party of Southern white men at a time when the country is increasingly diverse”:

 

As the nation is on the verge of inaugurating its first black president, the Republican Party is facing a telling choice: Whether to elect its first black chairman. …

 

Among the six candidates are four white men, including two from the South, and two blacks: Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, and Ken Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio.

 

Because it is a six-way race in which ballots are cast anonymously, and multiple ballots seem likely, it is impossible to project who may win. But party leaders said Mr. Blackwell and Mr. Steele are viable candidates - particularly Mr. Blackwell, who has strong support from social conservatives. …

 

Some Republicans argued that electing a black chairman could prove helpful as the party struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of the Mr. Obama’s [sic] historic and resounding victory. …

 

The party has to choose from a field of candidates barely known outside of Washington. To date, none has shown signs of being the kind of powerful public speaker that party members are yearning for to counter the opposition. And so far, Republicans acknowledge, none has yet to present a new message or vision to keep pace with the Democrats’. …

 

In one telling moment at a debate last week, all six men responded with the same answer when asked to identify the best Republican president in the history of the nation: Ronald Reagan.

 

Here’s The Washington Post’s often droll but not always original (last item) Dana Milbank on that debate at the National Press Club a week ago Nagourney referenced in his article:

 

The way Republicans are attacking themselves, who needs Democrats?

 

"You have Republicans scratching their head, going: 'Who are we? What do we believe in? What do we stand for?' " said Michael Steele, former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

 

"We have done a very poor job in communicating," added Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Tennessee GOP.

 

"The hypocrisy, more than anything else, has killed our party," agreed Saul Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan Republicans. "We had become the bums." …

 

[I]t quickly turned into a duel over who could best disparage their president and their party. …

 

Luckily, all six RNC candidates agreed on a solution to the party's woes: They would say Ronald Reagan's name over and over, as if it were a tantric incantation. …

 

The questions changed, but the same answer kept coming. Steele spoke of what “Ronald Reagan moved us to realize.” Blackwell quoted Reagan two more times, prompting Steele to remind everybody that he was “inspired by the rhetoric and the words and the reality of a Ronald Reagan.”

 

The takeaway message from all this: The GOP’s savior will be a black Ronald Reagan, which gives the staunchly conservative Blackwell an edge over the more moderate Steele.

 

Blackwell and Steele are both worthy contenders, but The Stiletto is not persuaded that anything Repubs do will increase the party's share of the black vote appreciably, now that Dems have elected the nation's first biracial president. However, The Stiletto is willing to entertain the possibility a black chairman may make the GOP more appealing to younger, moderate and independent voters, which means that Blackwell is “too hard.” And given the poor performance of Repubs in the 2006 and 2008 elections, current RNC Chairman Mike Duncan is “too soft.” But Steele – to whom The Stiletto is partial and admires immensely, though she disagrees with him on abortion – is “just right.”

 

E Unum Pluribus

The New York Times finds another patently dubious - if not potentially dangerous - multicultural and pedagogic fad to embrace in this article about Twin Cities International Elementary School, a taxpayer-funded charter school that caters to immigrants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and the Middle East:

 

Charter schools, which are publicly financed but independently run, were conceived as a way to improve academic performance. But for immigrant families, they have also become havens where their children are shielded from the American youth culture that pervades large district schools.

 

The curriculum at the Twin Cities International Elementary School, and at its partner middle school and high school, is similar to that of other public schools with high academic goals. But at Twin Cities International the girls say they can freely wear head scarves without being teased, the lunchroom serves food that meets the dietary requirements of Muslims, and in every classroom there are East African teaching assistants who understand the needs of students who may have spent years in refugee camps.  …

 

Amid the wave of immigration that has been reshaping Minnesota for more than three decades, the International schools are among 30 of the state’s 138 charter schools that are focused mostly on students from specific immigrant or ethnic groups. …

 

Some critics argue that these kinds of charter schools are contributing to a growing re-segregation of public education, and that they run counter to the long-held idea of public schools as the primary institution of the so-called “melting pot,” the engine that forges a common American identity among immigrants from many countries.

 

“One of the primary reasons that American society supports public schools is to give everyone a solid civic education,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian, “the sort of education that comes from learning together with others from different backgrounds.”

 

Regular readers of this blog know that The Stiletto's parents are (legal) immigrants from a Muslim country. When The Stiletto started school she could not read, speak or understand English, and no bilingual class or teacher's aide for one-on-one help was available. It was sink or swim. The Stiletto's readers can judge for themselves whether she was able to master the language on her own. And BTW, The Stiletto was not part of the “in crowd” at school because her parents imposed Sharia-like rules on her behavior, which meant she could not participate in any of the rituals of young American life (birthday parties, sleepovers, going to the movies with friends, school dances) and dressed far more modestly than the rest of her peers (though she did not wear a headscarf; that was not part of our culture). Guess what? The Stiletto survived that, too, because the discipline her parents imposed on her eventually morphed into self-discipline within her. 

 

The Stiletto is well aware that her “dominant culture” philosophy is out of vogue with pedagogues and demagogues (same thing, most of the time) but as her own personal experience attests, the greatest service that public schools can provide immigrant students is to teach them English, acculturate them to the American Way and to instill in them the founding principles (second item) of our nation that bind us all together as one people. As Americans.

 

Editorial Note:  For another take on one such MN charter school click here and here (second item).

 

 

Well-Chosen Words: Part VIII

 

The Stiletto’s latest round-up of words, phrases, grammar and books in the news:

† Herself an avid practitioner of snark, Adam Sternbergh’s review of critic David Denby’s new book, “Snark” - a lamentation, rather than a celebration of the art – in New York magazine caught The Stiletto’s eye. Snark is like porn – difficult to define, but you know it when you see it – but Sternbergh (who pans the book, BTW) and Denby give it their best shot:

The first difficulty of writing about snark is that you have to define snark. This proves consistently tricky, no less so for Denby. His definition is a tap dance on hot coals, as he mostly tells us what snark is not. It’s not irreverence or spoof or satire. It’s not Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert or Keith Olbermann. It’s not irony, at least not irony as exemplified by “the sharpened blade of Swift.” “Snark is like a schoolyard taunt without the schoolyard,” he writes. “Snark is hazing on the page.” Basically, Denby argues that snark is humor as a vehicle for cruelty. …

 

Snark, as it’s usually understood, is irony’s bastard offspring. It’s irony curdled into something even worse. But irony’s critics were wrong then, just as snark’s critics are wrong today.

 

Um, not quite. The Stiletto’s understanding of snark is that it is a searing amalgam of rude and ‘tude, sarcastic and smart-alecky, bitchy and witty. Her only other quibble is with Sternbergh’s contention that “reflexive glibness … flourish[es] mainly in the niche of media and celebrity gossip; snarky blogs about economics, business, politics, and technology are the rare exceptions.” Considering the bazillions of blogs on these topics, he should have added the caveat, “as far as I know.” But if The Stiletto’s snarky blog about politics is truly exceptional, so be it.

 

BTW, The Stiletto’s gets her inspiration for snarky posts like this and this from Dorothy Parker (one of her best put-downs, a critique of Katherine Hepburn’s acting skills: “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B”); Clare Booth Luce (among her tart observations: “They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.”); and Alice Roosevelt Longworth (her motto: “If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.”).

 

Courtesy of Dick Cavett, here are several other purveyors of snark (which could also be defined as a witty or funny insult, in The Stiletto’s opinion) who also predate Tom Wolf, Nick Denton, Maureen Dowd and others on Denby’s list of the “worst of the worst.”

 

Editorial Note: The New York Times’ Frank Rich recently cited an example of snarkiness that was so subtle, it went over most people’s heads:

 

In 1992, David Halberstam wrote a new introduction for the 20th-anniversary edition of “The Best and the Brightest,” his classic history of the hubristic J.F.K. team that would ultimately mire America in Vietnam. He noted that the book’s title had entered the language, but not quite as he had hoped. “It is often misused,” he wrote, “failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”

 

Halberstam died last year, but were he still around, I suspect he would be speaking up, loudly, right about now. As Barack Obama rolls out his cabinet, “the best and the brightest” has become the accolade du jour from Democrats (Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri), Republicans (Senator John Warner of Virginia) and the press (George Stephanopoulos). Few seem to recall that the phrase, in its original coinage, was meant to strike a sardonic, not a flattering, note.

 

 

† Michelle Singletary, who writes about personal finance for The Washington Post, decided to adopt a New Year's resolution suggested by a reader:

To stop referring to myself as a consumer.

 

The idea for the resolution actually came from reader Tom Krohn, who suggested that it's not just the country's spending habits that need to change for the better, but the language we use to describe who we are.

 

"We Americans are so used to being referred to as 'consumers' that we comfortably fall into that role and do so conspicuously," Krohn, a retired Navy submariner living in Arkansas, wrote to me. "Imagine an epitaph that read, 'Michelle Singletary - A Wonderful Consumer.' Not very satisfying, is it?"

 

No, Tom, it's not how I want to live, or die.

 

In her article, Singletary makes this devastating observation: “National holidays are celebrated by shopping. We have Veterans Day sales. That's how we honor our servicemen and women - by shopping, by consuming more stuff.”

 

Count The Stiletto sold.

 

 

† In this commentary, Stephen Moore, senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page, draws parallels between the fictional events in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and the headlines being generated out of Washington these days:

 

[W]ith each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957 …

 

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. …

 

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that? …

 

The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. … [A] "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."

 

 

† The Associated Press reveals the 2008 winner of the Burlington (WI) Liars Club’s annual Champion Lie contest: “My grandson is the most persuasive liar I have ever met. By the time he was 2 years old he could dirty his diaper and make his mother believe someone else had done it," submitted by Garth Seehawer, Oconto Falls, WI.

 

Here’s a real-life lie that would have been tough to beat in the contest: Ana Victoria Perez – “a regular fixture” on one of the main thoroughfares in Monterrey, Mexico, begging motorists for change sitting in a wheelchair – and her husband threw a rock through the window of a furniture store they planned to rob. When a security guard made an unexpected appearance, they both fled – on foot, reports AP. They were arrested when they came back to retrieve the wheelchair.

 

 

† Consider this list of oft-used words in 2008 that the Los Angeles Times “hope[s] never to hear in 2009” (among them, “czar,” “staycation” and “recessionista”). Considering how often journos use clichés (second item), the LAT hopes will surely be dashed.

 

 

† Check out this post on “linguistic reduplication” by blogger and linguistic columnist Mark Peters. The Stiletto’s favorite example: doo-doo, natch (click here and here; last item on both pages).

 

 

† Either New York Times columnist Stanley Fish is masochistic or had temporarily taken leave of his senses, but he simultaneously tried to get AT&T to resolve a problem with his service and to correct a grammatical mistake in the company’s customer service script. Not surprisingly, it didn’t go well:

 

The first obstacle, of course, was getting through to someone. The prompts did not correspond to any of my concerns, but finally, after pressing a number of zeros, I was rewarded with the voice of a live person who said, “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?”

 

Visions of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine the telephone operator danced in my head, but I bit my tongue and made my simple request.

 

“I’ve been away for some time and my services were reduced. I’d like to have them restored to what they were when I left in June.”

 

It turned out that this was not possible. Even though I had paid to retain my phone number, I was going to be treated as a new customer, which meant that I would have to answer a bunch of questions and decline services I had never had.  …

 

I should have quit when I was (somewhat) ahead, but I couldn’t resist returning to the greeting, with its double and ungrammatical “with.” I explained that the second “with” was superfluous, as the second “to” would be if the offending question had been, “to whom am I speaking to?”, or the second “about” if the question had been “about what are you worrying about?”

 

Somehow that didn’t make much of an impression on her. She said that her instructions were to greet callers in that way and that she would continue to do so.

 

For some unfathomable reason, he didn’t just drop it and the tale just keeps getting more Alice-In-Wonderland-like.

 

 

† In an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times Esra Özyürek, UC San Diego anthropology professor and author of “Politics of Public Memory in Turkey” writes about a nascent movement in Turkey to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide as settled history (last item) and to apologize to Armenians for the crime against humanity committed by Ottoman Turkey:

Two hundred Turkish intellectuals last month launched an Internet signature campaign for an apology to Armenians for the 1915 massacres. …

Within a month, more than 26,000 people signed on, a significant number in a country where the fate of the Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire has been largely unmentionable for decades. To those long frustrated by Turkey's intractability on the issue, this campaign may appear an inadequate gesture. But it has immense value, educating many Turks about the violence done to Armenians for the first time and enabling those who are ready to come to terms with it.

The official Turkish position on 1915 has shifted over time. It was a fight between local Turkish and Armenian bands. Or it was a forced resettlement - a march on which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were sent to Syria, but most never arrived. Historians and politicians also have argued that it was actually Armenians who massacred Turks and that talk of an Armenian genocide was an international conspiracy. In contemporary Turkey, novelists, journalists, historians or other intellectuals who call the events a genocide or even mass murder can face trial under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which outlaws insulting Turkey, its government or its people. …

It wasn't until I enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan, one of the most important centers of Ottoman and Armenian studies in the United States, that I learned about the unacceptably sad end of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire.

 

Editorial Note: Özyürek notes that Turkish nationalists wasted no time starting up a petition demanding an apology for the apology, and the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sneered: “These Turkish intellectuals must have committed the genocide, since they are the ones who are apologizing.” A Freudian slip on his part, as by referring to “the genocide” Erdogan tacitly admits a genocide did occur. Now that he’s over that hurdle, perhaps he can reach deep down into his soul and find the decency and courage to join the apology movement.

 

For previous posts in the “Well-Chosen Words” series, please see the right-hand sidebar.