Fluent in American

In the last month our local paper has had several editorial pieces pertaining to the recent Rush Limbaugh debacle. Other media personalities are just as guilty of routinely using derogatory and demeaning language. The formula is quite simple really: These people use this language because it sells. Media personalities like Limbaugh and Maher are very highly paid owing to massive advertising budgets; budgets fueled by the masses of Americans who love trash talk and tune in daily to listen to their favorite smartass. Now political candidates and politicians follow suit to gain the appearance of being smart, hip, sharp witted.

The American idiocracy has an insatiable appetite for gossip, vile behavior, and personal attack. This country seems to have abandoned all efforts at maintaining any semblance of civility; so much so, it is fair to say, that all manner of low-minded, mean spirited comment is interpreted as clever. Being mean has become cool. Sarcasm and cynicism have become synonymous with wit. Expletives have become the sharp edged tools of movers and shakers.

There have always been sharp-tongued irreverent comedians and commentators. It was understood who they were and how they worked. Some were popular, some were despised. Don Rickles was an artist, an entertainer, and the recognized dean of insult comedy. It was exceptional and understood as such. For my money, our contemporary practitioners are simply rude, hiding anger and frustration behind what is foisted onto the public as witty entertainment. Repartee.  It’s the tapas platter catering the wholesale appetite we’ve developed for bad taste and worse manners.

I find it especially discouraging listening to those with political ambitions phrase their presentations in a lowest common denominator type speech. It seems the ability to be articulate has been laid waste by the need to be vile. Given the current taste for casual and derogatory commentary, it is simply not cool to speak well. It is not effective to carefully articulate one’s platform or point of view. To be effective you must attack. Elections in this country are not being won based on what a candidate has to offer but solely on how much detritus has been heaved on the opponent. That leaves me to wonder just how great an impact month after month of negativism and personal attack has on an individual’s constitution. My concern is that these strategies and behaviors are either creating little monsters or revealing the candidates as such. Either way, the only reason I can see for endorsing such a candidate would be a desire to elect an angry frustrated individual with a limited vocabulary—or is that what it means to be a real American these days?

Any scholar of American political speeches must be wondering what there will be to study from this period of our history. So far, I’m not seeing much in the way of material. As for the talking heads who feel they garner the authority to rifle off insults and offenses at anyone who fails to live up to their media-stoked ego-centric standards, hopefully they will be remembered as criminals-- if at all.