Nitwit Nation?

[indigobusiness]

Commentary: Nitwit Nation?


Is America the most literate nation on earth? At the rate we're going, it may soon be the least literate.
By Penny Stone

Let's see. First, there was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire instead of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Then there was Love Actually, as opposed to Love, Actually. And, actually, there's an actor who bills himself as A Martinez, rather than A. Martinez. Now we have Shall We Dance instead of Shall We Dance? (unless it's an ad for same), to say nothing of all the other examples out there, past and present, that I've forgotten, didn't see, or can't bear to remember. (Oh, go ahead. Send them in. I love to get all riled up.)

Yeah, yeah. I know. As one reviewer said of Lynne Truss's unlikely bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, "What's the big deal if the commas, question marks, etc., aren't there? You get the meaning anyway." Well, for starters, back at ya. What's the big deal about not putting them in? How much more trouble can they be to your QWERTY-challenged fingers? How lazy can one person be? Most of us make mistakes by mistake. Now it's cool to do it on purpose?

More importantly, even if you do get the gist of it, it's probably because you're old enough to have been strong-armed into learning such "useless" little aggravations as punctuation marks, so that you supply them in your head when they're missing. But what about those legions rising up behind you, hapless heirs to years of reductive dumbing, who will not have that advantage? Are they going to "get the meaning anyway"?

In this scenario, our children are condemned to watching TV shows about someone named Who, who wants to be a millionaire (a nitwit version of "Who's On First?"); pondering what a Martinez might be; asking if there really is a movie about loving someone named Actually; and deciding if they really want to see one about Shall We, who dance? (Dances With Wolves, at least made sense once you saw it). If all this sounds absurd, it is, not because it's impossible to decipher, but because we shouldn't have to.

http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=943

[newyorican]

1. Fuckwit Nation...

is more like it.

[Elidor]

2. Nailed it

:thumbsup:

Great article, too.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. Dead on, except for the part about A Martinez...that is actually

his name, as I understand it..doesn't stand for anything, hence not an abbreviation....

or would that matter?

Usually, I am very inclined to be a grammar Nazi, unless I am just being lazy or don't want to correct my own typos.

Maybe I am just too tired to care tonight. Maybe that is everybody's problem; they are just too tired to care.

The dumbing down of America has been going on for a long time.

[indigobusiness]

4. It's one thing to know better, and make a mistake.

It's another thing, entirely, not to know better.

(Did I punctuate that right? I don't know.)

[Niccolo_Macchiavelli]

5. well

The beggar, says the king, is stupid.
The beggar says the king ist stupid.

Hang him, not innocent!
Hang him not, innocent!


love is war
black is white
mindfuck is rest
stupor is intelligence

[yellowdogintexas]

6. exhaustion is rampant LOL

[bloom]

7. A Martinez

If A is the whole name - there should be no period. IMO

[karlrschneider]

8. Penny Stone has the right idea, but her writing is no better than the

targets of her criticism.

[indigobusiness]

9. Pretty clunky.

The message matters...but, hell, I'm punctuationally illiterate. At least I'm not alone.