Finally, Something Gonzalez Can Handle: Cartoon Crime

The Simpson’s movie has been surrounded by a superfantasticrossmarketingmedia blitz including the online make yourself a Simpson game, turning 7-11s into QuikeeMarts, and voting on which Springfield is the home of the Simpsons. Overkill? Yes. Cause for a DOJ investigation? No.

But hilarious Representative Peter DeFazio thinks differently. He represents Springfield, OR and has recently written to Atty General Gonzalez, requesting that he investigate election in the recent Contest ‘O’ Springfields, which was won by Springfield Vermont. The letter is so priceless I’m just going to give it to you verbatim.

Enjoy.

Alberto R. Gonzalez
Attorney General
Office of Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy Building
950 Pennsylvania, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20530-2000

Heidely Ho Attorney General Gonzales:

I write to you to express the outrage that I, and all Oregonians, feel regarding a recent event. I know there is a strong possibility that you may come back and say that you “don’t recall” to what I am referring, so let me refresh your memory. Recently, 20th Century Fox launched The Simpson’s Movie Springfield Challenge where people could vote on the real-life location of the home of The Simpsons. Naturally, most Oregonians felt confident that we would win, since it is obvious to everyone that Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, who was raised in Oregon, modeled Springfield after his childhood home. Oregon has over 363 miles of the most beautiful coastline in America, the Cascade Mountains, and is the grass seed capital of the world. What does Vermont have? Maple syrup.

This travesty must not stand. Springfield, Vermont is a town of only nine thousand people; yet this community received over fifteen thousand votes. Unless they passed a law giving cows the right to vote, this smacks of election fraud. It also once again highlights the need for electronic voting with a valid paper trail. Was Diebold in any way involved in tabulating the results?

Additionally, it’s my understanding that Springfield, Vermont entered the competition after the deadline. That’s clearly an election violation since they should not have been listed on the ballot in the first place.

Some people will say that we were rolled by the giant pink doughnut, but I believe there were significant voting irregularities. Knowing how passionately the Bush Administration feels about counting every vote, I’m sure you will want to investigate this matter. Additionally, I urge you to petition the Supreme Court to review the facts and consider whether or not this election should be set aside. Given the Court’s recent rulings on election proceedings, I’m sure they will be eager to review the case. I demand that you investigate this miscarriage of justice and restore Oregon as the definitive home of The Simpsons.

Okiliydokily,

Peter DeFazio
Member of Congress

P.S. Also, to see proof beyond a shadow of a doubt where the real Simpsons are live, go to http://www.defazio.house.gov/images/zoom/LGKSWV/simpsonspad.jpg and see for yourself. Photos don’t lie.

P.P.S. Vote Quimby!

Answer your country’s call… It wants you to humiliate foreign children.

I know there’s absolutley nothing worse than seeming to harbour an ounce of sentiment that could be characterized as Not Supporting The Troops.  And don’t get me wrong, I like the troops.  They are brave and their job is important.  I don’t like the people who put together their mission, but that’s another story.  (I also don’t like how any criticism of the war gets conflated with lack-of-troop-support, but I digress.)

However, every once in a while, you stumble across an image on the internet of something like, oh, a bunch of soldiers torturing prisoners or something, and it’s almost enough to make you think twice about that enormous yellow ribbon sticker you have on the back window of your SUV.  Almost, not quite, because thinking twice about it would constitute lack of support for the troops.  And then this morning I saw this video of American soldiers leading Iraqi kids in a chorus of “Fuck Iraq.”  I’m not going to waste any time explaining how incredibly fucked up that is. 

On the Bring It On blog, the video was posted along with some comments by readers, including this:

Won’t someone think of the children? Fuck Iraq indeed. Fuck being sent over there for two and three tours watching your friends get blown up and sniped by the people whose welfare is your ostensible mission. Fuck Shiites and fuck Sunnis whose thousand year blood feud can only be put on the sidelines long enough to kill or maim some hapless kid from Kansas who ended up over there because its the only way he could afford tuition. And fuck entitled people sitting behind their PCs and criticising your every move.

Right.  Touche.  Seriously, those are all good points.  Being sent over to Iraq for several tours of duty, being put in the middle of a civil war/blood feud, all of that must be incredibly fucking frustrating to the men and women who are experiencing it.  So write a letter to your congressman, or the President, or the new guy in charge of the Pentagon, or a letter to the editor of the Times or your local paper saying “Fuck Iraq.”  Don’t teach a bunch of little kids to sing it for a camera. 

Yes, it’s offensive.  But as an entitled person sitting behind my PC, I can see how I forfeit my right to be offended.  More to the point, though, it’s futile.  I hope those soldiers can use the sentiment of frustration with the Iraq war/mission/mess  that inspired the chant and channel it into some meaningful, less pointless, outlet.

“A society is generally as lax as its language,” or Vocabula to phonelesscord: Ohhh Snap!

To supplement my paltry salary at my (rewarding!  remember, it’s rewarding!) nonprofit job, I edit college and grad school admissions essays for an online company.  As part of this service, I rewrite essays, reorganizing them and revising them for style/concision, etc.  For the most part, this is fun work.  It is fun to go in with an objective eye and organize an essay so the client’s undergraduate research as Such And Such Biochem lab, or that eye-opening volunteer project she undertook the summer after sophomore year, or whatever, sounds really important.    And it’s fun to correct for style, and make things more concise, because, well, because I am a nerd and I like it.

 The part of this job that makes me cranky and sometimes resentful of the education system and of the lazy students who would rather pay a couple hundred dollars to a website than carefully proofread their own essay, is correcting for grammar.  I don’t mean the trickier stuff - structuring long sentences with lots of subordinate clauses, using semicolons - that’s fun.  I’m talking about misusing “its” and “it’s.”  I mean using the word “literally” for emphasis.   (Did he “literally explode with rage”?  I doubt it.  I literally doubt it.)  I correct these things, and avoid the temptation to write my clients a note asking how, if they are as detail-oriented, intellectually curious, capable, motivated, and all-around snazzy as they insist throughout the essay, did they manage to get through all of high school and college without learning that ”accept” and “except” are very different words.

This leaves me feeling very much like a crotchety old lady who should just chill out and watch a sit-com.

 So I was overjoyed to read an article in the Wall Street Journal last week about a man who is even more of a crotchety old grammar-and-usage nerd than myself.  And he has a website!  The slogan of this nit-picking and very fun site?  The stern, “A society is generally as lax as its language.”  I like this.  This makes me feel like my prowling through essays for subject-verb agreement is part of some larger, more significant societal crusade.

Vocabula Review, which is both a website and paper publication, includes regular columns with great titles like Bethumped with Words, Grumbling About Grammar, and Top Twenty Dimwitticisms.  Is anyone else getting excited about this?

And then the website promptly burst my self-important bubble, when the first article I read was about a grammatical crime of which I am guilty.  Damn!  Just when I thought I was a good-guy.  The article begins,

“ When someone says we need an epicene pronoun, what do they mean?

Since when has they been third-person singular? That’s what he or she means. The epicene pronoun is a gender-neutral device for referring in the third person to the generic human being, without falling back on the discredited universal masculine or stumbling forward over the incipient singular they. “

Insert sheepish face here.  Yes, only moments ago I wrote, “… avoid the temptation to write my clients a note asking how, if they are as detail-oriented …. blahblahablah … did they manage to get through all of high school and college without learning that ”accept” and “except” are very different words.”

In other words, the article opened with a massive oooooooh snap! that seemed to be directed right at me.

Obviously there is a lesson here about being judgmental, self-righteous, and cantankerous, but this post isn’t about life lessons, it’s about grammar and usage!  So, onward.

The article goes on to suggest that, instead of the awkward “s/he” or the incorrect “they,” we just invent a third person, singular, gender-neutral (epicene, if you will) pronoun.  He suggests :

For he/she: esh, hesh, heesh, shehe

For him/her: rim, mer, hmer, hrim

For his/her: ris, ser, hris, hser

Yup, they sound funny.  But witty Vocabulist Michael Berger has this to say in these new pronouns’ defense:

“Granted, a person might find the proposed candidates a bit odd and unfamiliar, but esh would get used to them, and ris vocabulary would be fully up to date with ris attitudes and social practices. A bit of an awkward start and a learning curve is a small price to pay to enable rim to refer to people individually as human beings per se.”