[Nettime-bold] <nettime> Striking at the Heart of the Grammar Police State

["Paul D. Miller" <anansi1 {AT} earthlink.net>]

Perhaps I should post to the list some of Mark Dery's  e-mails sent 
to me about Ebonic plague?I don't think he would like that....  Black 
language for Mark is pretty much the end of the world (although, of 
course, he's a "liberal" and would never really act like a 
pseudo-racist.... of course not - like a scene out of Spike Lee's 
Bamboozled or something, Mark pops up as a perfect example of the 
crap of suburban styled theorists that have no clue, and certainly 
couldn't be any less informed about what's going on in contemporary 
culture than a White Negro like Emminem or something - in the 
tradition of Nor-mail Norman Mailer etc etc). The result is 
scatological: is Mark Dery full of shit? As an example of prose like 
Mark's how about checking in on

Words & Phrases Owned by McDonald's
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10900


or the grammar correction functions in basic Wordperfect Programs 
that underline every misspelled word or stuff like how each and every 
name for website protocols is literally owned and rented by various 
economic concerns governing the web? But of course, black english is 
really just a permutation machine precisely because of the sense of 
irreverence for the control mechanisms of normal "standardized" 
English that people like Mark need to exist. Also, etc etc - it makes 
the literature boring. The difference between a fool, and someone who 
is foolish, is that the foolish can learn.

Perhaps listening to a basic language instruction manual on 
contemporary English as its used (Safire, a right wing nut is a 
perfect example for Mark to cite.... see his editorials last week 
eulogizing the brilliant record of George W. Bush etc etc absolutely 
ridiculous...) or even the new KRS-1 single, might benefit Mark 
enormously. Probably not: the result of the kind of disjunction that 
I'm pointing out is critics who are completely out of touch with the 
culture as its lived, and of course, who are pretty much out-to-lunch 
when it comes to the everyday reality of the world they describe. 
I.e. bullshit.


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