Dennis Prager trots out some warhorses that were long ago boiled to glue for everyone except the Birchers and neo-Birchers, categories that however encompass the entirety of the New Century GOP.
While dining out last week, I periodically looked up at one of the television monitors to see the score of the first game of the NBA finals. As there was no sound on to interrupt diners' conversations, the monitor was in caption mode: One could read rather than hear the words spoken. At the conclusion of the game, an announcer was interviewing a member of the victorious Miami Heat players. I saw from the captions the player saying the words "they isn't."
Closed captions display the words spoken. They don't correct for poor grammar.
All I could think was: How can a grown man in America today say "they isn't" rather than "they aren't"?
First, how is it possible for anyone to graduate an American elementary school, not to mention a high school or, most incredibly, attend college, and leave with an inability to conjugate the verb "to be"?
Second, has anyone -- a parent or another relative, a teacher, a friend, a coach -- in that player's life ever corrected his grammar?
I assume that the answer to the second question is "No."
We don't know who exactly on the Heat perpetrated this atrocity, but I presume it was Wade, halfway through his celebratory cakewalk. (I almost went with Prager throwing a fit at LeBron for ending the question "where the white women at?" with a preposition.)
Prager here is firing potshots from a blunderbuss. Badly.
As regards Prager, the cheap shot, which I am not above taking, would be his sentences: "a member of the victorious Miami Heat players" sucks my succulent knob, as the Miami Heat, whatever else their skills, do not perform Shakespeare.
But that's hardly the point. Control language, and what do you control? How people think. And Prager wants everyone to think that black people are too stupid to be allowed to vote, at least until black people can prove they are smart enough to vote for the people Prager wants them to vote for.
I saw "they isn't" the same week the Democrats and others on the left virtually unanimously condemned all Republican attempts in state legislatures to pass legislation requiring voters to show a photo ID. The Democrats labeled it a means of "disenfranchising" blacks. Many Democrats compared it to Jim Crow laws.
Accurately.
Let's not fuck around. That's the point of these ID laws -- to suppress the black vote. Or, failing that, to deligitimize it. These beasts do not know proper gammar, how can they be trusted to vote, etc, and they say "they is," why they are almost Mexicans.
It is hard to imagine a more demeaning statement about black America than labeling demands that all voters show a photo ID anti-black.
This is easily demonstrated. Imagine if some Democratic politician had announced that demanding a photo ID at the voting booth was an attempt to keep Jewish Americans from voting. No one would understand what the person was talking about. But why not? Jews vote almost as lopsidedly Democrat as do blacks. So why weren't Jews included in liberal objections to voter ID laws?
We all know the answer. Jews are generally considered intelligent and therefore no one would assume that obtaining a photo ID was demanding too much of even poor Jews (yes, there are poor Jews). Therefore, one can only infer that the argument that demanding photo ID for voting will disenfranchise many blacks suggests that many blacks lack the capacity to obtain a photo ID.
Only if you ignore reality. Or even a certain fallacy. But also. A lack of "Intelligence" is not why so many blacks don't have IDs. If you want to know why they don't, oh fuck you, maybe ask the Jews who vote Democratic....
Republicans want to pretend real Jews don't know how to vote, either.
The best part of Prager's column is how smug he is about what blacks and Jews "ought" to do.
"Jews are generally considered intelligent" --
Just isolate that, preserve it, fuck you Dennis Prager.