The Lawrence superintendent doesn't speak English so good.
And you know whose fault that is?
They’re “liberals” or “progressives.” They’re Starbucks-sipping, NPR-listening, horrified-by-Fox News, holier-than-thous from Cambridge, Brookline, Wellesley and Weston. They tell everyone else what to do, which is a beautiful thing when one need not do any of it oneself.
Damn, we liberal-boomers-who-call-all-the-shots (LBWCATS) just got OWNED! Excuse me while I unplant Eagan's boot from my butt! Yow! Seriously, we need to let the people who can form really tight, coherent arguments — like Jon Keller and Margery Eagan — run the show here, folks. Go home. It's over.
Please share widely!
…the people who, as Egan points out in her column, are asking about the man’s “axed vs. asked” linguistic mistake saying,“It goes to show how nutty we’ve grown around here. Why would anyone hire a superintendent of schools with such troubles with English?” are ignorant and intellectually lazy.
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Praise or criticize the man on his performance, not his pronunciation. I bet the same people who criticize Laboy about saying “axed” are the same people who hate “outta townahs” for saying Boston accents make people around here sound uneducated and unsophisticated. What would Egan’s lede be if Laboy was a white guy who dropped his Rs and used “wicked” as an adverb?
Do conservative columnists always use hyphenated descriptions when referring disdainfully to liberals? Brian McGrory referred last year to supporters of Deval Patrick as “sandal-wearing, Volvo-driving acolytes from Newton and Wellesley.”
compound adjectives are supposed to be hyphenated. the quote above is a fin example of correct usage as defined by standard grammatical practices.
And Margery Eagan is a moderate liberal, not a conservative.
…it’s not “sandal-wearing,” it’s “Birkenstock-wearing.”
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By the way, comment below (or is it above) regarding the hyphens being grammatically correct is perfectly true. Americans don’t use enough hyphens to link separate words into concepts, and they definitely do not use enough commas to separate clauses within a sentence. Trying to parse Amerikanisch is oftentimes a nightmare.
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Eats, shoots and leaves.
But I am a very loyal Teva costumer!
does that make me a yuppie?
I think Eagan’s description of liberals or progressives is blatantly offensive. I mean, what’s up with Weston? Since when is Weston a hotbed for progressive thinking. Does anyone on BMG know a Starbucks-sipping, NPR-listening, horrified-by-Fox News, holier-than-thou from Weston?
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When I finish my latte, I’m going to switch off WBUR and raise hell with this woman. The nerve. I have disabled Fox Noise (Olbermann, 2007) from my cable remote flipping sequence, I never turn right when I can make three lefts instead, and I live in ARLINGTON, not Weston. ARLINGTON. Progressives don’t live in Weston, they live in ARLINGTON.
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As for the cheap shot at Superintendent Laboy, he’s a very talented, no nonsense, standards-based kind of guy. Yes, a second language learner who speaks two languages, helpful in a city with a very large Spanish population. He is also the darling of the old guard at the Department of Education, a fave of former commissioner Driscoll and BOE chair Peyser, and a member of Romney’s education transition team.
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How many languages does Eagan speak?
I have my supreme doubts.
Appropos of nothing, at my graduate composition recital in 1996, one member of the brass quintet was from Long Island and spoke with a clear Long Island accent.
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At the Frisch’s on Central Parkway after, Dave (the trumpet player from Long Island) came over to where I was sitting with my family and said his goodbyes. My father, without a hint of irony or the burden of self-awareness, turned to me after Dave left and said, “He talks funny.”
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(This story is way funnier if I tell it and mimic my father, who has an almost-stereotypical southern Indiana/Appalachian accent.)
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The point is, t’ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it. At least apparently that’s how Margery Eagan feels about it. If he’s doing a good job as superintendent, I don’t care if he says “axed,” “asked” or “inquired.” And if he’s doing a bad job, I don’t care about his pronunciation either – it would be the least of the problems.
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WF
…”ain’ got no pah” story here before, but I’ll just mention that for years my younger brother called spaghetti “pskitty”. It was a riot.
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I sincerely don’t care if a school superintendent sometimes misprounces words, as long as he (or she) can read and write. It’s not clear that this person could, however.
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Whan I do find more disconcerting, however, is a leading candidate for the US pResidency who failed her bar examination. On the first try, of course. Apparently, she had never heard of bar review courses; if she did not take one prior to taking the bar exam, that is even another strike against her.
That’s why I make a point that, despite the fact that Americans want to anoint Amerikanisch as the national language, there is no such thing as Amerikanisch.
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Lest anyone get upset about my referring to Amerikanisch as Amerikanisch, I will only suggest that they go to Schoenhoff’s book store and pick up a copy of an American novel published by a reliable high-end German publisher like Suhrkamp. “Aus der Amerikanischen” on the title page. Amerikanisch is not Britisch.
Could pass an English literacy test. Can you imagine a superintendant of schools in Mexico, C. America or S. America who couldn't speak Spanish?
Why don't we make ebonics the official” language of our collges and universities in new England. It would sound really cool and would fit right in with our pop culture.
That Uncle Tom Bill Cosby had something to say about that.
Of an english literacy test he failed, please stop trolling the boards. K?
He failed an English literacy test, multiple times, while he was superintendent
He faild it three times, but that fourth time was a charm.
It's on NPR so it must be true! Actually “axe” is one of those nails on the blackboard things for me. Especially if someone is going to the “liberry” to axe a question. Must be because my wife is a liberrian.
Certainly its bad when a superintendent of the schools cannot speak the first language of our country, and yes busing and other anecdotal incidents showed the hypocrisy of rich white liberals in some instances, and I have to agree with her about the liberals failure to address urban education issues in a non dogmatic way, but her criticism as well as Jon Kellers is misdirected. This Superintendent as someone pointed out is in with the old school pol crowd like Driscoll, the hackocratic elite that still have a spoils system in this state, town overrides are often needed when the hackocrats bankrupt the state, Cape Wind is widely supported by most liberals its merely opposed by two rich ones who happen to be our Senators and whose views happen to be impeded by the project. So the problem is not liberals or liberalism as she states the problem is merely a few individuals who practice NIMBY politics and are rich elitists first and liberal a far distant second if at all.
Also whats the alternative? Republicans oppose Cape Wind, hypocritical busing occured under a Republican Governor had Kevin White been elected that would not have happened, while liberals support dogmatic and pro-union policies to solve urban education the GOP simply ignores it where were the great voucher programs under our last four Republican governors? Republicans have done nothing to heal racial divides in this country and simply ignore the problem, and while some liberals might have NIMBY secretly in their hearts NIMBY might as well be the motto of the state and national Republican party since they are usually very reluctant to pay for anything that might just help someone else.
FALSE!!!!!!!
Romney vs. ME!
Deval vs. Kennedy, Kerry, Delahunt, Reilly, Turner, Peake, O'Leary and Murray.
Whose battle is more uphill?
BTW – I'll be at the hearing, supporting the wind farm, in front of the overwhelmingly Democrat Cape Cod Commission who is trying to deep six it, tonight in Yarmouth.
Both you gubernatorial candidates (Kerry Healey and Christy Mihos) last year opposed it too.
John Kerry is on neither side, Reilly is irrelevent, and it's not clear which Murray you mean. But close to 80% of Democrats voted for pro-wind candiates a year ago.
I think there is more institutional barriers among Democrats because of Teddy and Bobby Jr, but you'd have the same problem if yr party was institutionalized here.
Anyway, keep fighting the good fight down there, but know that the Governor and democrats across the state are on your side.
And I was responding to a comment that said – Republicans oppose the wind farm. And while Romney opposed the wind farm (based on bad advice from Mihos in early stages, IMHO), Healey did not go out of her way to oppose it.
It is simply not a partisan issue. If anything, more Democratic public officials have weighed in against it – even on a percentage basis, to make up for uneven numbers.
And Christy Mihos isn't MY candidate, now that he has been cast into the Outer Darkness.
liberals are fine with progressive views on renewable energy as long as it doesn't affect them.
Is that why we all drive Priuses, and live in places like Boston and Cambridge and Somerville, places with good public transportation?
Actually, many or most of the liberals I know go to considerable effort to live their values, Eagan and Keller's whining notwithstanding (love that word).
It costs slightly more (even with elevated gas prices) and takes longer most days, but my husband takes a 50-minute commute to Boston by commuter rail from where we live. And we deliberately bought a house in an area where he could still do that. We own one car that I (maybe) fill once a week (it's a small tank too). I just bought a composting bin from the city for my backyard, I will cut my grass with a non-gas mower, and we're installing a rain barrel. Our next car will be a hybrid (despite the fact we barely drive).
Damn straight, the liberals you know live up to their own ideals!
If you have the space, you might want to put in two compost bins. It actually does take time for the compost bins to–compost. My mother in law here in Germany makes extensive use of her three compost bins. Her roses and other flowers are absolutely gorgeous as a result.
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She doesn’t use a rain barrel, but the neighbor next door has a well whose water he uses to water his plants. I don’t know whether the water is potable. I suspect not, but it’s OK for the plants.
But let's see how you react when your million dollar view is encroached upon.
I totally agree with you that there are many of us who try to practice what we preach. It's always a few bad apples that spoil the bunch.
I thought she was right about the Superintendent. He should be a bit more competent and set a better example in the way he speaks. “Axe?” You can't have your Superintendent saying “axe.”
But to connect liberals to all the ills of the world and disconnect them from any good bordered on the ridiculous to me.
After her legitimate points about the Superintendent as a massive symbolic failure, she seemed to go off on an ill-informed rant. She seemed angrier and more off base the longer she went.
The telling everyone what to do and how to do it–but not always doing it themselves–is a bipartisan thing. Did everyone see the recent story about Massachusetts having the lowest divore rates? And that the highest raters were inthe “protect marriage” “family values” states in the south and midwest? Bible belt, eh?
Both liberals and conversvatives have people that preach with a sense of righteousness that I find a bit sickening at times. But that's life.
I hate Starbucks…I get my coffee (when I drink it) from a locally-owned shop that has fair trade totally organic shade-grown coffee beans, thanks very much.
Starbucks is too right wing for me!
I get my coffee (when I drink it) from a locally-owned shop that has fair trade totally organic shade-grown coffee beans
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…there is so much fraud and deception in the organic produce market that it isn’t even funny. There isn’t even a definition of “organic” in the US, much less a body to enforce the attribution.
I have never in my whole life purchased a single thing from Starbucks, this has nothing to do with principle and everything to do with the fact that I dislike drinking coffee and 3 bucks for a 16 oz ice tea is a bit too expensive especially when you can get Arizona in 24 ounces for a buck, but I digress what I love about Starbucks is that I can sit down, eat my lunch their when Im on break, the music is nice, and I can read their newspapers for free.
I'm there for the hot spot. HATE the coffee.
…I’ve tried the bottled product and the taste was so bad (too sweet and two sour at the same time) that I went back to making my own. It isn’t that difficult. And, when I had to go into an office, I’d take a couple of Thermos bottles filled with iced tea with me.
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As an aside, when I was a kid, my mother would take me shopping with her at the local A&P in Cincinnati. I used to love sniffing at the left-over coffee grounds at the grinder. But, I hated the beverage, and still do.
coffee of choice for liberals. Starbucks is the coffee of choice for yuppies.
I think that's not true, raj: The USDA certifies and is supposed to enforce standards of organic-ness.
selected and hired the superintendent. I know they drink Starbuck coffee in Wellesley and all, but I don't see many Starbuck's in Lawrence. If poor Hispanic people, black people and white people are the elites referred to by Eagan then Lawrence is lousy with em.
Reading Eagan or Carr or Keller is painful but in this case parsing her story makes sense. After you peel away all the crap what becomes clear is that Eagan's muddled attempt at journalism is much worse than the superintendent's English.
“what becomes clear is that Eagan’s muddled attempt at journalism is much worse than the superintendent’s English.”
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that about sums it up.
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Also, I have never heard anyone more whiny than Jon Keller
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He ingratiated himself to David Brudnoy 25 yrs ago and he has had a stage to whine about Mass Democrats since.