mallorys_camera | The Richness of Language Robbed From Us By Political Correctness (Reply)

Just before sunset. The wind on the beach was blowing thirty miles an hour when my cell phone rang.

"Hello," said Ben. "I wanted you to be the first to know. The head of the Chamber of Commerce in Hayti, Missouri just accused me of trying to jew her out of sixty-six dollars."

"Really," I said. "What did you do? Hit her in the head with phylacteries and grab her wallet?"

"The mayor crept around later and apologized to me. But he just stood there while she was ranting and said nothing."

"Well, I guess she won't be voting for Obama!"

"Oh, she might vote for Obama. But she won't vote for Joseph Lieberman."

"That's very niggardly of her," I observed.

"Ha, ha, ha," said Ben.

"I have a very large vocabulary which I use correctly," I pointed out. "I guess they don't much like my tribe in the Deep South, huh?"

"Missouri is not the Deep South. Missouri is the Midwest."

"Some people think my large vocabulary compensates for my dismal grasp of geography," I said. "Others disagree."

Ben started to say something but a gust that must have been fifty miles an hour practically blew me off my feet and broke the cell connection.

Jew me down… I was more bemused than offended. I've always regretted that political correctness has robbed us of a certain richness of language.

###

Robin and I have been thick as thieves this last couple of weeks. I've more-or-less given up behaving like a parental disciplinarian. I am besieged on too many fronts; I just don't have the strength for it. Instead, I try to explain to him what he's doing wrong, why it's a bad idea to use his clothes dresser as a food dump or stay up till four in the morning on school nights watching Tila Tequila reruns. This works better than screaming at him actually.

After the dogs have been beached and the dishes washed and dinner cooked and eaten, we stretch out on my bed and watch HBO's John Adams, the latest bequest from the Beatea Faerie.

I am a bit perplexed as to how John Adams – whom I remember best from high school civics as the author of the Alien and Sedition Act, an early precursor of the Patriot Act – has metamorphosed into a leading man, but hey! this ain't TV, it's HBO, and David Simon has moved on to other things.

And anyway it gives Robin and I the opportunity to discuss American history.

"That's Samuel Adams," I say, pointing to one of the actors on the screen. "He went on to a greater glory than his cousin."

"What do you mean? John Adams became President!"

"Yes, but Samuel Adams became a beer!"

Robin frowned. "Why do people care about the Roosevelts?"

"Well, Franklin Roosevelt was arguably the second greatest President ever in office."

"Who was the greatest?"

"Oh, Lincoln. Lincoln. Without a doubt."

"What was so great about Franklin Roosevelt?"

"Well, you've heard about the Great Depression, haven't you?"

"Yeah. The stock market crashed. People jumped out of buildings. 1920."

"1929, actually," I correct. "But it was more than a few people jumping out of buildings. There weren't enough jobs. People were desperately poor. There were food riots – people killing each other over a couple of loaves of bread. Franklin Roosevelt turned the economy around. Also, there was World War II. He made strategic decisions so that we came out on top of that one."

"Why do they always show Franklin Roosevelt on a horse?"

"They don't show Franklin Roosevelt on a horse. That's Teddy Roosevelt."

Robin shrugged impatiently. "Franklin, Teddy. Why a horse?"

"Teddy was a Rough Rider," I said.

###

I was born just four years after the end of World War II, but when I was a kid, World War II seemed terribly, terribly remote. Farther in the past than the Revolutionary War or the Civil War even. Partly because the Revolutionary War and the Civil War was part of PS 87's school curriculum, I suppose. But partly, I suspect, because the events of World War II were still too horrible and too close – the Fifties were an era of denial.

(I've noticed the same phenomenon with young people Max's age – twenty-one – and the Viet Nam War. They don't see it as any kind of defining event at all. It's shrouded in Arthurian mists as far as they're concerned.)

So it came as something of a shock to me on my last birthday to realize that Truman was actually in office when I was born. I'd always thought it was Eisenhower. My life has spanned eleven Presidencies instead of ten. I'm older than I ever intended to be.