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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (91723)	12/21/2004 8:45:25 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793781

A Giant Step Forward for Punctuation¡ Introducing the long-awaited sarcasm point. By Josh Greenman Posted Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2004, at 3:28 AM PT Illustration by Robert Neubecker The English language must evolve. Not with emoticons or lol or brb or l8r or GRATUITOUS all caps used for emphasis, not with Spanglish or bumbling Bushisms or even cryptic Kerryisms. We don't need more quotation marks that "hedge" or try to make the same "old" thing sound "fresh." What we need is an honest effort to incorporate the way we live today. My fellow Americans, we need to embrace a new punctuation mark—one that embraces the irony and edge of contemporary conversation and clarifies rather than condenses or confuses. It is time for the adoption of the sarcasm point. Why the sarcasm point? We have a mark that conveys that we mean or know something. We have one that says it with volume and force! We have one that communicates that we don't know something, don't we? We need one more: to do for language what shade did for drawing, what color did for television, and what eyebrows did for expressions—introduce finesse. The problem is simple. We live in a whiplash, light-speed world in which motion can range, within minutes, from standstill to supersonic, decibel levels range from NPR to Limbaugh, and the range of sincerity can shoot from earnest to irreverent in nanoseconds. Continue Article Click Here! Believe it or not, the world we've landed in is not only more image-obsessed than we've ever seen. It's also more text-based than ever. We finger-type and we thumb-type. We e-mail, we IM, we blog. And the forms cannot contain the content. There's a dastardly disconnect. Among other things, it makes Dave Barry columns somewhat difficult to read. Someone must step into the sarcasm chasm¡ I'm serious¡ See, there are people who are relentlessly sincere. So, what are they supposed to do when they're trying to sound a bit bitter? Suppose you're IM'ing that oft-earnest friend you have, and he writes: "I need to go to church tomorrow and confess the jealousy in my heart." You forget—have you ever heard him say nice things about God or do the opposite? "Wait … do you really?" "Sorry. I mean, I need to go to church tomorrow¡ To confess my jealousy¡ And the fact that I just renewed my subscription to Maxim¡" "Oh. Me too. Only as a Jew, I must do these things in synagogue¡" And then there are people who are relentlessly sarcastic. How do we know when they're being straight? The other day my brother told me he respected Colin Powell. I had no idea what he was trying to say. The sarcasm point can strengthen our communities and unite our broader culture¡ Sarcasm purists, Norm McDonald, and his acolytes might be troubled by all this talk. Good sarcasm, they'll tell you, is cueless. It trips dishonestly off the tongue. "What I'm looking forward to in prison is the prospect of anal rape." Telegraph your insincerity and the thrill is gone. Announce it and your friends won't experience the same delight in the spasm of sarcasm you use to praise the president. The other day I told my girlfriend I loved her. I did it on Yahoo! Instant Messenger. And the sarcasm just didn't come across. I grant that blue states will be at the vanguards in anointing the new sarcasm point. We'll use it in our MoveOn action alerts. We'll teach it our public schools, in those grammar classes they fail to teach. We will type it with excitable hands in Bruckheimer scripts and lace it in our advertising. Red states will be slower to come along, perhaps. The first sarcasm point won't work its way into the Republican Party platform until 2028, into a Georgia English textbook until 2032, and won't appear in a prayer book until, I'm guessing, 2080. But the spread will be inevitable, kind of like civil unions. Williams Safire and F. Buckley, chiefs of the language police, are retiring not two moments too soon. Let the organized grammatical crime commence¡ Do yourself a favor. Begin today. Suck in and cough out this little virus of an idea. Beam the meme. Use it at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and funerals¡ Try to keep it under wraps at gay coming out parties. I mean it¡ And since I'm going to copyright this bugger, you'll have to type¡© But don't worry. You can take the copyright symbol ironically. Josh Greenman, a former speechwriter for Joe Lieberman and Rudy Giuliani, contributes to the Onion. Seriously. Illustration by Robert Neubecker. slate.msn.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (91723)	12/21/2004 11:24:03 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 793781

Merry Christmas, for heaven's sake. LOL! You, too. ;^) After a week of no access to my laptop, which has my Outlook address book, and several days of sweating how to make address labels using Outlook (there has to be a better way), I finally got my Christmas cards to the Merrifield Post Office at about 12:20 a.m. Hopefully people will get them by Friday. At any rate, it's done. Except for two of the three Jewish people on the list -- I found my stack of "Season's Greetings" cards, the ones with two turtle doves, but only one envelope of a suitable size. Thought about sending Christmas cards anyway, but no -- my Christmas cards all have angels and Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. No way was I going to send them to a Jew. After talking about this for weeks, my consciousness has been raised. At any rate, only four more days until we can put this behind us until next year.

To: Lane3 who wrote (91723)	12/21/2004 11:29:00 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793781

Karen, it is the few that are causing the MSM to give them all sorts of publicity....Controversy sells. Even if it's only one or two malcontents who pretend to be speaking for the majority. The reason it is important Karen, is that it is like an erosion at a sand beach....bit by bit, grain by grain...pretty soon there is no beach. However, most of us can do more than one thing at a time....We can make a protest call, or an "attagirl call", AND make Christmas cookies, wrap presents, hug our own kids, and grandkids, hug other kids who are in need, and get a present for them as well, visit food banks, and all the etcs of the Season. Last night, I embroidered my Mom's name in a handmade crocheted lap robe, and plan to take it and a few other gifts to her today at the nursing home where she is being cared for...and will be bringing cookies for the staff who provides such good care to her and the other folks who are there. Thanks for the Merry Christmas wish. I wish you and all of the PfP's the very same wish -- Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!