Professor of BS? Is the English language in decay?

   wtf am i rambling on about? lol i think u know

Polar Vortex Sweeps the Nation!

This one goes out to all the English majors out there.

Okay I’m not losing my mind. I am simply illustrating how on one hand one form of social media, texting  seems to be morphing our language into a combination of acronyms, slang and shorthand while on the other hand our mainstream media such as TV, radio and yes mainstream internet sites seem to be so desperate for an audience that what was once described in my youth as a cold snap is now a polar vortex. Talk about a run on sentence! Mr. Turnidge who was my grade 12 English teacher is not rotflmao if he’s still alive. If he’s not still alive then he’s definitely tossin’ and turnin’ in his grave lol. While anyone who reads my blogs can tell I’m not great at grammar or spelling (thank u spell check) I seem to be able to get my point across;  after all  that is the point of writing isn’t it?

 

A few months ago while visiting my sister in Toronto (Rob Ford Land) I  tuned in to the CBC radio in my car. On the radio was a proffessor Harry Frankfurt. He is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. You know one of the US “ivy league” schools. He was promoting his book, On Bullshit. You heard me correctly, my tax dollars are being spent to allow a US professor emeritus of philosophy flog his book, On Bullshit. Don’t believe me? Well you can just google that  $#it and you’ll  find a reference of the prof’s somewhere down the list far past  a TV show by  Penn and Teller called Bullshit!

It was a little liberating and I was kind of happy to see/hear the word Bullshit was no longer being censored via my tax dollar. Again our language is evolving in that what would once have been censored in the 70’s ie George Carlins’ 7 words you can’t say on TV. The first, second  and last word in  Carlin’s skit  have now been accepted in mainstream media. Hell an Ivy League professor has made a career on the first one, (bull)Shit!  I’ve never heard anyone complain about the second one ,piss. We already know many have made a career on the seventh one, tits…lol  Alas it may be a few years until the “f” word is fully accepted bringing in the third and sixth words and seeing as I doubt the fifth word is seen/heard to be any worse I predict it will come into mainstream language around the same time. However I doubt and most women hope that the fourth word not become mainstream in my lifetime. hahahahaha

  You see in this ever increasingly competitive media space , what was once a needed  national treasure is now reduced to the stature of a grocery store rag. Do we as a society really need an ivy league professor to explain to us on tax sponsored media,  the subtle differences between spin doctors and bullshit artists? Yes he, Professor Frankfurt claims there is a difference. You see he says the spin doctors take a bit of truth and put their ‘spin” on it while he claims bullshitters  just lie. He may be  right about that but I would argue that I’m pretty sure  the difference between a bullshitter and a Bullshit artist was the artist sprinkled in enough truth to make it believable. Thus the “artist” designation sounds a lot like today’s “Spin Doctor” designation. Again mainstream media has to make the obvious extraordinary. How else can they compete?  Take this article for example. On one hand I hope you the reader click on one of the pretty ads so I get some $ while on the other hand I’m pretty sure that if you do I’ve lost you and you probably wont finish this article! How do you make and keep an audience? It all started to pick up steam with “shock and awe” but I have no idea where it will end. I’m sure by now that you can see this articles use of  abbreviations, slang and new improved words or phrases like ‘spin doctor” or “polar vortex” has just furthered my contention that while not in decay our language certainly is changing. It’s  been a long winter and as the warm weather approaches I can hardly wait to see wtf the main stream media morph a heat wave into?

The one thing I’m pretty sure  Mr Turnidge would agree with me on is that if nothing else Professor Frankfurt proves  the old adage to be  true.  bbb or as we said back in the day bullshit baffles brains 😉