Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:14:37 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss John McWhorter :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/John+McWhorter istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/long-live-the-sats/86574/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST This week the National Association for College Admission Counseling's report did not call for the complete elimination of the SAT from college admissions evaluations, and I am glad about that. However, in suggesting that "some" schools consider doing so, the report is part of a trend toward dismissing the SAT as an elitist scourge and evaluating students on the basis of grades, writing samples, subject tests, and testaments to their spunk. The good-thinking wisdom is that because students from... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/underestimating-obama/86083/ Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The fashion among Barack Obama fans is to worry that he is about to lose. The fluttering poll numbers supposedly tell the story. All John McCain had to do was trot out a snappy, poised, non-male running mate, and the Obama fairy tale was over. Insert here assorted pious ruminations about how Senator Obama had a nice run, but in the end America just "wasn't ready" because of ... need I go on? I'm not with it. Once again, Mr. Obama is being underestimated even by people who worship him. Think... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/palin-without-lipstick/85634/ Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST "A man would seem a coward if he had the courage of a woman, and a woman would seem garrulous if she had the temperance of a good man." As men and women go, "his task is to acquire property and hers to preserve it." That's Aristotle in "Politics." We understand that the reason such a prodigy could breezily toss off such stuff is because he lived in antiquity. I thought. But here we are talking about Sarah Palin in terms that are not as far from Aristotle as we might think. I recently caught... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/heed-adhere-accede/85155/ Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Don LaFontaine was the voiceover artist famous for intoning the "In a world where ... " line in movie trailers. He died Monday, and it reminded me of an evening in 1984 when my college newspaper assigned me, for some reason, to cover a panel discussion by voiceover artists in New York. One of them was the man who was asking "Have you driven a Ford — lately?" in television commercials. After the panelists had all spoken, the moderator cordially requested that audience members not use their... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/looking-for-any-excuse/84797/ Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST There they go again. They couldn't cry racism in Iowa or even in New Hampshire, and Hillary Clinton's loss further inconvenienced those sitting ever at the ready to play the Cassandra and warn America how racism lives on in this country with a vigor that could deny Barack Obama the White House. But now they've got new fodder: the NewYork Times / CBS poll showing that one in 20 whites would not vote for a black presidential candidate — not exactly a scary number — but more notably (and quotably)... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/cab-ride-interrupted/84428/ Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Barack Obama is nonracial enough that none of his likely vice-presidential picks are black and no one has batted an eye. Yet he is now processed as "racial" enough that we hear ever more about what kind of "black" agenda he needs to present. Saying he must address a criminal justice system is deliberately set up to lasso in black men. It isn't, but debate on that will be fruitless. What Senator Obama really needs to address is a War on Drugs which, while failing, is what brings so many black... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hope-lacks-heft/83837/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST I'm just back from a vacation in Portland, Ore., a Blue America town with Obama signs everywhere. It's the kind of thing that leads one to suppose that Senator Obama's victory in November is a done deal. You get the same impression from looking at magazine stands or even just listening to conversations in crowds and elevators. It's all Obama all the time, while poor John McCain galumphs around geography-challenged and unfocused. But the urban/collegetown sorts who swoon over Mr. Obama are not... JOHN MCWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-rest-of-the-sentence/82937/ Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Big news on race relations Tuesday, and no, it wasn't something Barack Obama said or did. The House of Representatives has granted black America an apology for slavery. Oh yeah — and also for the hundred-odd years of Jim Crow segregation after that. You may have heard about assorted states passing measures like these of late, but this is supposed to be an especially big deal because it was a federal thing. The question is how many times America is supposed to tell us it's sorry. The problem... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/from-theatrics-to-reality/82054/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST On Monday Barack Obama made a speech before the NAACP at their annual convention about — brace yourself — black people being responsible for themselves. Such a fresh notion: black people can't expect the government to solve all of their problems. I am supposed to write this column about how this is what the black community needs to listen to and how brave Mr. Obama is. But I won't. Not because I don't salute him, but because he was doing something perfectly normal in modern black communities... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/opera-in-translation/81541/ Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST The 25th anniversary of supertitles at the Metropolitan Opera is warm beer to me. Supertitles are definitely a darned sight better than the old days when one sat through operas barely knowing what anyone was singing and just savoring the "passion." In 1943, one man described what going to the opera was like when he was a kid. He said, "Listening to people sing words you didn't understand wasn't much fun." That was Oscar Hammerstein. Supertitles were beyond the technology of the day, and so he... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obama-and-bush-share-face/81219/ Thu, 3 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST No matter what, a good number continue to think Barack Obama is a Muslim. They don't do their homework. One could say the same thing of people claiming we "don't know what Obama believes," that he is a smooth talker devoid of substance. That indicates a certain discernment, a resistance to being seduced by surfaces. But all you have to do to get a sense of what Barack Obama is about is look at his Web site. There is plenty of policy there; he does not hold back. The problem is less that he does... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/constantine-cries-wolf/80816/ Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST When Professor Madonna Constantine up at Teacher's College at Columbia said, in the wake of a noose hung from her door last year, that she would not be deterred in her work, I liked it. To allow such gestures to hurt you is to give in to the smallness of the perpetrator. But I am less impressed with her response to her suspension for allegations of plagiarism this week. According to Ms. Constantine, the culprit here is the same as the one responsible for the noose: racism. "I am left to wonder... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/conscious-rap-part-ii/80268/ Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Last week I argued in this space against the idea that the "conscious" brand of rap music offers useful advice of an inspirational or political nature, contrary to a popular notion that such rap has the potential to spark some kind of "hiphop revolution" among young black people. Because this new version of political awareness is such an idle detour, I will depart from my usual practice and respond to the comments last week's piece elicited. Many respondents seem unable to get beyond a basic... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/conscious-hiphop-fallacy/79820/ Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST In Great Britain during World War II, with cities pockmarked by bombings, good-thinking planners wanted to take the opportunity to bless the British population with the glories of suburban living. Goodbye to crowded cities. Why not spread people outward where they could take deep breaths and stretch their legs? This sounded like wisdom incarnate. But architectural critic Ernφ Goldfinger, with his outsider's perspective as a Hungarian, understood that this idealization of the suburb was just one... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/racism-in-retreat/79355/ Thu, 5 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST A year and a half ago, often I was sweetly dismissed when I said that Barack Obama was possibly on his way to the White House and would certainly trounce Hillary Clinton for the nomination. "You don't know what they'll do to him," they'd say. As often as not, the idea was that America could not seriously support a black man for its highest office. I didn't get this. The America I live in today does not seem as deeply stamped by bigotry as these people seemed to think. It seemed as if, on this... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/showing-the-flag/78863/ Thu, 29 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Wearing pins have never been much my thing. However, after September 11, 2001, I did put an American flag sticker on my car windshield. After a bibulous festivity, a pacifist friend took it upon herself to rip off the flag. There was an element of humor in it, and a dash of the theatrical — yet it was sincere. I tried to pull her away, and realized that I could only have done so via what would have become some kind of scuffle. Off went my sticker. Her idea was that in these times, showing the... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ok-so-here-is-a-column-on-speech/76854/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 EST I've known him since he was born two years ago, and this weekend, I said to him "Gabe, can I have one marshmallow?" And he toddled over to me and gave me one. Amazing! Just three months ago all my neighbors' little boy could do was point to a carton of Tropicana and say "Oh-joo" — that is, orange juice. But now he has language. Such a miracle it is, really. Remember, running speech doesn't come across in words nicely separated as they are as I am writing them. He heard: "Gabe... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/arts/classroom-warfare/76745/ Wed, 21 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Reading a description of a university culture in which left-leaning professors preach anti-American and anticapitalist sentiment while free-market philosophy and devout Christianity are generally relegated to the sidelines of polite discussion, one pictures any number of college campuses today. One of the most striking things about William F. Buckley Jr.'s landmark manifesto of 1951, "God and Man at Yale," is how similar academic culture was in the late 1940s when he was a Yalie. The reign of... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/race-as-a-sport/76490/ Thu, 15 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Let me get this straight. When Hillary Clinton says that a reason to vote for her is that her popularity with the white working class would make her a more viable opponent against John McCain, she's playing the race card. It's more of the dirty tricks that those Clintons are so reviled for. Nonsense is the polite word for this; there are other worse ones. Senator Clinton's refusal to exit the race is distinctly unseemly, but this business of tarring her as socially undesirable for what she said... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/clintons-monster/76105/ Thu, 8 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Never have I been a Hillary hater. For one thing, I am too wary of recreational vitriol. "She'll stop at nothing to get power" — okay, but is that so unusual in a politician? Power-seeking is what alpha males do. I sometimes wonder whether one thing that gets people's knickers in such a twist about Mrs. Clinton is that she displays alpha male behavior as a woman. That said, she lost me Tuesday night. Having been trounced in North Carolina, and just squeaking by in Indiana, there she was saying... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/dashiki-posturing-of-the-reverend-wright/75596/ Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST The toughest kind of audience member for me is 60-something or a little older. This person was around 20 when Jim Crow was outlawed and white America began listening to black grievances. I find that for certain black people of this time slice, all talk of getting past race or addressing black culture is repellent nonsense. For them, it is still roughly 1966. These people grew up under segregation, and saw activism and protest usher in a new order. Whites were now good and guilty, and naturally... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/not-battling-racism/75268/ Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST There are going to be books about this Democratic campaign. Presumably, a few will address a staple question pundits are to attend to these days: "the role of race in the campaign." What people really mean by that usually is the role of racism: the thinking person is supposed to be dutifully watching for evidence that white people are "not ready" for a black president, or that criticisms from Mr. Obama's opposition are rooted in racism. What seems to almost frustrate some is that the answer to... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/indoctrinate-u-type-episode/74871/ Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST I've just attended a showing of Evan Coyne Maloney's fine documentary about political correctness on college campuses, "Indoctrinate U." Finally what we usually only read about: University of California Regent Ward Connerly shouted down by a near-violent audience, or an English professor whose department tried to blackball her when they found out she was a Republican. The film got me thinking about how I was treated when I was teaching at Berkeley and wrote a book against racial preferences... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/second-chance-act/74473/ Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST We have heard much about what we ought to be thinking about on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. I got to put in my two cents on the "Jim Lehrer NewsHour" — or at least, one cent. While I was talking, something accidentally went wrong with the studio feed (it happens), and the time it took to fix it meant I had to leave out something I wanted to say. Namely, the anniversary of King's death should have us thinking about something important happening right now... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stuck-in-the-60s/74142/ Thu, 3 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Not more on Barack Obama this week. If his message to get past race is valid, then in homage, I will do so in this space today. I was pleased that C-SPAN was on board with that impulse a few weeks ago, when they did a three-hour interview with me on Book Notes. It was the rare occasion where I was asked as much about my work in linguistics as race. They even came to my home a few weeks before and filmed me doing assorted non-racial things like playing the piano and petting my cat (Lara's press... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/conversion-of-race-conversation/73751/ Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST There are conventionally agreed-upon meanings that differ from the words used to express them. If you are wearing a watch and someone asks, "Do you have the time?," technically it would be answering the question to just say "yes" and walk on. There is a convention that "Do you have the time?" is taken as a request for the time to be shared. In this vein, what does it mean when people say, as they have been in the wake of Barack Obama's marvelous speech last week, that there needs to be a... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ready-for-obama/73218/ Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST There are black pastors nationwide giving anti-American sermons like Reverend Jeremiah Wright's. It's not as if Barack Obama sought out some peculiar institution to worship in. Call it Black Liberation Theology, "telling it like it is," or what have you — Reverend Wright's broadsides at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago were ordinary examples of one of many stripes of black sermonizing. Of course, "God Damn America" is most certainly not "telling it like it is" usefully. However... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/wire-war-of-truths/72948/ Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST It was hard Sunday night watching the finale of "The Wire" and facing the fact that we will never see the characters again. The richness and nuance of the show were such that you continually have to remind yourself that those people do not actually exist — that when Stringer, Omar, Boadie, Snoop, and the others were killed, the actors playing them got up and walked away after the director yelled "Cut!" I start to wish they'd do a few more seasons — but actually, I don't. The show would start... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/improvisation-of-language/72430/ Thu, 6 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST Tuesday was, like every twist in this mesmerizing campaign season, interesting. But we linguists were equally bemused by the fact that it was also National Grammar Day, sponsored by the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. The idea was to speak up for "good clean English cast well." Noble notion. Writing, for example, is one thing. I can go along with a concern for missing apostrophes. But when it comes to complaints like irregardless isn't a real word, that we should use fewer rather... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fighting-words-in-education-crowds/72036/ Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Neither Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, nor John McCain has had a whole lot to say about education during this campaign. It's not hard to see why. Vouchers and No Child Left Behind have not yielded really big news. There's a war and a teetering economy to discuss. But it's also because in some quarters, the longer school day is fighting words. Nobody wants to touch this third rail when the issue is not as screamingly urgent as warfare, an impending recession, or an attack ad. But once we've... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obambi-is-working-it/71687/ Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Lately pundits' speculations about Barack Obama's future are historical curios after two weeks. Whites won't vote for him? Iowa. Then after Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire, the going wisdom was that whites would only vote for him in the open format of caucuses. So much for that one. Obamamania will only take hold among the educated? Tell that to the white collar workers who just helped him take Wisconsin. Just wait till "Obambi," as Maureen Dowd has it, encounters the mudslinging? The mud... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/that-guy-from-tv/71319/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST "Hairspray" opened soon after I moved to New York in 2002, and I found it one of the most uplifting confections I have ever seen. I saw it six times within its first year and half. The other night I dropped in on it again. For the first time, I left feeling more or less the way I had when I went in. "Hairspray" has gotten old. For one thing, Cheer's "Norm" George Wendt is now playing plus-sized Edna Turnblad, a role originated by Harvey Fierstein in one of the most fascinating performances ever... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obamas-american/70873/ Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST I'm sick this week. I was supposed to be recording lectures on linguistics on DVD for the Teaching Company. But my yearly bout of bronchitis has laid me low. Back when I was a professor at Berkeley I gave a lecture when I had shingles. I thought that I was invincible. But here I am, wheezing and achy, unable to fulfill my duties. This is the first time illness has prevented me from doing something important. I am adjusting to something new. As I am also in watching the primary results. For... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/welcoming-obama-to-reality/70503/ Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Strong Black Woman. Say it loud, "I'm black and I'm proud." So why the sense of injury over the Clintons aiming slime at Barack Obama? Mind you, it's been a moderate dollop. We've heard so much about how the Clinton machine would "get" him. So: he worked with a slum lord? His record on Iraq is a "fairy tale?" His embrace by black voters in South Carolina won't take him any further than Jesse Jackson got? Compared to the Swift-boating affair against John Kerry, this is water balloons. And yet... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/arts/crying-wolf-over-race/70444/ Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Last year it was Angela McGlowan's "Bamboozled"; in 2006 it was Juan Williams's "Enough." About once a year comes a book by a black writer arguing that black America's problem is less racism than race hustlers. Richard Thompson Ford's "The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse" (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 400 pages, $26) is not, despite its subtitle, this year's version. As a Stanford University law professor, Mr. Ford is too concerned with nuance to write such a... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/turn-up-the-heat/70120/ Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST I find myself ever bemused at the idea in our political culture that it is big news when competitors for public office engage in sharply worded exchanges. This week, Hillary Clinton mentioned Barack Obama's association with a slum lord and he recalled her serving on the board of Wal-Mart. Never mind that both claims were distortions. For many, the very fact that the two of them started mixing it up, so to speak, was improper, "too much," something respectable candidates should not "resort" to... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/bradley-effect-rip/69664/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST The data are in. White voters in New Hampshire did not pretend to be for Barack Obama and then quietly vote for Hillary Clinton. David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has found that Mr. Obama's poll numbers before and after the voting match up. The discrepancy was in Mrs. Clinton's poll numbers: she attracted a surge of voters on top of those who had been polled. I call that one for the black history books, even though Mr. Obama lost. It means that the Bradley... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/change-may-now-be-happening/69260/ Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST As recently as a month ago, "Obamamania" was being eulogized, with Mr. Obama dismissed as a mere symbolic step towards a successful black candidacy in some distant era. But that era may well be now. Okay, Hillary Clinton came out ahead in New Hampshire — but that was a surprise, and by a mere two points. A standard line among black people has been that whites would cheer for Mr. Obama in public but then vote white. I have had a hunch that the junior senator's charisma and totemic weight was... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/out-of-the-ashcan/68834/ Thu, 3 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST I'm a fan of John Sloan, the Ashcan School artist who was in his prime a century ago. Most seem to think of him as a respectable also-ran. But his paintings and drawings of New York, concentrating on Sixth Avenue between 23rd Street and Greenwich Village, often dimly lit, move me somehow. I enjoyed the small exhibit of his drawings currently on view at the Museum of the City of New York. Looking at his depictions of ordinary folk skating, grooming, and marrying, I am struck by how despite the... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/arts/black-on-black-thought-crime/68809/ Wed, 2 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST Randall Kennedy has a gift for choosing topics: In four years he has covered perhaps the three most crucial issues in intelligent black discourse. First came "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word" (2002), a bestselling exploration of the N-word; then a book on black-white romantic relationships, "Interracial Intimacies" (2003), and now here is "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal" (Pantheon, 228 pages, $22), on the tarring of certain black thinkers and figures as Uncle Toms... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/beware-the-witches-of-grammar/68417/ Thu, 20 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST One of my books was a flop. In "Doing Our Own Thing" I described the increasing informality in the public use of English with a combination of affection and regret. It never really caught on. The reviews were tepid. Even my friends rarely get to the end of it. Part of the problem was that it stretched what should have been an article into book length. But another was a misleading subtitle: "The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care." That was a mistake, because it led... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/guidelines-leading-nowhere/68038/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST It's something I wish more Americans could see close up. To most of us, police officers are people in uniform who we rarely meet in person. We're glad to see them ready to protect us if something untoward happens. But to kids in the 'hood, the police are the enemy. Not just to the thugs, but to all of the kids, for the most part. It is part of the culture, the warp and woof, of the neighborhood that the police are a problem. I revisited this the other night at a community forum in the Bronx... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stop-the-black-kkk/67589/ Thu, 6 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Jason Whitlock has written this year's best column on race. He's a black sports columnist at FOXSports.com, and he is disgusted with much of the black punditocracy's response to the murder of Redskins football player Sean Taylor. Some are claiming that 2 was a target because he was an athlete. Others insist that it is wrong and even racist to bring up that Taylor had spent a lot of time on the wrong side of the law. But the tacit assumption would appear to be that the staggeringly high murder... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/lawnside-syndrome/67172/ Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST There's one at every event. Despite my reputation in some quarters as a hidebound "black conservative" out of touch with the way most reasonable people think, I actually have a pretty easy time when I give talks. My views on race and much else are largely what would have been considered liberal in 1960. But there's almost always one audience member who barely seems to have heard anything I said. I've been jetting around a fair amount over the past few weeks, and have been impressed by the... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/arts/great-hope/67128/ Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST It is not uncommon to see Barack Obama described as "comfortable in his skin." Yet in "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win" (Free Press, 142 pages, $22), Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele argues that underneath Mr. Obama's cool-tempered exterior is a soul divided against itself. Specifically, Mr. Steele suspects that Mr. Obama has crafted an oppositional "black" identity of a staged variety, despite having been raised by whites in a culture disconnected... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/thanks-giving/66799/ Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST You know how you can tell that we don't truly think of Thanksgiving as being about thankfulness anymore? Which syllable most of us put the accent on. Most people say thanks-GIVING. But think about it — you don't say horse-RACING; you say HORSE-racing. BABY-sitting, not baby-SITTING. So why not THANKS-giving? Some people say it that way, especially when the word is used as an adjective: many say THANKS-giving turkey, but still call the day they serve it on thanks-GIVING. The accent has changed... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/do-do-that-voodoo-that-you-do-so-well/66473/ Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Yesterday in 1929 was the first public performance of the first "real" Cole Porter musical; i.e., with a storyline throughout, and in the mature musical style that elicits us to urge Porter on to "Do do that voodoo that you do so well," in the words of its hit song, "You Do Something To Me." The show was "Fifty Million Frenchmen," in its Boston tryout before coming to New York. So much about this show has implications for life today, on stage and off. For one thing, one of the female leads was... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/joel-and-mike/66098/ Thu, 8 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST The folks at more than a few New York City schools are not happy this week. Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have graded almost all of the 1400. Three out of 5 got A's or B's. But the rest, as Desi Arnaz used to say on "I Love Lucy," have some "splainin" to do. For example, to the parents of the children they are failing to prepare to compete for jobs even someone can do without a college degree, but which do require that one be able to read and do some math. Predictably, many schools are... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/time-for-political-eloquence/65655/ Thu, 1 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST In Victorian England, in the House of Commons it was ordinary for political leaders to make four-hour speeches, laying out detailed arguments for legislation. I'm not going to quote the upholstered grandiloquence. You can easily imagine it; meanwhile, I want to discourage a misimpression that my point is about standards of grammatical usage. What interests me is not the form but the content: that it was seen as normal for politicians to spend that much time and care making a case. Just imagine... JOHN McWHORTER http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ghetto-pathology/65270/ Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST There it goes again. Bob Herbert does his roughly annual piece where he deigns to allow that The System is not the only reason black people have problems. A few days later the letters section includes earnest counsel of this sort, on why Compton in Los Angeles is no longer the stable suburb of two-parent families it was before the seventies: The factory jobs are gone, and Compton is drug-infested. It may be useful to say 'get a good education and there's an engineering job waiting for you in...