monolingualism is nothing to be proud of


Subject: monolingualism is nothing to be proud of
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sat Apr 28 2001 - 02:58:50 GMT


    A couple of points of clarification for those eager
    girls with the lovely bright eyes at the front of the class.

    Pisse-en-nids was the term the mighty Charles de Gaulle
    used when describing those of his compatriots who were
    forever criticising his statesmanship & who so appeared,
    like certain birds, to enjoy 'peeing in their own nests'.

    (It is not, of course, to be confused with pissenlit which
    has a rather similar root [cf., lit = bed; nid = nest] &
    which refers to the dandelion from whose leaves a diuretic
    infusion was prepared for patients in congestive heart
    failure who as their urinary output increased would, indeed,
    sometimes 'piss in their own beds.')

    And yes, Sean, I think Forrest would have made a very
    fitting candidate for such a democratic society as the USA.
    By embodying his bland, unthreatening figure, Tom Hanks
    now looks fair to win the American heart permanently as
    outright champion.

    Unfortunately, the governance of a great people demands
    subtler & more advanced talents: talents which can really
    only be fostered in a setting of financial security, educational
    priviledge & family connections. Without these, what one
    tends to find rising to the top is a kind of bookish
    industriousness coupled with a ruthless, populist ambition
    from which moral considerations are quite absent.

    Since I imagine very many of the list came to adulthood
    during the Clinton years, they still confuse that dreadful,
    clammy embrace with warmth & all that compulsive reading
    with intellectual rigour.

    But learn they will. They will. In time. Understatement,
    command, reticence, self-mockery - these are the real indicators
    of calibre.

    And remember, chaps, there's nothing like family.
    Churchill, Asquith, Cecil...
    Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy...

    Scottie B.

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