I Want to Fight Peggy Noonan.

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Here’s my recipe for writing a weekly (ha!) blog; ignore, ignore, and then frantically try to come up with a subject in my vain hope of posting every seven days. Last night, when I was reduced to looking through the contents of my kitchen for an idea, I remembered that I had made a list.

I did this at the behest of my friend Paul, who writes a really nifty blog that recently stuck it to the man. Relieved, I went to my PC (Yes, I’m still using my Amiga, damn it!) and opened up the appropriate file.

Apparently, I must have just suffered a head injury on the day that I started this list. It only contained one and it made no damn sense;

“Noonan sez CDN silly.”

Other than my spelling of the word ‘says’ being from The Simpsons, I recognized none of this. My usual remedy of chain smoking while downing generous gulps of Glenlivet didn’t help – but I did beat the crap out of my neighbor. I later asked my wife, the lovely and erudite Mrs. Sinister, but she noted that she didn’t go looking for things on “that part” of the computer since finding my erotic fanfic about The Golden Girls.

Eventually I did what any serious opinion columnist would do and performed the Google Dance, guessing at what my phrase might mean. I eventually found a column from the Opinion page of the Wall Street Journal written by Peggy Noonan. Much to my surprise, I had apparently read such a thing. Initially, this just served as a reminder not to surf the Interwebs when gooned on cough medicine, but then I found this:

“In France they speak French, and in China they speak Chinese. In Canada they have two national languages, but that’s one reason Canada often seems silly. They don’t even know what language they dream in.”

What language they dream in? Maybe we should examine what language you write in? To be fair, it’s obviously English, but the kind of English indicating that Peggy is a native of the tiny village Western Rhetorical Nonsense.

I’m going to ignore that since more than 32 million people speak Spanish there, the United States is essentially bilingual already. Spanish is also recognized as an official language or ‘language of government’ to some degree in California, Arizona, New Mexico, the frightening state of Texas and in whatever the hell Puerto Rico is. I will further ignore that in 1794, a motion was presented to the United States Congress asking that laws be printed in English and in German.

Yup, German…and you thought that the French disliked the Americans for no good reason.

Further, the current President of the United States speaks Spanish, and presumably as his first language. Given the regularity with which he turns whatever he’s thinking into serial misspeaking of English, he must have come to it later in life.

In France they speak French – Peg has us nailed there and I’m proud of her. They also invented that language, so I’m even more proud of them. Same for China and Chinese, although they speak about two hundred thousand variations of it according to the number I invented since I couldn’t bother to look it up. Germans speak German – they invented that too, or maybe it invented them. It only makes sense that Peggy should expect that in the United States, they should all speak United Statesian.

What’s that? There is no such language? English is actually a foreign language and merely an accident of the flow of immigrants? English is just a grand coincidence to the American identity?

Damn – don’t tell Peggy. Can I call you Peggy?

Peggy’s oeuvre on language culminated with the following compassionate and charitable statement that in no way made me want to gag;

“We must speak the same language so we can hearten each other.”

Oh, so that’s why?

Hypothetically, I have two situations in my head and I cannot decide which is more heartening;

1. Peggy Noonan Schools for Mandatory Heartening through Forced Education spring up around the country where people can have their potential for heartening increased dramatically. Programs could also include ‘An Introduction to Cultural Assimilation As To Not Make Whitey Uncomfortable’ and ‘Who’s Your Favorite Fifty-Something Former Reagan Speech writer, Pedro?’

2. You hearten people by accepting them as they are and agree that both you and they need to work very hard to get on the same page with language, culture and education.

Personally, I think I know which one I prefer but I need someone to help me with the math since I never took Heartening and Discrete Mathematics for Rich White Women.

So when I turn of the klieg lights here in the Sinister Tower and descend into the murky depths of my peat bog for a well-earned sleep, I will think of Peggy. It will occur to me, as a Canadian, that being called silly by such a person may be a blessing rather than a slight.

Then, I will dream…of Peggy…and I will do so in English, French, Franglais and maybe in some dizzyingly forbidden combination of the three.

And I will be heartened.

 

 

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