By John McDonnell
My last post got more attention that any other post I've written for this blog. It was about the new book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" by Amy Chua.
This book has generated a firestorm of controversy, especially after Amy Chua wrote an essay in the Wall St. Journal about it, titled, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". Chua is getting a lot of flak from bloggers everywhere, and it seems every parent has a strong opinion about her thesis, which is basically that Western parents are too soft on their kids.
Amy Chua has struck a nerve, because that subject is one that every parent I know struggles with. Get a group of parents together these days and invariably the talk turns to their children, and before long they're telling stories about how soft their kids are. Oh, they don’t use words like “soft” or “spoiled”, but that’s the gist of the stories.
If you have teenagers, it’s easy to go on a rant about the sense of entitlement they have, how they whine about the few chores they're asked to do, how they have more money and toys and gadgets than any other generation in history, and so on.
A lot of Western parents these days are asking questions like: Are we raising our kids right? Have we given them too much? Should we have been more demanding, asked more of them? What kind of people are they turning into? Now along comes this Amy Chua person to reinforce our worst fears.
You were too easy on them, she says. You gave them too much, and didn't ask anything of them in return. You should have taught them how to work harder, how to deal with adversity, how to respect their elders, etc., etc.
It's true that when I compare my childhood to the one my kids have, it's like I came from a different planet. I grew up in a house that was hardly bigger than some of the garages I see in the affluent suburb where I live. Of course I had no cell phone, computer, video games, or cable TV, but in my house we didn't even have our own phone line. We had what was called a party line, where you shared the phone line with another house, because the rate was cheaper. We had a big black phone on the wall in the kitchen, and if I wanted to call a friend I had to stand there and talk amidst the hubbub of a family of six, then be ready to hang up in an instant if someone on our party line started dialing the phone on their end.
But it goes further than just being deprived of material possessions. Parents back then demanded more of their kids, and they weren't shy about it. There was a lot of yelling in our house, especially around report card time. It was a kind of yelling that got very personal, and in today's world it would probably be called abuse.
Apparently Asian parents still do this, because Amy Chua admits that she called her daughter "garbage" once when she was particularly angry at her, and another time yelled herself hoarse when her daughter couldn't play a piano piece right.
I have never yelled at my kids like that, because I decided years ago that I didn't agree with that style of parenting. I thought there was a better way, one that wouldn't tear down my kids' self-esteem. I can't help but shake my head in wonderment, however, on the rare occasions when I do raise my voice just a tad, and my kids tell me to stop yelling at them. "Yelling?" I say. "You call that yelling? That's not yelling. I know yelling, and what I did is definitely not yelling."
Would a little more volume in my voice have toughened my kids up, made them more resilient and better able to handle life's down times?
Maybe. But you can't go back, and as I said in my last post, I'm basically happy with how my children are turning out. They are happy, confident, and outgoing. They have opinions, and they're not shy about expressing them. They haven't gotten straight "A's" but they seem able to handle a lot more than just schoolwork in their lives.
The jury's still out, like I said before. But I'm not going to be one of those parents who lacerates myself with guilt because some writer comes out with a glib formula for child-rearing. My parents did their best, but I feel I improved on their methods.
And besides, what worked 30 years ago is not necessarily going to work in today's world. The world my children live in is light years from the one I lived in at their age. They need to be confident, flexible, and adaptable if they’re going to succeed in the the next 30 years. They do not need to be rigid rule followers, because the rules are changing every day.
These kids need different skill sets to survive in the 21st century.
And learning how to deal with a “Tiger Mother” is not one of them.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Are Chinese Mothers The Best Parents?
By John McDonnell
One thing about parenting, there’s always somebody telling you that you’re doing it wrong. Mothers-in-law are good at that, along with best-selling books like “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. This new book by Amy Chua will make even the strictest parents feel like they’re too soft on their kids.
“Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is basically saying that Asian mothers are more successful parents because they push their kids harder. Amy Chua cheerfully recounts the way she pushed her two daughters to succeed in school by hectoring them constantly to study harder, telling them they couldn't bring home anything less than an "A" in every subject, and not allowing them to have sleepovers, play dates, or extra-curricular activities besides music lessons.
This is a mother who sat in on all her daughters’ music lessons, took notes, and then monitored their practices at home to make sure they were doing what the teacher instructed them to do. Her infamous quote in this regard is that American mothers think one hour of practice is enough. “For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.”
Predictably, this book has generated a storm of protest from guilt-ridden American parents, some of whom resent the implication that they are unconcerned with their children's welfare, that they're absentee moms, and that their children will never succeed in life because they don't know how to work hard.
My wife and I have discussed the book, and so have our four children. The consensus among our kids is that they think Amy Chua is crazy; no surprise there.
We do wonder sometimes if we were too easy on our children, and Amy's strict parenting style seems a reproach when you have kids who were not first in their class in any subject, and who we could barely get to practice 30 minutes on their musical instruments, much less three hours.
There are no instruction manuals when you bring a baby home from the hospital, and although we tried to read the latest books about parenting, when our kids were young we were mostly too busy and too tired to do much reading. We made it up on the fly, based on our own common sense and what we learned from our parents growing up. We made mistakes, in varying degrees, but we also had some successes.
Compared to Amy Chua we were soft American parents. We let the kids have cell phones, sleepovers, and play sports. We did not call them "garbage" (a quote from Amy's book) if they brought home a "B". We did not monitor every minute of their lives.
The jury is still out, but at this point it looks like we raised four kids who are reasonably smart and successful in school, and who have a good deal of self-confidence. They are reasonably independent, and they have good values. Nobody has played the violin at Carnegie Hall, and we have no Ivy League grads so far, but they also haven't made any bad judgments or gone down all the many treacherous paths they could have taken, and people tell us they are all personable, confident, polite, and fun to be around.
The Chinese style of parenting is not for everyone. It's not even for many Chinese, if you believe the reports in the Wall Street Journal that say even in China some parents are trying to loosen their grip, because the government is trying to encourage more creativity and less conformity and rote learning. It seems that maybe the Tiger style of mothering is too harsh, and creates children who grow up to be too reliant on outside forces to motivate them, instead of being motivated from within.
The one thing I know is that the Tiger style of parenting will be a fad for awhile, but then someone else will come along with another approach, and parents will all think they're doing it wrong if they don't follow that approach. The pendulum swings back and forth all the time. I've learned from parenting four kids that there is no template for raising each child, and that what works for one child may not work for his or her sibling. No matter how many parenting books you read, parenting is still a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants endeavor.
Tiger mothering may work for tigers, but it has to be modified for humans.
One thing about parenting, there’s always somebody telling you that you’re doing it wrong. Mothers-in-law are good at that, along with best-selling books like “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”. This new book by Amy Chua will make even the strictest parents feel like they’re too soft on their kids.
“Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is basically saying that Asian mothers are more successful parents because they push their kids harder. Amy Chua cheerfully recounts the way she pushed her two daughters to succeed in school by hectoring them constantly to study harder, telling them they couldn't bring home anything less than an "A" in every subject, and not allowing them to have sleepovers, play dates, or extra-curricular activities besides music lessons.
This is a mother who sat in on all her daughters’ music lessons, took notes, and then monitored their practices at home to make sure they were doing what the teacher instructed them to do. Her infamous quote in this regard is that American mothers think one hour of practice is enough. “For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.”
Predictably, this book has generated a storm of protest from guilt-ridden American parents, some of whom resent the implication that they are unconcerned with their children's welfare, that they're absentee moms, and that their children will never succeed in life because they don't know how to work hard.
My wife and I have discussed the book, and so have our four children. The consensus among our kids is that they think Amy Chua is crazy; no surprise there.
We do wonder sometimes if we were too easy on our children, and Amy's strict parenting style seems a reproach when you have kids who were not first in their class in any subject, and who we could barely get to practice 30 minutes on their musical instruments, much less three hours.
There are no instruction manuals when you bring a baby home from the hospital, and although we tried to read the latest books about parenting, when our kids were young we were mostly too busy and too tired to do much reading. We made it up on the fly, based on our own common sense and what we learned from our parents growing up. We made mistakes, in varying degrees, but we also had some successes.
Compared to Amy Chua we were soft American parents. We let the kids have cell phones, sleepovers, and play sports. We did not call them "garbage" (a quote from Amy's book) if they brought home a "B". We did not monitor every minute of their lives.
The jury is still out, but at this point it looks like we raised four kids who are reasonably smart and successful in school, and who have a good deal of self-confidence. They are reasonably independent, and they have good values. Nobody has played the violin at Carnegie Hall, and we have no Ivy League grads so far, but they also haven't made any bad judgments or gone down all the many treacherous paths they could have taken, and people tell us they are all personable, confident, polite, and fun to be around.
The Chinese style of parenting is not for everyone. It's not even for many Chinese, if you believe the reports in the Wall Street Journal that say even in China some parents are trying to loosen their grip, because the government is trying to encourage more creativity and less conformity and rote learning. It seems that maybe the Tiger style of mothering is too harsh, and creates children who grow up to be too reliant on outside forces to motivate them, instead of being motivated from within.
The one thing I know is that the Tiger style of parenting will be a fad for awhile, but then someone else will come along with another approach, and parents will all think they're doing it wrong if they don't follow that approach. The pendulum swings back and forth all the time. I've learned from parenting four kids that there is no template for raising each child, and that what works for one child may not work for his or her sibling. No matter how many parenting books you read, parenting is still a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants endeavor.
Tiger mothering may work for tigers, but it has to be modified for humans.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Do We Need A National Day Of Unplugging?
By John McDonnell
So now we have National Day of Unplugging. It was started last year by Reboot, a group of Jewish professional people who decided that we all spend too much time online, and we need a day to unplug ourselves from our technology and re-experience the wonder of the real world.
According to their Sabbath Manifesto, this year the National Day of Unplugging is from sundown Friday March 4 till sundown Saturday March 5. The folks at Reboot are encouraging everyone to “put down your cell phone, sign out of email, stop your Facebook and Twitter updates”.
It’s not a bad idea, to spend that 24 hours doing something humans have been doing for millennia -- hang out and talk, listen, connect with each other in person.
Here’s a thought, though: How many people have you interacted with in the last month only through online means? It’s probably a lot more than you actually spoke to in person, or even on the phone. And how many people do you interact with online that you haven’t met in person in the last year? Or ever? I have friends and relatives I haven’t spoken to or seen in years, but I communicate with them on a regular basis online. I have classmates from high school I have seen only once or twice at reunions in over 30 years, but we share emails at least once a month.
And how about the people we’ve never met? There’s an English fellow I met 15 years ago on an online message board and I have never seen his picture or heard his voice, but I’ve had enough meaningful conversations with him that I consider him a friend. By contrast I have friends and family members who don’t use email, Facebook or Twitter, and consequently I interact with them less than with this guy from England whom I’ve never met in person.
Whenever I hear people say that technology is isolating us I think of my grandfather. He lived and worked his whole life in Philadelphia, mostly within the confines of an area that was about three miles in diameter. He didn’t have a phone in his house till the 1950s, so he couldn’t call his daughter who moved to Michigan when she got married, or his son who went to college in Maryland. If a friend or family member moved out of the neighborhood, he lost touch with them unless they came back for a visit.
Sure, he had more face-to-face contact with his neighbors than most of us do today. He didn’t have a screen separating him from authentic human interaction. But he also lived in a smaller world than I do. He couldn’t text message or email his kids the way I can, couldn’t send pictures instantly to a daughter in Europe the way I have, and had no chance of meeting or interacting with people who lived in other countries, the way I can.
Whose world was bigger?
Who was more isolated?
I think National Day of Unplugging is a good idea if it makes people get away from their screens for a bit and go outside for a walk, or take a friend out to lunch. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sitting in front of a screen for too long can give you eyestrain, and it’s bad for the circulation. And technology will never satisfy the simple human need for touching and eye contact. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that technology is helping us all to stay connected in ways that our parents and grandparents could not have dreamed of. Our world is so much bigger and more interesting than it was before, and technology is helping us to meet people and stay in touch with them on a much deeper level than at any time in history.
So, unplug for a day, sure.
But then plug back in again!
So now we have National Day of Unplugging. It was started last year by Reboot, a group of Jewish professional people who decided that we all spend too much time online, and we need a day to unplug ourselves from our technology and re-experience the wonder of the real world.
According to their Sabbath Manifesto, this year the National Day of Unplugging is from sundown Friday March 4 till sundown Saturday March 5. The folks at Reboot are encouraging everyone to “put down your cell phone, sign out of email, stop your Facebook and Twitter updates”.
It’s not a bad idea, to spend that 24 hours doing something humans have been doing for millennia -- hang out and talk, listen, connect with each other in person.
Here’s a thought, though: How many people have you interacted with in the last month only through online means? It’s probably a lot more than you actually spoke to in person, or even on the phone. And how many people do you interact with online that you haven’t met in person in the last year? Or ever? I have friends and relatives I haven’t spoken to or seen in years, but I communicate with them on a regular basis online. I have classmates from high school I have seen only once or twice at reunions in over 30 years, but we share emails at least once a month.
And how about the people we’ve never met? There’s an English fellow I met 15 years ago on an online message board and I have never seen his picture or heard his voice, but I’ve had enough meaningful conversations with him that I consider him a friend. By contrast I have friends and family members who don’t use email, Facebook or Twitter, and consequently I interact with them less than with this guy from England whom I’ve never met in person.
Whenever I hear people say that technology is isolating us I think of my grandfather. He lived and worked his whole life in Philadelphia, mostly within the confines of an area that was about three miles in diameter. He didn’t have a phone in his house till the 1950s, so he couldn’t call his daughter who moved to Michigan when she got married, or his son who went to college in Maryland. If a friend or family member moved out of the neighborhood, he lost touch with them unless they came back for a visit.
Sure, he had more face-to-face contact with his neighbors than most of us do today. He didn’t have a screen separating him from authentic human interaction. But he also lived in a smaller world than I do. He couldn’t text message or email his kids the way I can, couldn’t send pictures instantly to a daughter in Europe the way I have, and had no chance of meeting or interacting with people who lived in other countries, the way I can.
Whose world was bigger?
Who was more isolated?
I think National Day of Unplugging is a good idea if it makes people get away from their screens for a bit and go outside for a walk, or take a friend out to lunch. There’s nothing wrong with that. Sitting in front of a screen for too long can give you eyestrain, and it’s bad for the circulation. And technology will never satisfy the simple human need for touching and eye contact. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that technology is helping us all to stay connected in ways that our parents and grandparents could not have dreamed of. Our world is so much bigger and more interesting than it was before, and technology is helping us to meet people and stay in touch with them on a much deeper level than at any time in history.
So, unplug for a day, sure.
But then plug back in again!
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The King's Speech And The Art Of Storytelling
By John McDonnell
The other night I saw The King’s Speech, a film about Britain’s King George VI, who had a crippling stammer and overcame it in the 1920s and 30s with the help of an Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue.
You know how when you see a good movie you can’t stop thinking about it, sometimes for days afterward? The King’s Speech has stayed with me for days now, and I keep replaying its scenes in my mind.
And it’s making me realize that I haven’t had that experience in the last several years of moviegoing. It’s been a long time since a movie has had that kind of impact on me.
Why is that? The King’s Speech is an old-fashioned movie, one that emphasizes character development over everything else. There are long scenes with only two characters, King George and the speech therapist, simply talking.
There are no car crashes, alien invasions, cartoon sequences, explosions, earthquakes, or monsters. There are no superheroes. You don’t have to put on 3-D glasses to watch this film.
It’s just people talking, revealing themselves through their conversation, interacting, showing (or trying to hide) their feelings, and doing what humans do every day.
Not much in the slam-bang department, but it’s still powerful stuff.
The reason is that through the course of the film we get to know these characters intimately. We see what their fears are, what motivates them, how they react to stress, what they love, what they hope for. The King, played by Colin Firth, shows his vulnerability, his fear of public speaking, and with every stammering word out of his mouth we see the pain of a troubled childhood.
Lionel Logue, played masterfully by Geoffrey Bush, is a man struggling with his own insecurities, while also trying to make sense of the fact that the King of England has come to him, a commoner from Australia, to ask for help.
These simple but profound scenes are rare in movies today. With all the explosions and special effects going on in movies, there is very little room for character development. It’s almost as if the moviemakers want to keep our eyes busy with a lot of flashing lights so we won’t realize their characters are cardboard-thin and their stories have no coherence or logic.
Or maybe it’s just that directors are like kids playing with toys. They get so wrapped up in all the new technology they forget to tell a story.
Humans have been telling stories to each other for thousands of years, and it’s not hard to do. You simply need to present some rounded, three dimensional characters and give them a conflict to work out. The characters can’t be cardboard cutouts moving against a background of computer graphics. They need to have rough edges. The good guys have to show their weaknesses. The bad guys have to show a common humanity, not simply be cartoonishly bad all the time. The story has to grow out of character conflicts, and you can’t have a superhero come in and rescue them at the end.
I mean, really, for all the hype about last year’s Avatar, did it stay with you for more than a few hours after you saw it? I loved the alien world that was presented in that movie, but I forgot about it an hour after I left the theater. The characters and their problems just didn’t seem real to me, didn’t grab me. The King’s Speech, however, was made for a tenth of the price of Avatar, and had not a single special effect, yet I’ve been thinking about it all week.
For my money, that’s a real story.
The other night I saw The King’s Speech, a film about Britain’s King George VI, who had a crippling stammer and overcame it in the 1920s and 30s with the help of an Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue.
You know how when you see a good movie you can’t stop thinking about it, sometimes for days afterward? The King’s Speech has stayed with me for days now, and I keep replaying its scenes in my mind.
And it’s making me realize that I haven’t had that experience in the last several years of moviegoing. It’s been a long time since a movie has had that kind of impact on me.
Why is that? The King’s Speech is an old-fashioned movie, one that emphasizes character development over everything else. There are long scenes with only two characters, King George and the speech therapist, simply talking.
There are no car crashes, alien invasions, cartoon sequences, explosions, earthquakes, or monsters. There are no superheroes. You don’t have to put on 3-D glasses to watch this film.
It’s just people talking, revealing themselves through their conversation, interacting, showing (or trying to hide) their feelings, and doing what humans do every day.
Not much in the slam-bang department, but it’s still powerful stuff.
The reason is that through the course of the film we get to know these characters intimately. We see what their fears are, what motivates them, how they react to stress, what they love, what they hope for. The King, played by Colin Firth, shows his vulnerability, his fear of public speaking, and with every stammering word out of his mouth we see the pain of a troubled childhood.
Lionel Logue, played masterfully by Geoffrey Bush, is a man struggling with his own insecurities, while also trying to make sense of the fact that the King of England has come to him, a commoner from Australia, to ask for help.
These simple but profound scenes are rare in movies today. With all the explosions and special effects going on in movies, there is very little room for character development. It’s almost as if the moviemakers want to keep our eyes busy with a lot of flashing lights so we won’t realize their characters are cardboard-thin and their stories have no coherence or logic.
Or maybe it’s just that directors are like kids playing with toys. They get so wrapped up in all the new technology they forget to tell a story.
Humans have been telling stories to each other for thousands of years, and it’s not hard to do. You simply need to present some rounded, three dimensional characters and give them a conflict to work out. The characters can’t be cardboard cutouts moving against a background of computer graphics. They need to have rough edges. The good guys have to show their weaknesses. The bad guys have to show a common humanity, not simply be cartoonishly bad all the time. The story has to grow out of character conflicts, and you can’t have a superhero come in and rescue them at the end.
I mean, really, for all the hype about last year’s Avatar, did it stay with you for more than a few hours after you saw it? I loved the alien world that was presented in that movie, but I forgot about it an hour after I left the theater. The characters and their problems just didn’t seem real to me, didn’t grab me. The King’s Speech, however, was made for a tenth of the price of Avatar, and had not a single special effect, yet I’ve been thinking about it all week.
For my money, that’s a real story.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
10 New Year's Resolutions You Can Break Without Feeling Guilty
By John McDonnell
Most of us start the new year with a lot of big plans for changing our lives, but we lose momentum around January 6 and by the end of the month our resolutions are a distant memory -- and that’s when the guilt starts.
Here is a list of resolutions for people who are good at breaking resolutions. They’re resolutions that you won’t feel guilty about breaking; in fact, you should feel terrific about breaking these ones.
THE END
Most of us start the new year with a lot of big plans for changing our lives, but we lose momentum around January 6 and by the end of the month our resolutions are a distant memory -- and that’s when the guilt starts.
Here is a list of resolutions for people who are good at breaking resolutions. They’re resolutions that you won’t feel guilty about breaking; in fact, you should feel terrific about breaking these ones.
- Get less sleep. Who needs sleep? It’s a waste of time, and we could spend that time on video games, social networking, email, TV, and any of a dozen other activities that give us the buzz that makes us forget how tired we are. Besides, if we needed so much sleep anyway, why did God create caffeine?
- Eat more fast food. Vegetables are boring. Just pound down another burger, fries, and supersize soda and let your digestive system handle the problem of trying to get something nutritious out of all that junk.
- Avoid exercise at all costs. There is absolutely no reason to walk when you can get in a car and ride somewhere, even if it’s to the end of the driveway to pick up the mail. Gym memberships are expensive, and all those sweaty bodies are no fun to be around.
- Do not talk to people unless absolutely necessary. People are stupid and they have nothing interesting to say. There is no point in interacting with them unless you have a screen in front of you.
- Spend more time online. The real world is a place where there are rainy days, demanding bosses, crabby co-workers, and family members who expect things from you just because you’re related to them. It’s much more fun to live in the virtual world where you can be a superhero or hot babe, and conquer worlds with the click of a mouse. Of course, it’s all fantasy, but what’s wrong with that?
- Do not ever read anything longer than a text message again. What’s the point of books and newspapers anyway? All those words, and really, what are they saying? Stupid stuff about politics and history, science, morality. And poetry -- what’s up with that? Why can’t those people just say what they mean?
- Run your credit card up to the max. There are so many shiny toys to buy, and if you have a credit card why not use it? Saving money is for sissies. When the credit card bill comes in pay the minimum amount, because, hey, you need the extra money to buy more stuff.
- Do not practice random acts of kindness. There is no reason to smile at strangers, compliment your co-workers, pat someone on the back, or do anything that might bring happiness to someone’s life. People are just obstacles in your way each day, and it’s a waste of time to take your headphones off and engage with them.
- Do not have a positive attitude. Life sucks and there is no reason to pretty it up. If something bad can happen it will; that’s just keeping it real.
- Do not ever ask Big Questions. There’s too much manufactured excitement every minute of the day to ask questions like: Why am I here? What am I doing with my life? Am I being the best that I can be? Those kind of questions take too much time off the merry-go-round to answer, and it’s easier to just flit from one attention-grabbing item to the next as the day goes by.
THE END
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The "Love Handle" Approach To Language
By John McDonnell
If you’ve ever called the fat around your waist “love handles” or ever said a friend was “downsized” when he was fired, you’ve used euphemisms. We all do it, according to Ralph Keyes, author of “Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms”. I heard Ralph interviewed on NPR the other day, and I want to buy his book because I love the way we humans try to pretty up the unpleasant things in our lives by using fancy words for them.
I have a graduate degree in English, so I’ve read a lot of poetry, and I’m on good terms with simile and metaphor and the way language can be used to convey reality in many creative ways. I love euphemisms because they show verbal creativity and humor (although there’s a fair bit of hypocrisy in there too).
Like saying “powder room” for toilet.
Or “misspeak” for lie.
Or how about “correctional facility” for prison? “Big-boned” or “full-figured” for fat?
The military is famous for its euphemisms. Here are a few:
“wet work” for assassination;
“collateral damage” for civilian deaths;
“friendly fire” for soldiers killed by their own comrades;
and “soft targets” for humans.
One of my favorite military euphemisms is, “strategic movement to the rear” for retreat.
Corporations can be every bit as euphemistic as the military, though. Besides “downsizing”, modern corporate speak has given us “called on the carpet” for being disciplined, “outsourcing” for sending work abroad, “a market correction” for a drastic plunge in stock prices, a “merger” for a corporate takeover, “negative cash flow” for losing money, and “right-sizing” for laying people off. Actually, the list of corporate euphemisms for laying off employees would take up more space than the Bible.
And then there are the so-called dirty words. George Carlin had a famous comedy routine about the “Seven Dirty Words” you couldn’t say on the air in the U.S. These are words that used to be taboo in polite company, so people would use euphemisms for them. Of course, today the taboos are breaking down, and you can hear many of the Seven Dirty Words on TV and radio every day.
Carlin called euphemisms “soft language”. He didn’t like them, because he thought that euphemisms were an attempt to deny reality. He had a whole riff on why “shell shock” is a better term than “post-traumatic stress disorder”, because it’s “simple, honest, direct” language.
It’s true that we sometimes use euphemisms to avoid naming unpleasant things. We soften the reality with a euphemism so we don’t have to think about the nasty stuff underneath.
As long as humans exist, however, the situation won’t change. We have an innate ability to see fish eggs and call it caviar, or cow dung and. . . well, you get the idea.
What’s your favorite euphemism?
If you’ve ever called the fat around your waist “love handles” or ever said a friend was “downsized” when he was fired, you’ve used euphemisms. We all do it, according to Ralph Keyes, author of “Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms”. I heard Ralph interviewed on NPR the other day, and I want to buy his book because I love the way we humans try to pretty up the unpleasant things in our lives by using fancy words for them.
I have a graduate degree in English, so I’ve read a lot of poetry, and I’m on good terms with simile and metaphor and the way language can be used to convey reality in many creative ways. I love euphemisms because they show verbal creativity and humor (although there’s a fair bit of hypocrisy in there too).
Like saying “powder room” for toilet.
Or “misspeak” for lie.
Or how about “correctional facility” for prison? “Big-boned” or “full-figured” for fat?
The military is famous for its euphemisms. Here are a few:
“wet work” for assassination;
“collateral damage” for civilian deaths;
“friendly fire” for soldiers killed by their own comrades;
and “soft targets” for humans.
One of my favorite military euphemisms is, “strategic movement to the rear” for retreat.
Corporations can be every bit as euphemistic as the military, though. Besides “downsizing”, modern corporate speak has given us “called on the carpet” for being disciplined, “outsourcing” for sending work abroad, “a market correction” for a drastic plunge in stock prices, a “merger” for a corporate takeover, “negative cash flow” for losing money, and “right-sizing” for laying people off. Actually, the list of corporate euphemisms for laying off employees would take up more space than the Bible.
And then there are the so-called dirty words. George Carlin had a famous comedy routine about the “Seven Dirty Words” you couldn’t say on the air in the U.S. These are words that used to be taboo in polite company, so people would use euphemisms for them. Of course, today the taboos are breaking down, and you can hear many of the Seven Dirty Words on TV and radio every day.
Carlin called euphemisms “soft language”. He didn’t like them, because he thought that euphemisms were an attempt to deny reality. He had a whole riff on why “shell shock” is a better term than “post-traumatic stress disorder”, because it’s “simple, honest, direct” language.
It’s true that we sometimes use euphemisms to avoid naming unpleasant things. We soften the reality with a euphemism so we don’t have to think about the nasty stuff underneath.
As long as humans exist, however, the situation won’t change. We have an innate ability to see fish eggs and call it caviar, or cow dung and. . . well, you get the idea.
What’s your favorite euphemism?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Jersey Boys And Me
By John McDonnell
I went to see Jersey Boys last weekend, and it put me in my Birthday Funk.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the show. It’s a terrific show, about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
It’s just that the Four Seasons’ music was the background for a lot of my youth, and hearing all those great old songs like “Walk Like A Man”, “Sherry”, “Dawn", “Rag Doll”, and others made me realize how long it’s been since I was a teenager.
And with a birthday coming in a few days, that time of my life is fast disappearing into the rearview mirror.
This is an annual event for me, a one-day funk that comes a week before my birthday. It’s like a 24-hour emotional virus, and when my birthday comes I’m happy again, but for that one day a gray cloud appears and spreads shadows over my thoughts.
For that one day I look at my life and see only the broken dreams, missed opportunities, lost chances, all the things I should have done or could have done, the times when I should have said or done something that -- drumroll here -- Would Have Made Everything Different.
I run the movie of my life and stop it at critical moments, then sit there in the darkened theater of my mind and say, “Do you remember this, John? The time when you didn’t work hard enough/speak up/follow your heart/know your priorities/play by the rules/grab for the gusto or any of a hundred other things that you should have done but didn’t? How do you think your life might have turned out if you’d acted differently back then? Usually, the answer is, “You would have been a smashing success and everything you touched would be golden. Forever.”
It’s like in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Past comes and harangues old Scrooge with thoughts of what his life could have been if he’d taken a different path.
Jersey Boys spurred some of this thinking because along with those great old songs is a story of four boys from the hardscrabble part of New Jersey who started out with a dream of making it big in the music business in the 1950s, and after a lot of struggle and hard work, they made it to the top. They had the same dreams as millions of other young people of their own or any generation, but the difference is they made their dreams come true.
It’s inspirational, but it also makes anyone facing a birthday after the age of 40 wonder, “Could that have been me?”. When you’re in your 20s you can still tell yourself you’re laying the groundwork to achieve your youthful dreams. In your 30s reality is starting to intrude, but you think, “I’m just a late bloomer. I’ll come into my own any day now.”
When 40 rolls around you start looking up biographies of people, like Colonel Sanders, who became successful in middle age or later. When you get past 50, though, the “late bloomer” line starts to wear thin.
It’s enough to make you get very blue when you have another birthday approaching.
But I know the drill, because it happens every year. I’ll be in this funk for a day, maybe two, and then I’ll snap out of it. I’ll realize that I haven’t done too badly, come to think of it. I’m heading toward my third decade of a happy marriage, and I have four kids who love me and laugh at my jokes. That alone is worth more than a hit Broadway show in my book. My career? Well, it isn’t Jersey Boys level, but it’s perking along, and every day I get to do work that I enjoy -- how many people can say that?
And hey, if you pay attention to what happened between the songs of Jersey Boys, you realize that it wasn’t all applause and hit songs for the Four Seasons -- all those years of touring took a heavy toll on their families. There are failed marriages, jealousy, heartache, and broken dreams in that show, singing counterpoint to all those hit numbers.
So maybe I’ll tell the Ghost of Christmas Past to bug off, and don’t come back till next year.
And remember the lyrics to “Let’s Hang On”:
I went to see Jersey Boys last weekend, and it put me in my Birthday Funk.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the show. It’s a terrific show, about Franki Valli and the Four Seasons, and I’d recommend it to anyone.
It’s just that the Four Seasons’ music was the background for a lot of my youth, and hearing all those great old songs like “Walk Like A Man”, “Sherry”, “Dawn", “Rag Doll”, and others made me realize how long it’s been since I was a teenager.
And with a birthday coming in a few days, that time of my life is fast disappearing into the rearview mirror.
This is an annual event for me, a one-day funk that comes a week before my birthday. It’s like a 24-hour emotional virus, and when my birthday comes I’m happy again, but for that one day a gray cloud appears and spreads shadows over my thoughts.
For that one day I look at my life and see only the broken dreams, missed opportunities, lost chances, all the things I should have done or could have done, the times when I should have said or done something that -- drumroll here -- Would Have Made Everything Different.
I run the movie of my life and stop it at critical moments, then sit there in the darkened theater of my mind and say, “Do you remember this, John? The time when you didn’t work hard enough/speak up/follow your heart/know your priorities/play by the rules/grab for the gusto or any of a hundred other things that you should have done but didn’t? How do you think your life might have turned out if you’d acted differently back then? Usually, the answer is, “You would have been a smashing success and everything you touched would be golden. Forever.”
It’s like in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Past comes and harangues old Scrooge with thoughts of what his life could have been if he’d taken a different path.
Jersey Boys spurred some of this thinking because along with those great old songs is a story of four boys from the hardscrabble part of New Jersey who started out with a dream of making it big in the music business in the 1950s, and after a lot of struggle and hard work, they made it to the top. They had the same dreams as millions of other young people of their own or any generation, but the difference is they made their dreams come true.
It’s inspirational, but it also makes anyone facing a birthday after the age of 40 wonder, “Could that have been me?”. When you’re in your 20s you can still tell yourself you’re laying the groundwork to achieve your youthful dreams. In your 30s reality is starting to intrude, but you think, “I’m just a late bloomer. I’ll come into my own any day now.”
When 40 rolls around you start looking up biographies of people, like Colonel Sanders, who became successful in middle age or later. When you get past 50, though, the “late bloomer” line starts to wear thin.
It’s enough to make you get very blue when you have another birthday approaching.
But I know the drill, because it happens every year. I’ll be in this funk for a day, maybe two, and then I’ll snap out of it. I’ll realize that I haven’t done too badly, come to think of it. I’m heading toward my third decade of a happy marriage, and I have four kids who love me and laugh at my jokes. That alone is worth more than a hit Broadway show in my book. My career? Well, it isn’t Jersey Boys level, but it’s perking along, and every day I get to do work that I enjoy -- how many people can say that?
And hey, if you pay attention to what happened between the songs of Jersey Boys, you realize that it wasn’t all applause and hit songs for the Four Seasons -- all those years of touring took a heavy toll on their families. There are failed marriages, jealousy, heartache, and broken dreams in that show, singing counterpoint to all those hit numbers.
So maybe I’ll tell the Ghost of Christmas Past to bug off, and don’t come back till next year.
And remember the lyrics to “Let’s Hang On”:
“Let’s hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl we’ve got a lot,
Got a lot of love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on,
To what we’ve got.”
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