School Reform and Jumbo Shrimp

I must be getting old.  I just read the CNN reader’s poll for best TV in 2013.  I am aghast.  It appears to me we have lost all our ability to think critically and discern reality from fantasy.  Where is George Carlin when we really need him?  I recall my hysterical laughter the first time I heard his routine on jumbo shrimp and the inherent cognitive dissonance of such a term.  His ability to identify oxymorons remains unsurpassed: military intelligence, holy war, death benefits, hot water heater, etc.)  Today there apparently remains no end to our ability to butcher our language.  Here are my current irritants.

Reality TV.  Never has a phrase been developed that more captures cognitive dissonance than the phrase reality TV.  Unless you are viewing a documentary, the Weather Channel’s coverage of a hurricane, or live coverage of a high speed police chase you are not watching reality on TV.  You are watching a fantasy production on TV.  Worse, each of these so-called reality shows seems to celebrate the lowest end of human accomplishment and wallow in joy at the rejection of some of the participants.  Why would we want to watch such an event?  It is beyond me.  If you enjoy quality dancing then dancing with the stars is not the show to watch.  If you enjoy quality singing, then American Idol, The Voice, etc. are not the shows to watch.  If you enjoy watching the pain of rejection and defeat, then tune in to a sporting event which comes much closer to reality TV than reality TV.  As for me, TV, books, movies, and video games are wonderful escapes from reality.  Each of these platforms has the ability to transport us to other places, times, clear fictions, reflections and fake blood.  If reality TV is in fact reality then I suffer from delusional thinking.  There is enough competition, rejection, and poor performance in my reality that I feel no need to seek it out on TV.  And until Robert Redford, Jennifer Aniston, Tom Cruise, Helen Mirren, Tom Sellick, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halley Berry, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Lawrence and/or Zoey Saldana appear on the show, the very title “dancing with the stars” is false advertising.

Obamacare.  The Affordable Health Care Act passed in the first two years of President Obama’s first term is an incredible piece of legislation.  The law makes patient health care more important than insurance company profit.  It eliminates the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage based on previous conditions, it expands coverage to dependent children, etc., etc.  It creates a national health care exchange forcing insurance companies to bid down health care.  On and on.  Yes, the act requires everyone to get health care coverage much as we currently require everyone to have automobile insurance and to wear seat belts.  To refer to this law as Obamacare is another twist on the use of the English language.  The act has nothing to do with the health care of the President.  The act has nothing to do with support and/or providing care to the President.  To call the law “Obamacare” is clearly a slur that has no meat, and yet is almost universally used.  If we can stomach this term, why not refer to the GOP fiscal policy as Millionairecare, or the Common Core as Pearsoncare, or vouchers and charters as Wealthycare, or all the proposed laws regarding Christmas, homosexuality, teaching religion in schools, female reproductive rights, etc, etc. as Christiancare.  This act is not about Obama.  It is about Americans who could not get nor could they afford health care.  If we want a nickname we should call it Everyonecare.

Selfie.  The Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year is equally confusing to me.  I understand that a selfie is a digital self-portrait taken typically at arm’s length.  I am not sure of all the boundaries of the word.  If I put a camera on a tripod, set a timer, and retreat to sit in front of a selected backdrop, is that a photo or a selfie?  If I take a picture of you with my cell phone is that a Youie?  Is the word so limited as to only apply to tilted, poorly lit, non formatted self photos?  If so, why not have a more specific term like, Vainey, or Tackie, or Shortarmshot?  Can there by definition be a candid self portrait?  Don’t I always know when I will click the shutter?  So, is a selfie my best foot forward?  The reflection I want the world to see of me?  If so, are commercial photographers worried?  If not, why would we do such a thing to ourselves?  Is it only because we are simply burning erasable mega pixels and we do not have to pay for film or development anymore?  I remain confused that we engage in such behavior, and if so that we share it.  Do we share it with anyone who does not know how we look?  Why would we do that?  Once we share a selfie, once seen by others, has a selfie automatically lost its claim to the term?  What shall we call a shared selfie?  A Groupie?  Is it OK to tag myself in a shared selfie?  How narcissistic can we actually become?  I am so confused.  More so because we could have chosen a word of the year that no one really understands like hashtag or twerking.

There are more.  One cannot buy a wall at Wal-Mart nor a garage at a garage sale, happy hour is always more than 60 minutes, livestock are raised to be killed, and why when there are only 3 possible times during a game to actually kick a ball do we call the sport football?  We should call it Tackle.  Likewise Dribble, and Pitch.

I have long irritated friends who would email me and ask things like, “Do you know so-and-so’s email address?” to which I would simply reply, “Yes.”  We become more obscure and obfuscating the more words and phrases we invent.  We should seek clarity.  Especially as our communications become instant and everyone has abandoned pen pals which required time and thought and reflection and effort. The same is not true of Instagrams, Tweets and Facebook which only require gizmos, not thought.

Which leads me to school reform.  Really?  Reform the school?  “Reform” implies changing or improving something that is wrong, something that is immoral, something that is corrupt.  Do we believe schools are in need of reform?  If so, what part of schools is immoral and corrupt?  I assume we are not talking brick and mortar, sidewalks, cafeterias and gymnasiums, though we might be in some cases.  Surely we are not talking about children.  They do not come to us corrupt.  If they become corrupt it is at the hands of the adults in the culture wherein they are raised, not the school.  Are we talking teachers, aides, principals?  No one tolerates corrupt adult practices in public schools.  When a teacher engages in inappropriate behavior with a student it makes the headlines.  When an administrator steals money it makes the headlines.  It makes the headlines because it is, quite frankly, so rare.  Fender benders and weekly burglaries do not make headlines as we have grown so accustomed to those multiple, immoral and harmful acts that they appear in list format somewhere buried in the bowels of the paper.  No, corrupt school people make headlines.   

So what must be reformed?  I would argue two things:  it is “school reformers” who are attempting to make profit from public tax dollars at the expense of kids and are therefore the corrupt component of schools.  Or, we have it backwards.  We really meant reform school, not school reform, for children who cannot behave.  As with jumbo shrimp, there really is not a school in America in need of reform or the elimination of corruption and greed any more than there is a whale-sized shrimp somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.  In fact, a jumbo shrimp is more likely than the need for school reform.  And it is in the private sector that we continue to discover immoral acts.  The market has no sense of morality.  I could have been comfortable with “school improvement” on the assumption that all organizations can improve and that the only real improvement is inside-out, not outside-in.  But no.  Reformers want school reform outside-in.  They will fight to the death to ensure the government does not reform their private practices any where near the extent they wish to the government to control public schools, especially for their own monetary gain.  For me, this is the ultimate oxymoron and we should be clear about that with the multiple morons who promote such.

Please pass the cocktail sauce, not for my cocktail (which would make sense), but for my 2 inch jumbo shrimp.