On music education, Twitter (non-)verification, the English language, abortion, comedians, our tipping culture, and more
Music departments at colleges and universities are facing a big challenge. Well, many of them, but I am thinking of one, in particular: Administrators are demanding classes in hip-hop and other forms of popular music on grounds that classical music is “elitist.” High culture is vulnerable to populism. Vulnerable to demagoguery. When you say that Bach is worthier of study, and tuition fees, than the Pop Star of the Month, you give offense. You offend the populist spirit of the age. Art involves judgment, taste, discrimination. And those things are . . . dicey.
I keep hearing cries of despair from people in the classical-music world. (Usually, those cries are private.) I wonder where we’ll be in ten, twenty years — even five.
• Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, has done away with the verification system. Twitter instituted a verification system so that readers could know who was who. If a guy was saying he was the Pope, for example — was he really the Pope? Twitter’s blue check mark let you know: Yes, he was (or no, he wasn’t).
But this system fell afoul of populism — because Twitter users with blue check marks were “elites,” you see, and Twitter had a caste system, pitting the fancy folk, with their blue check marks, against The People.
The absence of a verification system — a genuine one — makes Twitter ripe for all manner of mischief. Imposters and deceivers abound. But the fancy folk are “owned,” you see. The celebrities are all bent out of shape because they have lost their status symbol, the blue check mark. And who needs verification, anyway? What is “truth,” anyway?
Populism is not always petulant and destructive. It is not always rooted in envy and resentment. But it often is, which is why it needs to be watched and guarded against (like many another ism).
• Speaking of Twitter, I was using it the other day to lodge a complaint — a grievance of my own. (You want grievances? I got ’em. My column, Impromptus, could some days be titled “Grievances.”) “To beg the question” means something. It means “to make an argument that assumes the truth of its conclusion, rather than proving it.” It is a cousin of “circular reasoning.” But people often use “to beg the question” to mean “to prompt the question.”
When I brought up this issue on Twitter, many said, in essence, “You’re not going to get your old, outdated definition. The elitist definition. A language belongs to the people. And the people have decided that ‘to beg the question’ means something else. So, stuff it, Grandpa.”
Okay — but can you give me a new phrase that means what “to beg the question” used to mean? Because that was a very useful phrase to have. And when you deprive people of such phrases and words, you make the language poorer. You shrink it, rather than expand it.
If you’re going to say “international” when you mean “foreign,” we must have another word for “international.” Because “international” — meaning “between nations” — was a good word to have. (So was “foreign.”)
(I addressed this issue in an Impromptus — a Grievances — earlier this month. Golf announcers were saying “international country,” because they could not bring themselves to say — or were not permitted to say — “foreign country.”)
And yet and yet — English is democratic and popular in a way that other languages are not. (France and Spain, as you know, have language academies. Each academy is a guardian of the tongue.) The other day, Shaquille O’Neal said “dismantle-ization.” His fellow commentators — e.g., Charles Barkley — got on him for it. “That’s not a word!” (The noun that goes with the verb “dismantle” is “dismantlement.”) Shaq said something like this: “Yes, it is. If I say it, that means it’s a word.”
I loved that. And there is truth to it. But, you see, Shaq was not making the language poorer. He was not making it smaller. He was expanding it . . .
• Here is a very interesting article in the Washington Post: “Abortion divides 2024 candidates and confounds many within the GOP.” The subheading reads, “Presidential hopefuls have struggled to settle on a position amid warning signs that the party is on the wrong side of public opinion on the issue.” The article is here.
I have some advice, for politicians and others. Ready? Okay. Figure out what you think about abortion, and what the law should be. And then say what you think.
Everything is easier that way. Calculating can be so wearisome. Calculating, calculating, calculating. But what if you lose an election? That’s okay. Life goes on . . .
• The Heritage Foundation — new, if not improved — held one of its nationalist-populist jamborees. Here is what one of its participants — a “Lincoln Fellow” of the new, if not improved, Claremont Institute — had to say:
“Eliminated” — no. Stand strong, conservatives. Or, to borrow a phrase popular today: Stand your ground. Don’t let these nat-pops bully you into submission, or silence. Give them their Trump, their Orbán, their Bannon. You keep your Reagan, your Thatcher, your Buckley.
Here is another (nasty) morsel:
I wonder what the word “virtue” is doing in that name. And the word “American.”
• On to something pleasanter: “Barry Humphries (Dame Edna to You, Possums) Is Dead at 89.” Now, it is not pleasant that Mr. Humphries is dead. But the obit, by Margalit Fox, is delicious. I bet you the comedian would have loved it. Ms. Fox uses the phrase “bewigged, bejeweled, and bejowled” (which puts us in mind of Lorenz Hart: “bewitched, bothered, and bewildered”).
There are some comedians, I think, who are greatly benefited by their looks. They look funny — the audience is prepared to laugh — before they even open their mouths. Buddy Hackett was such a comedian. And Rodney Dangerfield. And Barry Humphries.
You know who loved comedians? Loved and appreciated them? Paul Johnson, the late historian and journalist. (I podcasted with his son Daniel about him a week or so ago: here.) He frequently paid tribute to comedians — because to allow people to laugh in this grim world is a great service.
• Lately, I have been on airplanes. Over the years, I have wanted to tip flight attendants, for service above and beyond. Or for an especially admirable manner. But flight attendants are not permitted to accept tips. Often, out in the world, I find myself tipping employees I don’t especially want to tip. Or who don’t especially deserve to be tipped, in my opinion. I think our whole tipping culture is a bit out of whack . . .
(Fear of not tipping, and fear of undertipping, are afflictions that many of us experience.)
• Thank you for joining me today, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe I could end by recommending a piece — a longish piece, on a topic many of us know well, but that still bears study, comment, and explication. The piece is by Haviv Rettig Gur, the Israeli journalist, and it is titled “The forgotten horrors that hide in the Holocaust’s long, dark shadow.” Go here.
See you soon.
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