Super Sunday, and how grammar can be "empowering"
Super Bowl Sunday (this week) has become an important secular holiday. It’s a time for friends and family to gather, either at someone’s home or what beer commercials used to call “your friendly neighborhood tavern.” There is so much less home hospitality than there was when I was a kid.
Women today are too busy to keep their houses as perfect as their mothers and grandmothers did. But today’s busy women are still embarrassed to have anyone see their homes looking less together than their mothers' did. Getting ready for company can take two stressful days, or overtime for the housecleaner, and who needs it?
Working women don’t join one another for coffee in the kitchen during their mid-morning breaks. They join each other in the office or store break room.
Sometimes, the Super Bowl is a good football game. My favorite of all time was the Patriots’ first win over a heavily favored St, Louis Cardinal offensive machine. (The Colt-Giant overtime championship, commonly known as The Greatest Game Ever Played, was not a Super Bowl. The first Super Bowl was played nearly 10 years later. )
Then, there was what I call the “Dewey-Beats-Truman” Super Bowl between the Minnesota Vikings and the Oakland Raiders. (On Election Night, 1948, the Chicago Tribune published a banner headline that said “Dewey Beats Truman.” Next morning, a grinning, victorious Harry Truman was photographed holding that paper. )
For two weeks before that Super Bowl, the pre-game news was all about how the Vikings’ “Purple People Eater Defense” would marinate the Raiders. After the Vikings got clobbered, when the information was useless, the media reported that Minnesota’s star defensive end Carl Eller had switched from his natural right end position to left. He had lost so much weight to stay quick that he’d have no chance against the Raiders giant tackle Gene Upshaw. Years later, we learned that Eller lost all that weight because he “snorted the 50-yard-line” at practice every day.
For two weeks, thousands of journalists on expense accounts party like crazy, and file a story. Usually, there is no news, and when there is, like the Eller story, the teams keep it secret. Officials lead reporters around to “press availabilities,” where the players sit surrounded by packs of journalists. There’s no opportunity for interaction, just formal Q&A with cliche answers, and no follow-up questions. Paul LaFond, a sports writer I worked with, told me he covered five Super Bowls, and you can file your story every day without leaving your room. Every morning, a stack of press releases is waiting at your door.
The football in the Super Bowl is uneven, but the commercials are always outstanding. The argument is whether it’s good business to spend so much money on a one-time commercial with super-high production values, or to spread the money around, and deliver your message more frequently. The other argument is whether people remember the super-creative commercial and forget the product. I don’t remember what my favorite Super Bowl commercial was selling. It showed a mucho-macho bunch of classic Hollywood cowboys trying to herd CATS on an old-time cattle drive. The narration was as hilarious as the visual images,
I was surprised when a friend called my blog about grammar "empowering," She said she always butchers the English language, and feels stupid or illitarate. She did not go to college, and her boyfriend, who did, is always correcting her.
My blog told her she was not alone, and much of the problem starts with the way grammar is taught by K-12 English teachers, who don't understand it themselves. They teach senseless rules that have nothing to do with the language we speak, many of which are not even rules. They don't make writing clearer or more precise.
These "English teacher rules" only matter in compositions students write for English class. If a student breaks one, the teachers scribble on it with red ink and deduct points from the student's grade. They also matter if someone remembers a rule from English class, and decides you're stupid if you break it.
Millions of people freeze when they try to write. They're too afraid of breaking a rule to say what's on their minds. That's what they learned in school: it doesn't matter what you say as long as you don't break a rule. Except in formal business or academic composition, where you have to go back and correct the grammar after you've written your ideas down, just say what's in your heart or on your mind.
