The gauntlet of good grammar

Learn how to write English well and you'll soon be able to discern the racist bullies from the mere and generic bullies. Nothing drives a racist crazier and into raging hysteria faster than having their superiority challenged.

Throw down the gauntlet of grammar.

Consider the nastigram sent by someone named James Wasser. I wrote a few articles about the police officer who shot a dog in Hawthorne.

• Viral video incites mob mentality threats of violence
• Police kill dogs: A Tale of Two Cities
• Police shoot, kill dog in Hawthorne

Apparently James Wasser disagrees with what I wrote. Instead of writing in the comments section, he sends me a personal email with the subject line: "youre a horrible writer."

His message? "you write like a child. Ive blocked google results from examiner.com due to your garbage articles."

Just how many errors do you see and does your child compose better emails? I hope your child does compose better emails and has a better understanding of Netiquette, but I'm not sure at what age one learns to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Is that first grade? I admit I sometimes channel my inner five year old. My husband will attest that happens, perhaps too often. 

One's inner child can help with such things as language learning. My Japanese language professor at UCLA told us it was a kindness to correct people's language errors. How could I resist?

Wasser quickly shows that he's really a racist underneath all that lack of sophistication by his reply: "Did you learn the English language as a child in your foreign land? "

Do you think he also uses that quaint phrase "You speak English good" or "You speak really good English" when he attempts to pick up a non-WASPY person for reasons of racist romance?

Language can be a weapon. Learn English well (not good). That will drive the racists into a hysterical rage which will probably leave you and your friends laughing. 

I don't think when people disagree with Leonard Maltin's writing they intimate that English isn't his native language. That also probably never happened to Roger Ebert (except in South Africa where he was speaking and writing American and not English).

When I was learning to debate in Japanese, we were told to say things like "this is just my opinion" or "that's interesting that you believe that, however" or "that may be so, but" and yet when I was watching an American debate camp the goal seemed to be humiliate your opponent. Isn't that in part like a bully culture? You could see the bully culture at work when people were calling for the death of three to four officers over the shooting by one officer of a dog. That makes so much sense. Ask that the police put more value on the life of an animal such as a dog and yet devaluate the human life. Four human lives for the life of one dog.

Don't threaten just the officer that shot the gun, but the two other officers who were there and didn't make or encourage the decision and then add in the public information officer (Scott Swain). There is nothing like international hysteria. One has to appreciate the thoroughness of the mob when they decided to include the Glendale Police Department and Swain's Art Supply store in Glendale. I guess they thought Los Angeles was a small town and all things Swain must be related? 

Mob violence and death threats are part of a bully culture and could be considered domestic terrorism. We might have done away with the lynch mobs in Los Angeles, but we still have a culture of violence here (e.g. the victory mob violence after a Laker championship) and obviously the culture of violence exists in the world at large and online. 

I believe the bully culture begins with a lack of respect and with attempts to intimidate much in the way James Wasser attempted to intimidate me by insulting me instead of attempting to express his disagreement with my views and respecting mine. Because he so easily indulged in a racist twist, one understands that he is the kind of person who doesn't respect the humanity of people of different color and ethnicity.

The concept of respecting another's opinion isn't just something I learned in my Japanese debate class. I learned it also in a University of California community program for gardeners. We were told that we only spoke for ourselves and we respected everyone's opinion. How would that be so bad or do people really prefer this kind of hysterical rage where one threatens art stores in one city because of an incident in another city?

My mother was right when she said choose your friends well. Wasser, I feel sorry for your friends. As for those much more fortunate than Wasser's friends, when you are troubled by the haters, throw down the gauntlet of good grammar. As people become more hysterically mad, as they begin to foam at the mouth in a racist or sexist rage, the exchange can become more amusing. Once they use the race card, the sexist pig card or the threat of violence bully card, you have won. Take your bow, leave them burning with their ridiculous hate and you can have a good laugh. 

My mother was also right about name calling which in college I learned was argumentum ad hominem or a logical fallacy. Mr. Wasser, like many readers, feels that by attacking me personally he is attacking my arguments. Yet what is there for one to defend or refute when one isn't clear on what Wasser disputes? He wins the argument, he seems to think, by making none? 

So, dear reader, don't get angry and start name-calling. Or if one must be name calling say something interesting like a Dorothy Parker or an Evelyn Waugh. With Wasser, there was nothing left to do but throw down the grammar gauntlet to give a verbal slap in the face of racism.