a terrible infectious disease has crossed our border! it's the plague of dumb-ass!

[lolaraincoat]

So of course I am greatly enjoying the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court. But I was also, unkindly, entertained by the NY Times retraction of the wording of a May 19 article about her: they had called her Puerto Rican parents "immigrants." Although it is true that PR remains a colony, not a state, Puerto Ricans are still US citizens (duh.) So calling people who were born there but live in the Bronx "immigrants" makes just precisely as much sense as referring to my Connecticut-dwelling parents as "immigrants" from Michigan, in case you didn't know. I am kind of shocked it took the Times a full week to print the retraction - unless they did it earlier and I missed it?

Well, anyhow, it was entertaining until I noticed that the 6:00 newscast on CBC radio also referred to Sotomayor as the "daughter of immigrant Puerto Ricans." Argh! CBC people, I know they just fired like 800 of you, but could the rest of you please buy a map? It wouldn't have to be a map of the whole world, mind you. Just North America would do.

Comments

[fledgist]

North Americans may be short of maps. I just finished reading an article in Newsweek, in which the writer described her feelings on visting Elmina Castle. I found them pretty conventional. Horrors of slavery. Ancestors passing through Door of No Return. Tears at the thought of what they must have suffered. Looking out over the Indian Ocean (in fact, the Indian Ocean was mentioned twice in the piece).

I phoned a colleague in my department who's led two faculty-student expeditions to Ghana, and told him the above. When he stopped laughing, he wondered if Newsweek had fired all its fact-checkers. I wondered if Ghana had been moved when I wasn't looking.

[lolaraincoat]

Oy gevalt, as my ancestors used to say back in the Olde Country they called Detroit. Oy veh ist mir.

[jakeinhartsel]

And teachers want more money, but then maybe the problem is not the teachers, maybe just maybe it is the parents.

[fledgist]

Or the students who did not pay attention in class.

[jakeinhartsel]

True.

[jakeinhartsel]

More likely with society in general. I know in my 73 years I have seen many, many changes in the attitude of the majority of people.

Such things as seeing an importance in having a degree but not an education.

I read in the paper a couple of days ago that the sale of books is down, but the sale of Romance Books is up.

Jake