Few Dare Speak Name Of This Crime

by Michael Graham – Boston Herald
Lake Superior State University just released its “32nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.” Among the verbal bilge LSSU would like to dump overboard: “awesome” (for general overuse); “we’re pregnant” (biologically nonsensical) and the trendy combined celebrity names, like “Brangelina” and “Tomkat” (“so lame and pathetic that it’s ‘lamethetic,’ ” says one writer). Well, I can handle lame and can tolerate pathetic. What really twists my linguistic knickers is inaccuracy. So I was delighted when this year’s list also urged a ban on “undocumented alien,” a phrase comparable to describing drug dealers as “undocumented pharmacists.” People who migrate to America are aliens. If they come here without our consent, that’s called “illegal.” Illegal. Alien. What’s the problem? …

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Few Dare Speak Name Of This Crime
by Michael Graham – Boston Herald

Lake Superior State University just released its “32nd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.” Among the verbal bilge LSSU would like to dump overboard: “awesome” (for general overuse); “we’re pregnant” (biologically nonsensical) and the trendy combined celebrity names, like “Brangelina” and “Tomkat” (“so lame and pathetic that it’s ‘lamethetic,’ ” says one writer).

Well, I can handle lame and can tolerate pathetic. What really twists my linguistic knickers is inaccuracy. So I was delighted when this year’s list also urged a ban on “undocumented alien,” a phrase comparable to describing drug dealers as “undocumented pharmacists.”

People who migrate to America are aliens. If they come here without our consent, that’s called “illegal.”

Illegal. Alien. What’s the problem?

You’ll have to ask the pointy heads of the Modern Language Association. The MLA – the language mullahs of the American left – just issued a fatwa banishing “illegal alien” in favor of “undocumented worker.” Calling people who break the law “illegal,” the MLA insists, would be a crime.

The problem with “undocumented worker” is that at least 30 percent of illegals don’t have jobs, on or off the books. As for “undocumented,” what’s the point?

Is the MLA trying to say that illegals aren’t breaking the law, the dog just ate their green card?

An illegal alien’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t have his documents handy, but rather that he never bothered to get them in the first place.

“Undocumented worker” is a nonsense phrase, like “rap music” or “redneck culture.” And yet the MLA, the premier language authority of liberal academia, has ruled that the only acceptable way to discuss people who enter America illegally is to lie about them.

Liberals literally cannot handle the truth.

If you find the transformation of “illegal aliens” into “undocumented workers” baffling, what to make of the following headline from the Arizona Star in September: “Entrant-Rights Rally Falls Short Of Mark.”

That’s right. Not “immigrants,” not “aliens.” Entrants.

You might ask, what the heck is an “entrant” and what “rights” does he have? An entrant rights activist will be happy to explain that every person in the world has the right to “enter” America. Upon entering, they have the rights to the full and immediate benefits of citizenship.

If this sounds radical, remember that this is essentially the position of President Bush, Sen. John McCain and the new Democrat-controlled Congress. Their first bipartisan act is likely to be rewarding 12 million or so illegal

imm . . . undocumented wor . . . unauthorized . . . you-know-who’s with amnesty. While foreigners politely applying to enter the U.S. are forced to wait in their home countries, McCain and Co. would let our lucky “entrants” stay here, keep jobs they’ve stolen from Americans, avoid back taxes and bring family members in from other lands.

McCain insists that “amnesty” is the wrong word to describe his plan. He prefers the other phrase that means rewarding people for breaking the law.

Not being a member of the MLA or McCain ’08, I’d call it “sheer stupidity.” I suffer from a limited vocabulary.

Michael Graham is a talk show host on WTKK 96.9 FM

SOURCE: The Boston Herald

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