FOR Peggy, a tourist from Britain, it’s a headache to find roads according to the street signs.”Early last week, I encountered a noxious piece over at Huffington Post by Frank Luntz who, in case you weren’t aware of it, is personally, directly and almost single-handedly responsible for the ruination of political discourse in this country.
“”I don’t know if the English words under the Chinese characters are telling me the direction because they always confuse me,”" said Peggy who is strolling along Nanjing Donglu.A conscience-less purveyor of rightwing propaganda for the last decade or so, his essay was whining and begging for mercy from Democrats who swept into power in November, urging them to let bygones. “”I can’t relate them to the names of roads on my English map.You see, he doesn’t want to be treated the way he treated others for the last 12 years; he can dish it out, but can’t take it. “”
Tianmu Zhonglu, a road near Shanghai Railway Station, is spelled three different ways on the street signs.(And the comments gave him back some small measure of the scorn and derision he’s been disgorging so freely for so long now…and even provoked a heated response from Big Brad of Bradblog fame.)
While this served to reiterate what pusillanimous maggots Republicans REALLY are, it also exposed the fragile nature of their structure; the modern triumph of marketing over content. Signs that read Tianmu Zhonglu, Tianmu C.Their essential agenda has always been so ruinous that it cannot appeal to people on its own merits; unless you’re among the upper fraction of 1%, it doesn’t have ANY! Consequently, they require dirty tricksters, language polluters like Luntz–plus hatchet men like Turdblossom Rove–to make voters ignore their own best interests and elect GOP candidates. Rd and Tianmu Zhong Rd can be found within several hundreds metres.Think about THAT the next time some hair-puppet on cable tries to insinuate that both parties are somehow equally guilty for this mess we’re in.
Reprehensible as he is, however, Luntz is not the worst offender. Zhong means ‘middle’ or ‘central’ in Chinese.In fact, he’s almost benign compared to someone like, say, Newton Leroy Gingrich. )
“”In an investigation launched by the Shanghai Language Commission last year, we found over 800 road names in Pudong New Area not standard,”" said Zhang Jian, deputy dean of the Journalism and Communications Department of Shanghai International Studies University (SISU).Intelligent, glib and poisonous as a cottonmouth snake, Noot led the verbal race to the bottom back during the administration of Ronald Ray-Gun by challenging the patriotism of Tip O’Neill and other Democrats on the House floor in 1984.
“”I can’t say which translation is the best, but standardization is key, otherwise people will think they are different roads,”" Zhang said.You remember Noot: Claimed the mantle of family values…yet was married three times; told his first wife he was filing for divorce while she was bed-ridden in the hospital; headed up the ambush of Bill Clinton for “”immorality”"…while having an extra-marital affair of his own; went after Jim Wright savagely and personally.
Another thing that confuses Peggy is the phonetic alphabet on Chinese shop signs.THAT Noot.
It was nothing for him to refer to an opponent as a traitor or worse and, by example, he taught the ropes to Coulter, Savage, Malkin and every other maniac in the right’s hate-mongering attack squad.
“”I thought it was English words telling me what was sold in the store, but in the end, I was told it is phonetic alphabet,”" she said pointing to the sign on Shanghai No 1 Provisions Store.He’s a man who could explode into a rabid, foaming rage over wholly imagined liberal misdeeds even while simultaneously decrying the lack of civility in political discourse.
“”I have found a lot of English along the street that I couldn’t understand when I was living in Shanghai,”" said Gaby De Vet, a young woman from the Netherlands.He could pour a gallon of his own special hemlock and arsenic blend into the mix yet still be utterly unable to comprehend why people wouldn’t play nice with him.
Compared with the inconvenience experienced by Peggy and Gaby, Mr Qu’s experience two years ago is one he will always remember.The quintessential hypocrite.
When he sent wedding invitations to his foreign employer, a line of English greeting in the invitation read: Harmonious Union Lusting a Hundred.His 1996 GOPAC memo is what really assured his place as an upper-echelon Republican language polluter.
“”It’s a serious mistake.It listed “”positive”" words with which a candidate could describe his party and himself and “”negative”" words to be use when referring to Democrats and liberals. Lust in the Holy Bible means one of human’s seven original sins,”" said Li Ji’an, assistant professor of SISU.He called them “”powerful;”" I call them deliberately deceptive…loaded.
Though the new couple believed their love would last forever, the word ‘lust’ made them the subject of much laughter.Or lies, depending on context.
The funny thing is that this despicable demagogue’s barely-contained hysteria could sound sensible, even professorial at times…right up until the moment when he revealed his true reality-challenged self by saying something so thoroughly bereft of any trace of sanity that you almost couldn’t believe you’d heard him correctly.
To Zhang Jian, what’s most ridiculous is the Chinglish (Chinese English).His manner was one of studied loquaciousness combined with a nearly unconditional condescension that could never be at a loss for words.
“”The less English they understand, the bolder they are in translation,”" Zhang said.Yeah, he did his share–and maybe somebody else’s–in degrading our dialogue. “”People with less ability for translation always think it’s easy.As a matter of fact, he could easily be considered Patient Zero of the disease that Republicanism has become. They just translate Chinese characters into English words one by one with the help of a dictionary.Noot was there first.
Not far behind him came Rush Hudson Limbaugh III. “”
If you come across a store with a sign that reads “”Sex Shop”" or “”Adult Shop,”" don’t worry, there are no pornographic products sold on the shelf, it is just a store selling sex health-care medicine or appliances.Subjected–one could say indoctrinated–early on to the conservative worldview by being born into a prominent Missouri family with political connections, (His grandfather, Rush I, was ambassador to India during the Eisenhower administration.) he got his start in radio while still in high school under the name “”Rusty Sharpe.”" He ducked the military draft then in force through an “”inoperable pilonidal cyst”" on his hindquarters and flunked out of college…perfect for his chosen career of overbearing media gasbag.
Commercial buildings along the street are not home to offices, but are department stores.Several times over several years he was fired for adding rude political commentary and when he moved to Sacramento, California in 1984, he was an impoverished nobody.