You know the Little Drummer Boy; pa rum pum pum pum?
We all know how this stuff happens: Somebody decides that your delicate sensibilities can’t stand some word or some image and manages to keep it from you. That somebody is called a bowdlerizer. A bowdlerizer is not exactly a censor. He decrees what you should hear or see. He is someone who would disinfect things for you. God forbid you should worry your pretty little heads.
What could be more pure-of-heart than to keep from our sweet youngsters what is vile and indelicate. Make no mistake, what is vile and indelicate should be kept from your ears.
Just be aware that he is a human too with a complex set of motives and anxieties like the rest of us. Sometimes the stuff that gets cleaned up says more about the cleaner than about the dainty ears of children. Sometimes she would rather you didn’t giggle during the Christmas Pageant when you hear the word “ass”. Okay, so “donkey” would be acceptable but doesn’t fit into the songs metric scheme.
So the word gets changed to ‘lamb’. How very adorable. Except now the line has been leached of its meaning. From the very earliest crèches or manger scenes depicting the birth of The Christ Child, an ox and an ass have been present based on the words of the prophet Isaiah:
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.
and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.
Much has been made of this over the last couple millennia. Ox is kosher; donkey meat is forbidden. Many scholars have taken the verse to foretell the Jew/Gentile debate of the early church. Others have contrasted the gentle ox with the obdurate ass. The juxtaposition has also been used in quite judgmental terms toward Jewry. In any case: You got your baby Jesus, you got your ox and you got your ass.
This is a rather mild example to be sure. After all, what harm does it do? No real harm has been done except you get to be ever-so-slightly cheated of a carol’s richness. This is in the name of foregoing a few giggles at the Christmas Pageant.
Political talking points are cut from the same cloth. A talking point serves up a sanitary, unambiguous and easily repeatable bit of humbug for the home folks to toss about at dinner. Talking points usually involve a tautology (self-referential reasoning) in the hope that enough repetitions will crowd out whatever nuance might otherwise exist. Some recent examples are:
We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
We’re giving tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.
Here again, a couple of mild examples that, in the scheme no things, don’t amount to much. This is not a partisan post. The partisan ones will curl you hair.
In the first instance, we are avoiding the word “debt” because at $14 trillion there is no power on earth capable of denting it in our lifetimes. It is merely lip service to an ideology that long ago has been stripped of its political muscle.
In the second instance, we make reference to something that happened eight years ago. The question at hand is whether we should raise taxes on one group or another. And besides, taxes are levied on earnings not net worth.
As bad as talking points are, the outright vending of ignorance ranks just below the bald-faced lie. Senators from South Carolina and Arizona used words like “sacrilegious” and “disrespectful” to describe their obligation to work during the week between Christmas and New Years. That sort of thing is way beyond cant. Maybe he just misspoke, but the plain text of the junior Senator from Arizona suggests that the very day (December 15) was Christmas.
So what? Senators bloviate – that’s what we expect of them. They’re giving you what you need to hear without much in the way of thought or care. The Senator was bowdlerizing for your benefit.
All the polls show it: the electorate has a low opinion of Congress. That low opinion cuts both ways. Congress has low opinion of the electorate.
I’m just sayin’,
Poppy
www.poppylbs.blogspot.com
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