TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

The Republican Language Problem

ADVERTISEMENT

By TOM TEEPEN Cox News Service

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 15, 2008

I've always accounted it one of my dumber moves to have been just smart enough to figure out how to fishtail through college without taking language courses. I can't tell you how many times and in how many circumstances I have felt the consequent debility. A lot.

But it appears that my old dodge just goes to show these days that I'm a good American.

Barack Obama recently made the observation that we'd benefit as a nation and as individuals if more of us acquired a second language, what with globalization already broad and sure to keep spreading.

He noted that, for example, many Europeans have a working second language and often more than one. He lamented his own shortfall.

I took Obama's comment at the time as simple good sense.

But, wow! You would think Obama had proposed melting down the Statue of Liberty for scrap. Taking the White House condo. Leasing Mickey Mouse to the Taliban.

The New York Times logged some of the reactions.

The Weekly Standard, the political journal of the intellectual right, covered the incident under the headline "Obama Snobbery Watch." Cheeky for a publication founded by the ever-arch William F. Buckley Jr., and in whose offices, you can be sure, are many who speak more than one language.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "This is a country that should speak English." Buff the flag pin, salute for no obvious reason and cue the applause.

Mitt Romney, who didn't win the GOP primaries, touted John McCain, who did, as the candidate who "is going to make sure that America stays America." Romney, by the way, has sometimes been overhead speaking a little French.

We've run across this lingual isolationism before. Republicans four years ago mercilessly mocked the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, for being able to speak French.

When NBC's White House correspondent David Gregory asked French President Jacques Chirac a question in French at Chirac's joint press conference with President Bush in Paris, Bush went all yippie-aye-aee cowboy on the spot and scoffed, "The guy memorizes four words, and he plays like he's intercontinental."

So it's official: The president thinks a journalist is snicker-bait for speaking French to the president of France, in France.

Eager ignorance mongering of the sort stirred up by Obama's off-handed comment is a long-time favorite of politicians playing good ol' boy. It also is the real snobbery. It either assumes Americans are too dim to learn a second language or they shouldn't want to because we're so special the world should come to us hat in hand.

Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT