Your English Course

Your English Course

Mr. Teacher

            Welcome to your English course!  Together we will explore a full set of complex literary works, each of which stands on its own but also forms part of a larger conversation, as you will see.  Or perhaps you won’t.  It’s one of those things that’s kind of difficult to pull off, actually.

We will write extensively and in a variety of ways.  This is a year to attempt to refine your own voice on paper.  I mean this, and I really hope it happens, but I can’t make any promises.  You’re going to have to do most of it yourself, and it mostly depends on where you’re starting from.  If you’ve been reading all your life, you’re probably going to do fine (which is pretty unfair, I know).  If you’ve never been much of a reader, I hope you’ll start.  I can give you a list of good books that may annoy your peers and/or parents.  I wish I could inspire everyone to read and think and love it, but I’m not exactly Robin Williams here.

In this class we will explore how literature makes meaning, and also how we make meaning in our own writing.  The idea is that an encounter with really excellent writing could actually spark something for you.  It’s all graded, though.  Sorry about that. 

Junior year is an exciting time, but also a stressful one.  You’ll probably develop some awful habits.  If you hide them well enough, I might not notice; I have a lot on my mind.  Come and talk to me if you have questions, problems, or just want to chat.  But I don’t really want to hear about the icky or illegal parts.  That’s what your Art teacher is for.

Texts:

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises          

An alcoholic’s book about boozy, self-destructive drinkers whose lives are imploding because of alcohol.  We will use it to talk about bullfighting.

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

An extraordinary account of 1930s Southern gothic girlhood via alcohol.

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

A dead body decomposes and talks about it.  I’ll bet you ten bucks that Faulkner can’t even remember writing it.

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

A minority writer, because sober.  I will notice if you merely rent the movie about the bandaged guy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

A fable of obscene wealth, lies, pretensions, and freedom from consequences.  Sound familiar?  Also, alcohol.

Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hamlet is a linguistically challenging and philosophically difficult dramatic study in the superiority of Kenneth Branagh over Mel Gibson.

…as well as a variety of short stories and poems photocopied in violation of somebody’s copyright.

Course Expectations:

            Your Notebook and Homework:  You must keep a notebook in English.  Stop laughing.  You should write down everything I say more or less exactly as I say it.  This will help you to present it slightly differently in your own essays.

Writing will happen to you throughout the year.  There will be written responses to reading, in-class writing practice, short written homework assignments, and longer critical essays.  The longest assignment will be something close to five pages, or maybe four with creative margins.  Don’t panic.  You probably think this is a lot, but have you ever written a one-hundred-ten-page college thesis?  Have you?  I didn’t think so.  Punk.

            All writing for this class must be produced on a restored 1930s-era Underwood typewriter, the kind used by the all of the writers on our syllabus, possibly excluding Shakespeare.  The Underwood is a sturdy and reliable machine capable of standing up to all manner of author eccentricities, peccadilloes, vices, and obscenities.  During the Second World War, the Underwood Typewriter Company made M1 Carbines for the War Department.  What did your iMac ever do to kill Nazis?

Reading:  I will expect you to do all of the reading for each class before the time it is due.  Actually, that’s the last thing I expect.  Couldn’t you at least try?

Every sentence you don’t read is a stinging tear I weep for the future.

            Speaking and listening are of utmost importance in your English work and in the world beyond.  In class discussions you will practice articulating your ideas while also developing the attentive listening skills.  This will allow you in the future to, you know, be proactive or leverage your competencies or think outside the box or something.  Whatever.

A Note on Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is defined as the copying of another’s work, the use of a single essay for more than one course, misrepresentation of another’s work as your own, copying and pasting from Wikipedia, copying and pasting from Elizabeth, buying a fifty-dollar paper online the night before the assignment is due, dipping into the essay file at your older brother’s fraternity, having your girlfriend do your homework, copying and pasting from that guy’s website, digging through my recycling bin for discarded papers, having Mom “edit” your final draft, failing to adequately cite your sources, making up imaginary sources, failing to adequately cite your imaginary sources, or similar tricks designed to give the appearance that you wrote, did, or know something you haven’t, didn’t, or couldn’t possibly.  In a world of spin, faulty logic, and shoddy attribution, being honest and accurate about your relationship to your sources is more important than ever.  You’re not fooling anyone anyway.

Assessment Guide:  The Rubric

Grade A (90-100)

Reading:

* Demonstrates a thorough understanding of the complexity of literary texts.  Willingness to deal with both (or more) sides of ambiguity.  Congratulations!  You will never win an election.

* Embarrasses teacher (who didn’t quite do the rereading this year) with recollection of textual facts.

* Can tell the business end of a metaphor.

Writing:

* An A paper can be graded in under ten minutes.  This means more to me than you can possibly imagine.

Studentship:

* Active participant in class discussion.  Saves classmates trouble.

* May I write you a college recommendation letter?  Perhaps a supplemental?

* Popular with faculty.  Unpopular with peers.

Grade B (80-89)

Reading:

* Demonstrates coherent and adequate understanding of literary texts.

* Doesn’t always call a memoir a novel.

* Excellent recall of principal characters and their associated reductive themes.

Writing:

* Adequate focus present or nearby.

* Margins not ridiculous.

* Uses SAT-prep words, sometimes appropriately.

* Double-digit sentences.

* Adequately disguises summary as analysis.

Studentship:

* Nods appreciatively.

* Pretty much almost always prepared with book and assignments.

* Knows place.

Grade C (70-79)

Reading:

* Bookmarks SparkNotes.

* Demonstrates a thorough understanding of book cover.

* Confuses main character with that actress in the miniseries.

* Connections are disjointed, irrelevant, fragmented, desperate, indicative, unsupported, and sad.

Writing:

* Broad generalizations drawn from a variety of contexts.

* Wild guesses still within ballpark.

* Regurgitation of other’s points and/or lunch.

* Forgets to save.

Studentship:

* Probably stoned.

Grade D: (60-69)

Reading:

* Possibly a little.

Writing:

* The kind of thing I wish I could help.

* Really I do, but I hardly know where to start.

* Maybe it’s my fault?

Studentship:

* Thank you for playing.

Grade F: (59 and below)

* Believe me, I’m not looking forward to the parent conference any more than you are.

Succinct Rebuttal Theater, Episode 1

I do not Tweet, chiefly because I cannot square it with my guiding tenet question, “What Would Abraham Lincoln Do?” While the Gettysburg Address contains about two hundred eighty words, by one hundred forty characters we have not yet reached “equality.” In fact, we haven’t even noticed the War.

At the same time, though, I’m attracted to the idea of word limits. I have a tendency to go on, particularly when I have nothing to say. I suppose I keep thinking I’ll find something. The discipline imposed by a solid ceiling has its attractions, and the G.A. shows the power that can be generated by just ten sentences.

Thus today’s exercise, the first episode of Succinct Rebuttal Theater. The idea is to propose a claim (not patently absurd, for the sake of fairness) and then to craft a solid and meaningful rebuttal in the space of fewer than two hundred words. Who knows? Development of skills for the task might eventually prove useful on message boards, at picket lines, or in church.

Topic: Evolution

Claim: “Human life is too complex to have evolved by chance. How could everything about Earth and biology just happen to be so perfect for us?”

Succinct Rebuttal: Think about your family tree: generation after generation of people meeting, mating, and raising children to do the same in their turn, all of it leading to you. Take away just one of those people and your unique particularity disappears. One accident, one missed acquaintance, one worse disease, one misplaced sperm in umpteen thousand years and your place in genealogy would be occupied by somebody else. It stands to reason, then, that every choice and action made by all those countless ancestors must have involved not chance or choice but predetermined intelligent design. Otherwise, the odds against you existing at all are simply astronomical.

But of course it isn’t that way, is it? You exist at the foot of your family tree by chance, not choice. You’re what came of those events and possibilities, just as human life is what resulted from the mutations, selections, and behaviors of a billion years. Given what we know of the robustness of life, the likelihood of humanity occurring (or something like humanity, which we would call humanity if we were it) is actually rather good. The universe is very large. The odds are astronomical, but only because there burn so many stars.

Markings and Corrections Guide

Markings and Corrections from Your English Teacher

Because You Need Serious Correction

You’ll see comments of various kinds on most writing that you get back from me.  The purpose of each is to improve your writing.  This document is a guide to interpreting those corrections and using them to your advantage.  Also, somebody has to know these things. 

“affect”/“effect”

These two words sound a lot alike but mean different things.  This is one of the tricks played by language on people who don’t read enough.  I think it does this on purpose.

“Affect” is a verb:  The plight of the soulful, suffering English teacher affected her strongly.

“Effect” is a noun:  The main effect of alcohol is senior prom.

(Note that there is an uncommon noun use of “affect” and an even rarer verb use of “effect,” but you will never need them unless you go to graduate school.  Do you really want to do that?)

agreement

A clause’s subject and verb must agree in number:  The dog likes cheese. Dogs like cheese.

Pronouns should also agree with their antecedents:

            Incorrect:  A person needs their enemies. (This is a very common mistake.)

Correct:  A person needs her enemies.

Other than that, nobody really has to agree about anything.  If they did, we wouldn’t have literature.

analysis

(See “A Few Notes on Literary Analysis” in your coursepack.  Then write a five-page essay exploring only arbitrarily chosen and extremely picky details from that article out of context. )

awkward (or awk.)

A sentence is awkward when something about its structure isn’t right.  Maybe you have piled up too many prepositional phrases, or have strung together too many “because” clauses, or have created a clunky phrase, or something else.  Maybe you’re just at a certain age where your body does uncomfortable things, and you have feelings that scare you and that you don’t understand.  In any case, an awkward sentence is difficult to follow for reasons of grammar or clarity.  It should be rewritten, usually in a simpler form.  Also, try not to embarrass yourself in front of your peers.

block quotations

When a certain passage would take more than three lines to quote, format it as a block quotation.

           

A block quotation is single-spaced even when the rest of your writing is double-spaced, which means you have to consider whether the quotation is really going as far as you think it is towards filling the page.  The whole block is indented half an inch on both sides (not just the left), so that’s a plus.  Block quotations don’t need quotation marks, and they look stupid in italics.  Employment of a block quotation implies that you have read the passage.

character description  (see also summary)

See analysis above.  If you are only describing characters and their behavior, you are not writing an academic argument.  You are merely doing literature.

citation

When you make use of an outside source, you must cite that source in your work.  This will deflect blame away from yourself.  The most basic citation format is to list all works cited at the end of your essay while referring to the source and the page number using parenthetical citation.  For example:

It has been argued that Shakespeare’s critique of power in Measure for Measure implies a sort of Foucauldian archaeology of power avant-la-lettre (Ernie 134).  Others say, “Meh” (Bert 12).

Having introduced your reader to these sources, you may walk away with clean hands, confident that the issue is no longer your problem.

clause (see also phrase)

A full grammar lesson on clauses is beyond the reach of this handout.  (You’re welcome.)  In brief, a clause is a group of words containing a verb and its subject.  In this sense, all clauses are equal.  Some sentences contain more than one clause, and some of these may be dependent (or subordinate) to other clauses.  Thus, some clauses are more equal than others.

cliché

A cliché is a phrase, idea, or set of words that have been overused to the point of meaninglessness.  Use of clichés will make you sound like a television.

            Some common clichés:  grow as a person, across the board, think outside the box, accept herself for who she is, be proactive, fair and balanced.

comma usage

The comma is a bitch-goddess beholden only to its own laws.

            Commas are used between independent clauses (before the coordinating conjunction):

                        The day passes slowly under a hot sun, and at night the weasels come.

                        I had never seen such a huge mob, but I was impressed with their manners.

            Commas are used after introductory clauses and phrases:

                        When the shit hits the fan, act surprised.  (Introductory clause)

                        Happily, there was really no reason to be in class at all.  (Introductory adverb)

                        During the day, we never seem to worry about the undead.  (Introductory phrase)

            Commas separate items in a series:

                        Larry’s voice was high, reedy, and despondent.

            Commas are used to set off non-essential clauses (see “which”/“that”/“who” below).

Unnecessary commas:

            Do not put a comma between a subject and verb or a verb and its object.

                        Incorrect:  The boys on the bus[,] always make such a noise.

            Do not put a comma between the elements of a compound subject or compound verb:

                        Incorrect:  The flag bearer[,] and the sergeant both went down in cannon smoke.

                        Incorrect:  We ran as fast as we could[,] and sidestepped the controversy.

comma splice (or splice or c.s.)

A comma splice is an error that occurs when you try to join two independent clauses using only a comma.  Who do you think you are, Marcel Proust?  A comma splice is like botched plastic surgery.

The soldiers raised their rifles, they uttered a fearful cry.

There are several ways to correct this kind of error:

            Make it two sentences.  The soldiers raised their rifles.  They uttered a (etc.).

            Use a semicolon:  The soldiers raised their rifles; they uttered a fearful (etc).

            Choose a conjunction:  The soldiers raised their rifles, and they uttered a (etc.).

                                    The soldiers raised their rifles, but they uttered a fearful (etc.).

                                    The soldiers uttered a fearful cry as they raised their rifles.   

coordinating conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions are the small words that can join independent clauses together, producing a compound sentence.  The coordinating conjunctions are For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So, and WTF.

double-space

If you submit work that is single-spaced, your instructor will not have room to make comments or corrections.  Think about that for a minute.

fragment (or sentence fragment or frag.)

A fragment occurs when a sentence is incomplete as written.  This usually means that it lacks a core independent clause.  It’s like you’re not even trying.

            Whenever I feel afraid.  Because that’s the way I like it.  Like rain on your wedding day.

Sometimes it is just one clause that is fragmentary (e.g. if it lacks a subject or verb).

literary present tense

When discussing literature, you should base your discussion in present tense.  The temptation is to use past tense since you are pretending that you have read the book, but this causes confusion in certain cases.  Literary present reminds you that the book will still be around long after you are gone and forgotten.

            Incorrect:  Romeo almost found Juliet in time, but he was too late.

            Correct:  Romeo almost finds Juliet in time, but he is too late.

numbers

You should spell out any number than can be expressed in a word or two (e.g. “sixteen,” “ninety-seven,” “twelve million”).  All numbers are actually words.  Algebra is grammar.  Geometry is like type-setting or something.

passive voice (or passive)

Passive voice sentence construction obscures agency; that is, it hides the true agent of the action described.  Without practice, passive voice sounds stilted and dishonest.  Done well, it can deflect responsibility even under oath.

            Mistakes were made.  (Who made them?)  The car was wrecked.  (Who wrecked it?)

            The girls were being taught to do anything that made them look good.  (By whom?)

The opposite of passive voice is active voice, which foregrounds a clearly-discernible subject.  This should usually be someone else.

plot summary

If you must summarize plot in your essay, be sure to do the reading first.

pronoun antecedent

There’s nobody in the whole damn world who can’t be replaced by a pronoun.

quotation usage

A quotation included within one’s own writing is called an embedded quotation.  A quotation long enough to take more than three lines should be set off as a block quotation.  Never quote unless you have something to say not just about what the passage says but also about how it says it.

            The great thing about quotations is that someone has already said something interesting about what you’re talking about.  The not-so-great thing is that it wasn’t you.

(See also citation.)

repetition

Repetition is like redundancy, but more obnoxious and less subtle.  It is the Frat Boy of errors.

run-on

A run-on sentence is an error that occurs when two otherwise complete and unattached sentences are not properly set off by the condom of punctuation.

            Incorrect:  The open sea is my best friend without it I would be lost on land.

            Correct:  The open sea is my best friend; without it I would be lost on land.

            Correct:  The open sea is my best friend, for without it I would be lost on land.

“shall”/“will”

According to Garner, the will/shall distinction is both pretentious and illusory. It is unnecessary in American English.  Thus, one says "I will crush this puny planet," and never "I shall crush this puny planet."

“thee”

Even worse than the subjunctive.  Don’t go there unless you’re a Quaker.  It also works for sonnets, but only if you’re dead.

“their”/“there”/“they’re”

“Their” is possessive.  The bears dragged their hapless victim away into the murk.

“There” is an adverb referring to “that location” (as opposed to “here,” which refers to “this location.”)

            Put it there and never bring it here again.

“They’re” is a contraction of “they are.”  “They’re at it again,” she said ruefully.

Mixing these up tells your reader that you don’t care enough to read your own writing.  I’m sorry I even assigned it.

theme

Literary authors generally return to certain key issues, problems, conflicts, or other matters in their work.  Often this is because they can’t afford therapy.  Whenever you identify such a main concern in a text, you have identified a theme.  Most analytical writing about literature focuses on themes, but not just their identification.  Equally important is how the author explores the theme in the work.

            When asked about theme, think this way:  what is the author asking us to see or think about differently in this work, how are they doing it, and why does it matter?  Answer this question, and then subordinate that issue to whatever particular axe it is that you have to grind.

thesis and thesis statement

Your thesis is what you are trying to prove, argue, or otherwise explore in your writing.  A thesis statement is a single, clear, distinctive sentence that states what this thesis is.  It usually occurs in your introduction paragraph, often (but not always) as the last sentence of that paragraph.

            The plural of thesis is theses, which rhymes with feces.

titles (of your essay)

Imagine that you pick up a magazine article with no title or a book with no cover.  Like, say, you picked it out of the dumpster behind a bookstore.  Have you ever done this?  I have done this.

titles (of books, etc.)

Titles of books, movies, magazines, albums, and other objects published on their own are underlined or italicized (but never both):  Gone with the Wind, Romeo and Juliet, Europe Central, Newsweek.

Titles of stories, poems, essays, songs, and anything published within something larger get quotation marks:  “The Hollow Men,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “How To Tell a True War Story,” “Hey Jude.”
Sometimes books out of a dumpster don’t have visible titles, but I think I’ve mentioned this already.

transition

Writing must flow logically.  When one sentence follows another with no apparent connection to what was just being discussed, there is a problem with transitions.  Marking a transition can be as simple as including an appropriate phrase (e.g. thus, however, therefore, on the other hand, etc.) or as complex as alluding to a point made much earlier in the writing.  One way to describe writing that lacks good transitions is to say that it is “jumpy.”  Another way is to say that it is “awful.”

unnecessary

It’s always tempting to include intensifiers, personal anecdotes, and even small amounts of cash folded into your writing, but these are seldom appropriate to straightforward argument and analysis.  When I mark something as unnecessary, try to rewrite the sentence without it.  The following example sentences are all stronger with the bracketed portions simply removed.

            [I have argued in this essay that] Shakespeare’s women are often crippled by words.

            No one [that I know of] has ever said that Shakespeare’s women are simple.

                        (Even better:)  Shakespeare’s women are not simple.

            [We have to ask ourselves,] what does it mean to be a strong female character?

Sometimes whole sentences will be marked “unnecessary.”  This is often a nice way of saying that they are “boring.”

vague

I mark words as vague when they are so general or universally applicable as to say almost nothing.  Common problem words here include interesting, unique, special, and such.  Absolutely everything is “unique” when you think about it.  Instead of saying that something is “interesting,” come right out and tell us what is so interesting about it.  The opposite of vague is precise.  In writing, precision is a twin to clarity, while vagueness is the mutant Siamese doppelganger of bullshit.

verb tense

Jumping around with verb tense is confusing.  Keep it consistent.  One day at a time.  Or, er, yesterday.

“who”/“whom”

“Who” is for subjects, just as “he” and “she” are for subjects.

“Whom” is for objects,” just as “him” and “her” are for objects.

            Who wrote the letter?  (She wrote the letter?)

            You gave the book to whom?  (You gave the book to her?)

            We gave a party last year, and who came to it?

            Whom do you love?

“Whom” is also for people who want to sound like English teachers or certain British movie stars.  William Shakespeare used it.  He also coined the word “pedant.”

Dear Conservative Friend (Obama Hatred)

Dear Conservative Friend,

Okay. I get it. You don’t like the President.

That’s all right—I didn’t like the last one. I thought he was a Doofus who disgraced the office by his lack of qualifications, his know-nothing approach to complex issues, and the Rovian nastiness with which his administration governed. I disagreed with most (not all) of his policies. Also, as a lover of the English language and of clear argument, I felt like tearing my ears off every time he opened his mouth.

I did not, however, pretend that he was not the President. I did not pretend that he was part of a conspiracy to replace America with a dictatorship. I never believed that that he was—merely by virtue of not being of my political persuasion—somehow allied with forces of Cosmic Evil. I understood that, while he was wrong on all counts, he believed that he was right, and that he was working sincerely by the light of his convictions. I disliked him, but I did not demonize him. I understood that democracy means having to be in the opposition party from time to time.

I gather that the situation is not analogous on your side of the aisle.

I love American democracy more than anything. I love that we can disagree vociferously without killing each other or getting hauled away by the secret police. What disturbs me these days, though, is the paranoid unreality of the fantasies that come up again and again in conservative opposition to Obama. Correct me if I’m wrong, but these are some of the ludicrous positions that seem to be getting pretty close to mainstream on your side:

1) Barack Obama is not a real American, having been born in Kenya and falsified his birth records, believing (as a young black man in the 1970s) that he had an excellent chance of thereby becoming President.

2) Obama is a terrorist, raised in Moscow or Cairo or some secret Viet Minh training camp later leased to Al Qaeda as part of the Global Anti-American Conspiracy

3) Obama has broken the theology barrier and is somehow simultaneously a radical Muslim AND a militant atheist.

4) Obama is an ignorant street kid who parlayed a job as a community organizer (whatever that is) into political capital. The scary part is how he so effectively disguised his lack of real political knowledge by becoming a state legislator, U.S. Senator, and Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

5) Obama is a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist, whose every policy initiative is part of a diabolical scheme to replace American capitalism with Central Planning and Workers’ Soviets before November of 2010. And now he wants all these "Czars," just like the Bolsheviks.

6) Obama is a murderer, planning to kill elderly, flu-ridden Americans in order to, I don’t know, produce more Soylent Green or make voodoo bowls from their skulls or something.

7) Obama is a racist, burning with hatred of everything and everyone white. Of course he was raised by a loving white mother and grandparents, and most of his administration is about as pasty as I am, but The Blacks are ungrateful that way.

8) Obama is a demagogue, relishing every chance to stage Nuremberg-style rallies for his bloodthirsty minions (who routinely attend these rallies armed to the teeth, calling for the impeachment and punishment of Republican politicians and their supporters). No President in U.S. history has ever gone so far as to insist on press conferences, addresses to Congress, or videos advising students to stay in school.

9) Obama is a fascist, cleverly disguising the usual warning signs of fascism (such as extreme militarism and jingoistic identification of a minority enemy) behind an elaborate smokescreen of traditional pluralism, Great Society rhetoric, social liberalism, and business as usual D.C. deal-making. He was even legally elected, just like Hitler!

10) When, in a centuries-long functioning democracy, one’s own political party passes for a time into a minority role, the best and most reasonable response is secession.

Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but the alterations are meant to keep things light. Taken straight, the implications of belief in these positions is just too embarrassing to contemplate. They remind me of the Limbaugh-inspired allegations of a few years back that American liberals (what with their Civil/Gay/Women's Rights and their Darwin-toting secularism) ultimately long for a world governed by Wahhabist Sharia Law. These fantasies have a serious purpose, however, which is to imaginatively delegitimize the Obama presidency—not just to oppose it politically, but to insist that it is not real.

So my central question is this: what kind of politics requires such elaborate fantasies or conspiracy and persecution? What’s so hard about simply admitting that the other party won, and that, while you hate their policies, they pursue those policies out of a sincere desire for the good rather than out of some diabolical commitment to Evil for the sake of Evil? What's so hard about getting down to the business of politics without encouraging your angriest fringe towards patriotic assassination?

And what, by the way, is so scary about attending a town hall meeting without bringing a rifle? Are you afraid that you’re going to be Socialized right there in the parking lot?

I won’t belabor each of these points in detail, but let me address at least one of them: the “Birther” complaint that Obama isn’t even an American citizen.

The facts are right there: the Hawaii birth certificate, numerous corroborating documents, everything. Every reporter, politician, and grad student in America has seen them, and they didn’t even have to travel to Hawaii: American universities have a habit of keeping microfilm copies of every newspaper they can get their hands on, including Honolulu’s major papers, both of which ran routine birth announcements for Obama in 1961. Those microfilms have been getting a good dust-off lately, I’m sure. The dust itself suggests that, if this be conspiracy, you’ve got to give it credit for getting a very early and prescient start.

But I think there’s an even better argument to be made against the birther fantasy: the fact that no candidate gets far along towards political success without all parties (political and otherwise) vetting that candidate’s background to the utmost degree. Consider this: the birther rumors got started as early as 2007. Do you believe that the GOP didn’t put every effort into uncovering whatever evidence might have derailed an Obama candidacy at the first possible moment? For that matter, do you think the Bush-Cheney Justice Department didn’t perform routine and not-so-routine background checks on Obama as early as possible? Is it plausible that the FBI missed the signs of the Kenyan conspiracy, and that we had to wait for the intrepid guesswork geniuses of the internet to bring us the truth only after the election?

Perhaps I am wrong, and the positions I’ve listed above aren’t really in the mainstream of GOP thought. Indeed, I hope I am wrong. But it’s very disturbing to see a Republican congressman afraid to admit on the record, for fear of offending his base, that he believes Barack Obama is legally an American citizen. (Just such a spectacle was the prompt for this writing, in fact.)

Even more distressing is the Republican Party's response to the violence and hatred that spills out at the edges of the anti-Obama movement. Where is the decency that should lead office-holding conservative politicians, at least, to call shame on supporters urging the murder of the President? Why the GOP embrace of Assassination Chic?

Let’s make a deal: if (after you rise up and stop Obama’s Red Army when it finally tries to put white Christians in FEMA concentration camps) it is shown that Obama really was the deep-mole sleeper-agent foreign element that you present him to be, or even if he is just shown to be a genuine full-on America-hater, I will own up to my mistake. I will vote for your heroes. I will attend to whatever pundits you like, and I will gladly embrace my re-education. After all, if Obama is really that evil, I can only thank you for stopping him and saving my country.

If, however, Obama finishes out his term without trying to destroy America through Marxist-Fascist-Racist insurrection, will you promise to think twice before demonizing the opposition in terms that make working democracy impossible? Will you promise to try admitting that, while liberals may be wrong, they are not actually sworn agents of Hitler, Stalin, or Satan? Will you promise to take your political opponents seriously as, at least, fellow Americans?

That would be enough. Thanks.

Paul Roberts