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Calling a spade a spade

I’ll get back to more serious blogging in a bit, but it’s been way too busy a day, and I just learned that a quirk in the summer hockey league schedule has me playing games every night this week.  So, instead, here’s some low-hanging fruit that’s been brought to my attention by Eric Wertheimer (professor of American Studies, Arizona State), via Roger Ailes, via World O’Crap.  It’s Peggy Noonan in full gush mode-- about flowers:

“Now I think people who put flowers all over the place are the only geniuses. They know flowers are an unasked-for and essentially unearned bit of beauty given to us perhaps to suggest other, greater beauty to come. They’re in Einstein-land, gardeners, and thinking of eternity. And I thought they were just retards with spades. Anyway, flower people are generous. They make everything look prettier, at no charge and for your enjoyment, even though they’ve never met you. So here’s to flower power, and thank you, London from this American traveler.”

Yep, retards with spades.  Well, everyone is (rightly) all over this bizarrely abusive term for developmentally disabled folks, especially considering how our priggish Peg has reacted when confronted with foul, uncivil things like Paul Wellstone’s funeral.  And then there’s the equally bizarre, dripping condescension at work in the entire passage, disguised (but not well disguised) as effusive praise.  Yes, very well, and as Jamie’s father I have more or less the response you’d expect.  But wait just a minute here.  How do we know what La Noonan meant by “spades”?

I’ll bet dollars to dolphins that Peg wasn’t thinking of Benjy and Luster in The Sound and the Fury-- she doesn’t usually get that literary with us.  Much more likely she was thinking of Peter Sellers in Being There and Dennis Haysbert in Far from Heaven.  (Or maybe a cross between the two, like Ernie Hudson’s character in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle?) Someday we’ll learn that her original sentence read, “And I thought they were just idiots with darkies,” before the dolphins appeared to her and said, “Peg, dear, surely you can be kinder and gentler than that.”

Posted by on 07/05 at 11:17 AM

  1. So now you tell us that you don’t think God has ever commandeered a dolphin. Heathen.

    Posted by Jim E.  on  07/05  at  05:19 PM

  2. Sorry to disappoint you on that score!  I think the original sentence, in re Elian Gonzalez, was “Mr. Reagan would not have dismissed the story of the dolphins as Christian kitsch, but seen it as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God’s creatures had been commanded to protect one of God’s children.” You gotta love the use of “reasonable” there, if you’re a heathen like me.  But wait!  there’s always the possibility that God has commandeered a retard to bring us lovely flowers . . . let’s ask Peg!

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  06:10 AM

  3. That wasn’t even the first time this year Noonan’s used the word “retard.” In her May 25th WSJ column about the politicization of college graduation speeches, Noonan wrote, “I have spoken at three college commencements. Each time I spoke I talked about the students, and the life ahead of them, and the nature of their achievement. I spoke to them about them. I didn’t tell them Jimmy Carter is a retard or Bill Clinton is a pig. It would have been wrong to do that. It would have been boorish.”

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  01:31 PM

  4. Good for Peg for knowing that it would have been boorish!  See, the dolphins do call her to her better self.

    Posted by  on  07/06  at  01:37 PM

  5. Thanks for this, and also for your years-ago article in Harper’s. I’ve been in a number of recent arguments on this usage--you and I are coming from the same place here--and remembered reading “Life As We Know It” when my son Dylan (who has CP and retardation) was about two. At the time, the essay was very helpful in framing some of my thinking. Anyway, my recent discussion brought you to mind, so I googled you.

    Thanks for your work in this area, and best with your various pursuits. 

    Posted by  on  07/13  at  05:58 AM

  6. And thanks for stopping by, Jeff.  Best wishes to Dylan, who must be eleven or twelve by now (and Jamie turns 13 this September)--

    Posted by  on  07/13  at  10:04 AM

  7. yep, he turns twelve next week. made me happy to see the pictures of Jamie on this site. 

    Posted by  on  07/13  at  12:42 PM

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