LOL! I love Garrison Keillor.

>>Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life.

finacially, socially, militarily, morally

Garisen Keeler is a speling eleetest.

When banks started looking (literally) like the corner butcher shop or used car lots with handmade, gaudy fluorescent colored signs on the windows, I knew things were getting a little "strange".

Garrison___Great article!!! People need to realize how our language has become dumbed down and careless. Not too many years ago, people took pride in their correct use of language and speech, also good penmanship instead of unreadable scrawling.

We take great pride in our educational system and think always throwing more money at it will fix everything. However, a little diagramming sentences might help a bit also. Another great development is text-messaging, which just means to get the idea across with a minimum of letters. Computers and calculators tend to give the impression the answer is correct, while a misplaced decimal point or extra zero can be far off, and without a basic sense of mathematics, can be missed.

Our fantastic progress in this country comes with a price, and we need to recognize the pitfalls that lie ahead because of it.

You are as brilliant and relevant as you ever were in the 1980's. Great read, Mr. Keillor.

"A college graduate just sent me an e-mail asking about a band that "one" a contest, wishing she had been "their" to see it."

We here in the Yoonited Statez of Merica are some of the best edjakated peepul in the wurld. Nope we ain't ignert!

One would think that nationalizing from the 1980's forward the curriculum used at the Lake Wobegon School District (where, we recall, "all the children were above average") would have since fixed the spelling problem for a whole American generation. I guess Ronald Reagan must have missed putting that on his "to do" list way back then.

The economy is indeed bad, and in ways that hurts people like me who are trying to do the "right" thing -- save rather than go into debt. Our CD retirement nest egg (about the size of a quail egg) was paying 4.65 percent interest five months ago, but when we added money this time it is paying 2.90 percent.

The frighteningly young bank officer who "rolled over" our account suggested we talk to the financial adviser who might find other "investment options" that might pay more. Not bloody likely. Those are the guys who spouted party line lies to all the folks who are now being required to pay the piper. Besides, if someone knows how to make money turn into more money, why would they be working at a day job instead of magically making their own money grow?

Next time the CD matures I'm seriously considering buying a small safe and putting such savings as I have into gold coins, but the banks will probably collapse before it gets to that, causing my savings to "disappear" like what happened in the early 30s.

Still, as G.K. says, people are optimists. There are pregnant people and new building s going up all over the place, just as if there was going to be a future.

The Decider may not be able to spell but I am so relieved we have our first MBA president during these troubled times. I remember Him a couple years ago touting the success of his grand plan: The Ownership (owership) Society. More 'merikins than ever before "owned" their homes thanks to his leadership on the economy. Wow!

Thanks, Paranoid Pessimist, for reminding us about the assault (mostly on older conservatives) that is embodied in the Bush pressure on Bernanke to lower interest rates paid to individuals on insured bank savings---when they should have been holding steady at the 5.25 of a few months ago or even going upward to fight inflation.

The problem America has with interest rates is all in the corporate "middle", and stems from lack of regulation and erroneous repeal of usery laws. When banks have been borrowing from you at 4.65% to loan on credit cards at 24.65%, there is no real solution in reducing your part to 2.90% and lowering the credit card rates to 22.90%. We'd be far better off limiting the top end but not the bottom.
And some would say, yeah, and if you limit the top end, the easy credit on cards would "dry up." Yes, it would somewhat, and many people now accessing that easy credit and digging themselves into hopeless debt holes from buying stuff they don't need would be spared years of subsequent grief.

I do know that a big ship on "wrong track" can only turn very slowly, but we're decades (since Reagan) overdue.

Loved the article. Since a friend introduced me to the guy she'd listened to for years, I've been a big fan of yours, Garrison Keillor.

We think speech and spelling are so bad now, wait until every one begins using that language as the norm!

gin - everyone thinks bush's "ownership society" meant he wanted us all to own our own homes. What he meant was "You have a problem? It's yours. You own it - you fix it."

Since last August, the financial billionaire brainiacs that have demolished our economy have been given a $800 Billion (and rising) bailout.

I am not a financial brainiac, or a billionaire, but if we had given every homeowner in the country that money instead, the majority of us would have been debt free. Mortgages and loans of all kinds would have been paid, incomes freed up to "buy, buy buy", the American way.

Instead, we gave more of our money (that really isn't ours, but China's and Saudi Arabia's that they "loaned" us, cuz the US is insolvent)to these brainiacs who already stole all of our money, looted the Treasury, and stole everything not nailed down in this country.

WTF?!!? Wake up people! We need a good old fashioned economic boycott. Don't pay your taxes, don't pay any mortgages or loans. NOTHING will change until we turn off the money spigot to these evil, evil people.

Ralph Nader, you were a "consumer" advocate of old. Where are the people stepping up to organize an economic boycott of this inhumane system? Proper spelling is not going to save us from this.

As a side question, how many of the founding citizens of this country (ya know, the ones who were part of the invasion that stole the hemisphere from the native peoples) could spell? I suspect not many of them.

Great article.

I am embarrassed with my own grammar and spelling skills or more precisely the lack of such skills. When i ''passed'' the eight grade I quit school. I was bored and disillusioned with what was being ''taught'' to me.

Now at the age of 54 years, having been a voracious reader for all of that time , I can not believe the level of incompetence displayed by ''educated'' peoples in basic language and communications.. it now seems that to , too and two are interchangeable.

Some even go so far as to use, there , their and they're depending on which way the wind is blowing.

However, I do not gloat ever my very limited ability to construct a coherent sentence.

Instead I try to glean the meaning of some poorly constructed , misspelled sentence for the ideas being communicated by these authors, via the ''tools'' that were supplied to these ''state certified as passing the grade'', authors of said constructs.

There can be a fine line sometimes between popular usage and "correct" usage; it's perfectly normal for language to lose some of its perfection in the hands of the average person, and I don't have a problem with that. That is, after all, how you get linguistic "evolution". But seeing "there" and "its" and such misused makes one cringe, regardless.

Of course, this is nothing Orwell didn't say half a century ago in "Politics And The English Language", that sloppy usage correlates with sloppy thinking. Which, I suppose, is partially why he was so cynical about the future.

I think it's a bit of an over-statement to suggest that the financial meltdown is "the result of the raging epidemic of poor spelling", but I think the two are linked. We're in a anti-intellectual phase of American culture yet again, complete with our own 21st Century nativist "Know-Nothing"s. We'll grow out of it - only question, though, is how much damage the cretins will do before that happens.

wilmoor, actually I think what Bush really meant was "we own you".

I think the misuse of words, including spelling (although I am also guilty of typos), reflects the lack of quality education in this country. I have never pointed out errors of usage to any one, but using "rein" instead of "reign" is an example. My Russian partner was shocked to find upon arrival here that his Russian high school education was equivalent to a two year community college degree here. He also observed that Americans his age were remarkably immature compared to Russians. He was right. I was impressed at how mature he was for his age, but of course, I was measuring him by American standards. We have a long way to go here.

kathyodat

I can not believe the level of incompetence displayed by "educated" peoples in basic language and communications

Just remember - just 'cause someone has a PhD or a MD doesn't mean they can't be a gullible dumbass.

Johnnychuck, I agree with you that critical thinking isn't limited to accurate spellers, or even to people who use the right words to express themselves. But generally critical thinking is a learned skill, and along with it usually comes other learned skills, such as proper use of language.

However, a rule for me is to beware of too much generalizing.

kathyodat

@WTF
I too am amazed that no one seems to see the scam.

the big money players screwed everything up, made billions doing it, and now run to the US gov. to bail them out, when the whole ''house of cards'' comes crashing down

What happened to letting the ''Free Market'' sort itself out?

Guess that is only applicable when it is the ''little guys'' losing big

Corporate welfare.. but take responsibility for yourself if you do not have a ''logo'' on wall street or the stock exchange.

Makes you want to throttle someone

@Kathyodat

Yes , I stand corrected..

I generally try not to generalize..

lol say that five times quickly

I dink derfor eyeyam.

totaljoke__I disagree with your statement that probably not many of the founding fathers could spell correctly. In reading the papers of that period, it appears they were well versed in the language skills, although a little flowery.

pere uber__You are correct that many well educated people seem to lack common sense, however that may be a partly inherited trait, and is no excuse for the use of sloppy language.

A good example of the grammer problem is our President, who convinced me not to vote for him by his atrocious use of the language. It seemed there was something amiss when an MBA Graduate from an Ivy League college could not converse in proper terms.

It may not be the fault of younger generations, as they have been raised to be materialistic consumers and try to keep up with all of the new inventions. However, it is possible for anyone, rich or poor, to develope decent grammar and spelling skills that will help them all of their life.

Garrison Keillor must have been the spawn of William F. Buckley Jr. and Tallulah Bankhead--what an unctuous and condescending snob.

daniel david, ronald reagan was the one who invented appointing incompetents to oppose the departments they were appointed to head. george w. bush made it into an art form.

poet, garrison keillor just knows how to spell, read and write. did you never care whether you made sense in our native language? i came to this article because i needed something a little lighter than normal headline fare. and i found it here.

It was politely said of Bush The Elder that '...deep down, he's shallow.'

But we can't say the same thing about Bush The Younger: He lacks anything even resembling a 'deep down.'

On Bush's Ownership Society: Gee, when he came up with the 'ownership society' baloney, I thought Bush meant that those who owned the most when he first took the oath to be president, those were the owners that mattered. I thought maybe the top three percent of wealth owners were the ones who got to own his ownership society. It never occurred to me that Bush cared about home ownership for people who didn't already own a home when he stole his first presidential election.

I don't think it is possible but, gee, maybe I am dumber than Bush?!

We privatize the profits and nationalize the risks. We're Wall Street! (Some restrictions apply.)

Dream of the Stern Bear

A bear of sorts was
resting on it's fleshy parts
asleep on yonder stern
while a tide of money is for nothing
came washing up their tidy loss

Some didn't have to 'eat their cake'
for being on the make is good for heavens sake!
A short term gain merely a bit of long term pain

So please indulge your self
be a serf for surfeit
so you don't forfeit
the heady dream of the well to do

Do to others like they did to you
don't forget to rip off labor too

Lever every step along the way
drown them so they won't have any say
and give thanks to TINA
since there is no other way

Paranoid Pessimist-If you're lucky enough to have over $100,000 in savings it's a good idea to split your account. Either a separate one for your wife or separate banks. The government is not likely to cover you over the $100,000 FDIC commitment per account in the event of bank failure.

What the financial titans have done is a version of Three Card Monte, a version of the old shell game.

Keillor is right on target. Yes, he uses spelling but more importantly he brings common sense and common decency into the discussion. With his humor, he respects the wise, uneducated and despises the educated dunces, especially the educated, privileged, arrogant ones.

George W. Bush was born on third base and when there was a wild pitch he scored and said he hit a home run.

Einstein said that we cannot solve the problems that confront us with the same level of thinking that brought on the problems.

The greed and poverty of spirit that inhabits the Current Occupants of the Executive branch have gotten faster to the rocks of the rapids we're traveling on than could have been imagined when Bush stole the 2000 election.

It's long overdue that Americans wise up. If not linguistically, than at least in horizons and clear vision.

Those rocks are coming up fast. Many Americans found them from birth, some more recently.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We're in the same boat now". Well at least those without accounts in the Caymans and elsewhere or who live off the interest of their wealth.

I volunteer Dick Cheney to go up to the volcano. He'll probably come back and say the volcano accepted the sacrifice of Bush and Greenspan. As Shakespeare might say, "It would be a good start."

(PS-For those keeping score, there were two typos and two misspellings before spell checking. Three misspellings with this PS. The sentence fragment is there to annoy you.)

Garrison Keillor must have been the spawn of William F. Buckley Jr. and Tallulah Bankhead–what an unctuous and condescending snob.

I disagree. My mom is a grammarian of the highest order. If I begin a sentence with "Me and a friend...." she will hastily correct me by saying, "No, it's 'a friend and I....'"

There is nothing at all wrong with demanding correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in this society in which we live. There is nothing wrong with demanding higher standards of our leaders. There is nothing wrong with holding greedy investment bankers to account for their misdeeds.

I am, and always will be, a big fan of Garrison Keillor. He's always spot-on when it comes to social commentary and observation of humanity. Thank you, Mr. Keillor, for yet another insightful commentary on what's wrong with our society today.

There is nothing at all wrong with demanding correct grammar, spelling and punctuation in this society in which we live.

I'd reiterate - just a personal opinion here - that punctuation and grammar are iffy things sometimes; you're just annoying people if you're complaining about whether or not a split infinitive is permissible or double negatives or whether or not punctuation goes inside quotation marks. Spelling less so; I'm not going to bitch about someone misspelling "champagne" or some such. Confusing "there" and "their", though, should be grounds for waterboarding (JOKING, JOKING!).

I'd argue it's much more important to have a love for and respect for clear, concise writing than it is to insist on adhering to nit-picky rules. That said, all the adherence to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation isn't going to be worth much if it's used to lie, cheat and steal.

Kernel, you misread. I did not say "founding fathers" (how sexist) but founding citizens. A lot of whom were pirates, religious fanatics, capitalistic predators and criminals that seized land from the people already inhabiting this hemisphere. The founding fathers were mostly rich white elite males too, by the birth of this nation, they had already "got theirs".

What I was trying to suggest is that proper spelling, literacy, or lack of it has nothing to do with the rapaciousness of an individual. I am sure most of the soldiers that killed the natives were not literate at all, while the monarchies leading them probably were rich and highly educated families. Greed has very few socio-economic limiters. I would have to agree with kathyodat that generalizations tend to get us all in trouble, including me.

Greg R March-you honestly believe FDIC will cover any more than pennies on the dollar if anything at all? That's a big mistake right there. If someone has over $100,000 dollars in savings right now, I think that puts you solidly in elite territory anyway. (And I mean real cash, not funny money like CDOs, stocks, etc.)

Seeing a misspelled word or hearing someone using poor grammar is like nails on a blackboard to me. What's happened to our schools that so many students can't spell?

As for the Current Occupier, he's saving me money on my electric bill because every time he shows up on TV, I turn the thing off.

Yes, but notice that these same Small Soap Dishes can spell words like, "huge!", "sweet", and the latest apparent rage of faux-intellectual writing, "Having said that,..."/"That being said,..."/"That having been said,...".

Garrison - for many reasons: thank you. My pet peeves are (a) the use and overuse of "actually" and (b) the use of "guy" to address everyone - including the 52% of us who are not guys. I wish I had Toni Morrison's article on "The Pause" so I could quote how she expresses her feelings on using the word "guy" to address females ... she's far more eloquent than I.

Thank you Garrison and here's to the grammar elite.

Juliann

In one of my posts further up here the point I was trying to make about the future of our language was concerning the current text messaging craze. Imagine how that's going to affect speech and spelling.

Pere Ubu wrote "I'd argue it's much more important to have a love for and respect for clear, concise writing than it is to insist on adhering to nit-picky rules."
Hay, weight juzt won minute, their is wright and their is rong.

Something I've noticed in reading hundreds of threads a week is that people confuse "lose" with "loose". That's very common these days. Thanks, Woebegoneboy.

I just have a few things to say. TURN OFF YOUR TELEVISION!!!!!! GET UP OFF OF YOUR FAT ASSES!!!!!! PARTICIPATE IN YOUR CHILDREN'S LIVES!!!!!! GO BACK TO SCHOOL EVEN IF YOU ARE FIFTY!!!!!! SPEND TIME WORKING IN YOUR COMMUNITIES!!!!!! and last but not least!!! STOP LIVING VICARIOUSLY!!!!!!

mr. keillor, although i listen to you weekly, it is so difficult to have your articles appear so infrequently here. not quite withdrawal pains, but thanks for the fix anyway!

It's good to laugh about the mess we're in ...

... too bad it's not funny.

"He is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before they were."

Genius.

Daniel David March 28th, 2008 12:43 pm

"One would think that nationalizing from the 1980's forward the curriculum used at the Lake Wobegon School District (where, we recall, "all the children were above average") would have since fixed the spelling problem for a whole American generation. I guess Ronald Reagan must have missed putting that on his "to do" list way back then."

As did Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, and Bush Jr.

Lobo Gris

#
magikpowerwoman March 28th, 2008 9:02 pm

"Something I've noticed in reading hundreds of threads a week is that people confuse "lose" with "loose". That's very common these days. Thanks, Woebegoneboy."

That is one that always gets to me too.

Lobo Gris

Economic boycott.....sounds good. How about all of us workers just stopping work for a couple days - or a week - or a month? Except for situations absolutely demanding personnel, such as healthcare, all of us could just say, "heck, we're not working for you today". That would expose the "independently wealthy" (those living off capital and not a paycheck) for what they really are: absolutely dependent on the working class.

Little did we know that the state of Texas was a terrorist training camp all along.

The savings and loans, Enron..... A think tank. A how to training ground for our current clowns.

How long? Not long; because you reap what you sow and the great arc of justice is coming for them too. Long live the volcano.

Hukt on fonix wurkt fir me!

Great article.

You a funny man Keelor.