Results 1 to 12 of 12

Thread: Good, quick read

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2015
    Posts
    1,182

    Default Good, quick read

    I normally skim the opinion pieces in the Sunday paper, but this one is worth reading:

    Commentary: We mock virtue and wonder why we’re awash in vulgarity
    BY MARK Y. HERRING
    15 hrs ago

    Whether we’ve actually read it or not, we’re all familiar with John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” But Milton also wrote an important poem in honor of virtue. “Comus” tells the story of the nefarious main character of the same name, a debauched sort who disguises himself as a villager and tries to seduce “The Lady,” a young woman whose brothers have left her in the woods to find food. His efforts to lure her to his palace of pleasure ultimately fail, and The Lady, by her steadfastness to right reason, is at last freed by her good discipline.

    While “Comus” never made the headlines like “Paradise Lost,” it deserves to be remembered, and even taught in our schools and colleges.

    I’ve been thinking of Comus as the courts sort out questions about a North Carolina charter school’s decision to require its ninth-grade language arts students to read “The Poet X” by Elizabeth Acevedo. Not because of how much “The Poet X” reminds me of Comus, but because of how much it doesn’t.


    Acevedo tells the story of a young Harlem girl who uses slam poetry basically to slam her mother’s Christian faith. Filled with profanity, the story is explicit and explicitly blasphemous. And this is what at least one school decided our young people need to be reading: a book trashing Judeo-Christian values.

    Our time is certainly out of joint. We have lost that one ingredient to good living: virtue.

    There. I said it. Out loud. I’m sure I’ll be called a scold by my kindest critics, but it needs to be said. I don’t mean by virtue one of the well-known seven, although those are worth remembering (humility, modesty, diligence, patience, kindness, temperance and charity) — and Lord knows we need them in surfeit today.

    What I mean by virtue is what it meant from its beginning: moral excellence. One could say that to be virtuous is to follow all seven of those heavenly virtues.


    Our culture, it seems, has rather adopted the seven deadly sins instead (just for review: envy, lust, pride, greed, wrath, gluttony, sloth).

    C.S. Lewis once wrote, “We mock honor and wonder why we have traitors in our midst.” I amend that only slightly: We mock virtue and wonder why we are awash in vulgarity.

    It’s hard to get away from the vulgarity and even harder to resist. When forced to hear such things, even the most delicate among us loses respect for humanity, as Cicero reminds us. It ruins our politics, our theater, even our common conversations.

    Among nearly everyone, the F-word is a comma or an adjective. It shows up in the casual conversation of young and old. It’s on T-shirts and all over social media. Stand-up comics cannot tell a joke without using the word ad nauseam, and apparently moms and dads cannot even correct their children without it, which, by the way, is often why their children use it so frequently.

    This is to say nothing for the rest of our four-letter vocabularies, let alone their behaviors. But saying these words isn’t the only problem. As we like to say today, it’s systemic in our natures now. When it isn’t the words, it’s the sexualization of everything: clothes, ads, television shows, radio and everything else. The internet is awash with it, and I don’t just mean porn sites. Patience is gone, humility something we think others should have, greed an ambition, diligence thought to be elitist, kindness something you show to animals and modesty sexist.

    So I’ll be a scold, and everyone can tell me to, well, you know, that “off” phrase. I hope for some, however, it will be a quiet clarion call to better living in 2021.

    Mark Y. Herring is professor emeritus and dean of library services at Winthrop University. He lives in Rock Hill.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Johnston
    Posts
    22,407

    Default

    That’s well written, and absolutely true.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mars Bluff View Post
    Only thing we need to be wearing in this country are ass whippings & condoms. That'll clear up half our issues.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2016
    Posts
    2,625

    Default

    Yep.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Wateree, South Carolina
    Posts
    48,810

    Default

    Thanks for sharing...

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Sep 2017
    Location
    Blythewood
    Posts
    2,088

    Default

    Absolutely true

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
    Location
    Columbia
    Posts
    3,601

    Default

    Has anybody noticed how every two-bit celebrity and useless virtue signaller has decided that throwing in the f word gives their mindless spewings some sort of moral authority?

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Posts
    328

    Default

    My grandfather (Navy) always had a sign hanging over his desk that read "Profanity shows a distinct lack of vocabulary".
    “Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.” Lord Byron

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    Charleston
    Posts
    18,402

    Default

    That’s cute, but not true. I’ve got a large vocabulary. Someone is constantly making a comment about some word I used.

    Cussing is part of it. Not my finest accomplishment. I’ve been reeling the bad language in lately. My orbit is getting closer.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Hampton Co./Bluffton
    Posts
    7,817

    Default

    Well said.

    I also cuss an awful lot.
    Quote Originally Posted by Chessbay View Post
    Literally translated to, "I smell like Scotch and Kodiak".
    "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees"- Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    Green Pond SC
    Posts
    1,441

    Default

    Some of the most literate people I know are really good at cussing ....
    “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” - Thomas Jefferson

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    Campobello
    Posts
    3,033

    Default

    I’ve been trying to work on it here lately, Rob.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Posts
    5,127

    Default

    There's a difference between using a well placed f bomb to emphasize a point and every other word being one because you can't think of anything else. Sort of like the youts using "literally" in place of 75 words there were closer to the meaning they were trying to convey.

    Watch End of Watch when the Messican gangbangers are riding around in the minivan after shootout for a good example of the cringe fest.
    Last edited by everlast; 01-25-2021 at 07:57 PM.
    “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
    -Samuel Adams

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •