I graded hundreds of student papers at the U and would often have to get
past fractured English to get at the substance of a student writer's
intent but my eyebrows would certainly be raised if I found a
significant difference in language usage between one part of a paper and
another. That's what happened when I read the Kallenbach response to
Palmer's post: a first paragraph with below-grade usage ("Believe it or
nor Jonathan is the truth. In addition, I surprise that Palmer did not
ask me those questions ...") and then subsequent paragraphs with one
polished sentence after another. To this course grader, that suggests
more than one writer.
Ghostwriting is commonplace in politics but one must wonder about the
capacity of the principal actor here so often absent from occasions
where that capacity could have been exercised in the flesh and so
completely silent on this busy list. The language of public process is
unforgivingly complex and we need to know that our elected folks are
reasonably fluent in their own right.
I'm also astounded by the tool use argument - Internet access is ready
to hand these days in public libraries and coffee shops, for example,
and there are plenty of folks who find ways to use their computers at
work. But go down memory lane with me to the 1950s when there were
college students who balked at having to use typewriters and then fast
forward to the 1990s when I required that older-than average students in
my urban studies seminar use email to communicate with me as a
pedagogical benchmark. This called keeping up with the Joneses and it's
not an elective.
As individuals and quondam participants in public dialogue, we now use
the Internet to communicate in written and visual media at speeds that
are many multiples of previous methods. Computers are routinely used to
massage data: I remember hand-copying voter roster information at the
Wisconsin Secretary of State's office in the 1960s - a monastic moment
to be sure - and in contrast I burned a CD in two hours earlier this
week for a candidate with precise information that would have taken
thousands of man hours to generate sans computer technology.
Not that everybody's going to jump through all these digital hoops, but
it's a fact that municipal information management is a digital universe
now, as is the realm of finance and commerce, and I think we have the
right to expect that our elected folks are reasonably fluent in this
twenty-first century language. Sans a contemporary personal computer
ready to hand, any candidate for public office is really isolated - not
just a trip to the library now, but to me at least terminal estrangement
from the rapid-fire exchanges and elaborately detailed web page
environments that now define decision vocabularies and parameters in our
public life.
Kallenbach's response to Palmer's post says to me that getting this
fellow up to speed in the Minneapolis City Council would be a herculean
task - a learning curve that would mean challenge (and hence dependency)
for months or even years, given the continuing evolution of data
management and communication systems. Not ready for prime time, I fear,
and no amount of surrogate activity can dismiss that considered
impression. In an academic setting, I'd have to give Mr. Kallenbach a
pretty low grade, warn him about letting others write his papers for
him, give him small hope of success after graduation. In the real world
of this election cycle, I think the selection of Dean Zimmermann - more
experienced generally and more capable on these precise points - is the
better option.
Fred Markus Horn Terrace Ward Ten
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