Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Oh No, Please!

As I was reading an online publication last week, I saw the title, ‘Sarah Palin says “refudiate,” and creates a word controversy. What’s the big problem with refudiate?’ My first reaction was, “Oh my God, she doesn’t know that the word is repudiate and not refudiate. Refudiate is not a word.” I was shocked and somewhat disgusted. She had used the word in one of her tweets that thousands of people read. Again, I thought, “This woman is uneducated. The fact that she wrote refudiate and not repudiate indicates that she probably has not seen the word in the written form, which indicates that she doesn’t read.” Repudiate is not an obscure word. This woman tweets to thousands of people and doesn’t bother to do the most basic check in writing, the spell check. If she had checked the spelling of her writing, she would know that refudiate is not a word. I write a little blog that only a few people read and at the minimum, I check the spelling of the words I use. By the way, English is my second language, and I don’t aspire to run for the presidency of the United States.

In her response to the criticism that refudiate is not a word. She replied, “English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!” Yes, English is a live language. Words are created out of necessity. Some of the words created or used differently than what was originally intended are: email, google, input. We say, “I emailed you; I googled it; I inputed the data.” All these are new additions and new ways of using the English language. And, yes, Shakespeare coined new words, but his coining new words was not out of ignorance. He had characters in his plays that were supposed to be uneducated and used words incorrectly. There is a big difference here. Her response indicated that not only she is ignorant, but also she is insolent. If she had said, “I made a mistake and didn’t use the correct word.” I would think, “She is human, and she admitted to her mistake.”

When I first saw Sarah Palin introduced as John McCain’s running mate, I was hoping that she would be someone that I could come to respect and even admire. But during the months before the 2008 elections, I came to be disappointed by her lack of knowledge and simple and narrow views on issues. I remember when she was asked about what she read, I thought, “Name something, anything, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times...”. But she didn’t. Another thing that bothered me about her was her divisive way of talking in her speeches that were repeated over and over. She used phrases such as “good patriotic Americans” to refer to people who shared her political views, as though people who didn’t have the same views were unpatriotic. This sort of language only fuels hatred and judgment and is not constructive. Even her Tweet that had the non-word refudiate in it had a prejudiced tone. My issues with her have nothing to do with her politics, and they have to do with her person. It is obvious that she is not well informed. Her perception of things is limited and yet she is extremely ambitious. She didn’t even finish her first term as Alaska’s governor so that she could pursue her political goals.

America, today, is the greatest nation in the world. I have come to understand that this country has become what it is today, because of the vision and the foresight of the founding fathers and some enlightened early Americans. It is because of their insight that this country has such a strong foundation and a great system of laws. I have, also, read about the Women’s Suffrage in this country. The struggles of these amazing women who fought for their right to vote are no less than heroic. I have seen the rise of women CEOs, scientist and inventors in the recent history. I would love to see the first woman president in this county someday. I hope that she will be one that I can admire, respect and be proud of, someone with a great mind and intellect who is, also, educated. It is terribly jarring to hear the leader of the free world use words that are not in the English language. I’m still trying to digest president Bush’s use of the non-word “misunderestimated” in one of his interviews.

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