🚀 go-pugleaf

Permit me to intrude selfishly in order to try out a net newsreading
program for DOS I was just given (Trumpet 105e) and am trying to test.
This is a sample post, but in order not to make it totally a waste of
your time I am including the following file, which will be the subject
of a radio broadcast later this month.

Thanks for your patience.  Feel free to skip the rest.

Dennis Baron


         "You spell potatoe, I spell potato"

Vice President Dan Quayle, in the tradition of American vice
presidents, doesn't generally have a lot to do, so when he
does do something it's usually noticed and he usually
receives a lot of criticism for it.  When he complained
about a character on a TV sitcom choosing to be a single
parent he got a lot of flack.  Squaring off loudly for and
against the VP's comments were mostly people operating under
the delusion that television gives us something to pattern
our lives after.
     But when Quayle misspelled potato in an elementary
school spelling bee practice, all h-e-double hockey sticks
broke loose.  Because as we all know, spelling is more
important even than television in American life.  I mean,
spelling counts, doesn't it?  Have you ever heard anyone say
"Television counts"?
     The Vice President put an extra e at the end of potato.
The student speller, just to be polite, added the e as well,
and promptly lost the bee.  Quayle blamed the gaffe on an
incorrect cue card he had been handed.  But that doesn't
change the fact that Quayle misspelled potato.  With that
misspelling, the political commentators laughed all the way
to the bank, while the educators moaned about the bad
example Quayle was setting for American youth, who already
have so many e's they don't know what to do with them.
     We know that Murphy Brown, who is rich, tough, has
stage hands to change her baby's diapers, and is not even a
real person anyway, will survive single parenthood because
it's all in the script.  But not knowing how to spell potato
could prove fatal to the career of the Vice President, who
was born with silver place settings for 12 in his mouth and
has probably never had to spell anything in his life.
     The message the VP brought to the nation is not what some
people are claiming: that spelling is important and he can't
do it, so he really must've gotten through law school on
family influence.  The message is that true power rests not
in the mind but the pocketbook.  If spelling is so
important, Quayle can pay somebody else to do it for him.
After all, he doesn't cut his own grass, does he?
     The rich and the powerful don't carry cash.  They don't
know what scanners are in grocery stores.  And they have
someone else write everything they say and, of course, check
the spelling.  If they're caught short, they borrow a dollar
from someone in the entourage, or they borrow an e.
     If you dig into the history of the potato you will find
a bushel of spellings, including the one Quayle backed.  In
one of its earliest incarnations--if a vegetable can be said
to have an incarnation--the word began with a b, not a p.
Potatoe with an e occurs as recently as the mid-nineteenth
century, among other places in the writings of the great
naturalist Charles Darwin.  If anyone knew how to spell a
species, it was Darwin.  And we all know that potatoes have
eyes, though they never appear in the spelling and so must
be considered silent.
     But the final e in potato went out with the Paperwork
Reduction Act, a federal statute aimed at reducing the
number of vowels in the language to an acceptable level.  No
doubt the Vice President was confused because there is an e
in toe, the little digit that wiggles at the end of your
foot, and because there is an e in the plural of potatoes.
Too, a lot of English words end in a silent e, including his
own name.  In this case, however, it was Quayle, and not the
e, that should have been mute.
     
     

debaron@uiuc.edu               (\                   217-333-2392
                               \'\             fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron                    \'\           __________
Department of English           / '|         ()_________)
Univ. of Illinois               \ '/          \ ~~~~~~~~ \
608 S. Wright St.                 \             \ ~~~~~~   \
Urbana IL 61801                   ==).            \__________\
                                 (__)             ()__________)