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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-04-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 2011. PAGE 5. There is no humble, forelock-tugging, aw-shucks way to say this: We’ve got ourselves a miraculous language, we English speakers. Just consider: every word that appears on the pages of this newspaper; every word we read and write and think and sing and shout and whisper – is made up of some combination of letters chosen from our alphabet. Shakespeare, and Hemingway; Winston Churchill and George W. Bush; Leonard Cohen and Stompin’ Tom Connors. – they each got just 26 letters to mix and match. Those 26 letters can be woven and crocheted to give us splendid words like ‘pulchritude’, ‘Arcadian’ and ‘quiescent’. They likewise serve up short, sharp and ugly words like, well, ‘ugh’ and ‘ugly’. The English language is so versatile and sturdy the letters themselves can stand alone. We have A lists and B girls, C clamps and D rings. Not to mention E-mail, the F word and G spots. Even double letters can be eerily eloquent – “The MD went to the OR in his PJs on the QT to do a DC” The SOB. And then there are those two plodding workhorse letters – numbers 15 and 11 respectively, which, when yoked together are used by all of us, dozens of times a day. I’m referring to O and K. Okay? What a curious pedigree that combination has. For years, no one knew for an absolute certainty why those two letters, ever came to be fused together – although there were plenty of theories. Some experts were confident that the word came from the famous Scots expression Och aye. Others theorized the origin was the Choctaw Indian dialect which contained the phrase okah, meaning ‘It is indeed’. But how about the West African phrase O ke meaning ‘certainly’? Or the Finnish expression oikea – ‘correct’, ‘exact’? For a time it was believed the phrase derived from the French expression aux quais – which was supposedly scrawled on kegs of quality Puerto Rican rum. Then the theorizers really got into the booze. OK commemorated an Indian chieftain, Old Keokuk, some insisted. Nonsense! It really stood for Oberst Kommandant commemorating the German army officers who sided with the South during the American Revolution. Balderdash! The letters were the initials of Obadiah Kelly, a freight agent who signed bills of lading with a grandiose OK. The speculation grew wilder and loopier. Old Kinderhook got many votes; so did Ober Kommando. A few folks were sure that the letters came from an ancient Macedonian fisherman famous for shouting “Olla Kalla! – meaning ‘all right’ in Greek. Others insisted the two letters were lifted from O. Kendall and Sons, a supplier of biscuits to the Union Army who stamped the initials on every wafer. The nastiest rumour attributed OK to Andrew Jackson. The ex-U.S. President was so illiterate, the rumour mongers said, that he scrawled “O.K.” on the bottom of government bills which meant he considered the contents to be ‘orl korrect’. That was a bad joke and a cruel smear on Jackson’s name, for he was apparently a learned man – but it was ironically close to the truth. An even more learned scholar – a professor at Columbia University – discovered just a few years ago that OK does stem from a corruption of ‘All Correct’, but Andrew Jackson had nothing to do with it. Seems that back in the 1830 a mini-fad for goofy abbreviation swept the Boston area intelligentsia. It became de rigueur to refer to minor characters as SPs (small potatoes) and to speak of an absent party as GTT (Gone to Texas). Deliberately misspelled abbreviations were considered to be thigh-slappers too. ‘All right’ was the way fuddy-duddies talked. Cool customers changed that to ‘oll wright’ or ‘OW’. The letters O and K really got a working over. At various times they meant Orfully Konfused, Often Kontradicts and my favourite: Out of Kash, Out of Kredit and Out of Klothes. Orl Korrect made the short list too – and unaccountably held its ground as ‘OK’ for the next 18 or 19 decades. OK is still going strong – in fact’ as quite possibly the most recognized phrase in the English language – it’s stronger than it’s ever been. There an Okay Airways, an Okay Record Company and an Okay magazine. I’ve even got a pair of Jeans with OK stencilled on the bum. Do I mind? Heck no. It’s A-OK by me. Arthur Black Other Views The history of the term OK. OK? With great power comes great responsibility. Peter Parker’s uncle Ben recites these words to a nephew who he knows as Peter, but that the world knows as Spider-Man. In these days of second-by-second news tickers and social media, an updated version of this might be that with widespread accessibility comes great accountability. Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti now knows this better than anyone as comments he made earlier this year have launched an event guaranteed to attract attention. What kind of attention it will attract, however, is up for debate. To be clear, Sanguinetti stated that in order to help avoid sexual assault, women should refrain from “dressing like sluts” comments he quickly apologized for. But for his sins, Toronto has now been given SlutWalk, a pilgrimage to Toronto Police headquarters that took place on Sunday. Of course, you’d like to think that even the simplest among us knows that any form of sexual assault is always a choice of the perpetrator and not provoked by a victim, despite the archaic reasoning Sanguinetti may have used in making his initial comments. His comments were indefensible, but in his line of work, even the most minor slip-up is met with a wave of criticism. Perhaps it’s because police officers are supposed to be any given area’s “finest” that they are often not given the grace of a misstep. Unfortunately, every Toronto police officer has been painted with the same brush once career protesters got a hold of the information. When explaining why this event was necessary, the reason given by the SlutWalk Toronto website was that Sanguinetti’s comments gave “shocking insight into the force’s view of sexual assault” and went on to state that the organizers of the walk felt that the police had failed them. The walk was planning to “call foul” on the police, while at the same time “re-appropriate” the word slut. I find it hard to believe that what Sanguinetti said would have appeared in some sort of Toronto Police training manual or would have come out of the mouth of one of his training officers. To me it seems like a stupid comment made by an individual, but it will be the entire force that will have to bear the cross. Like the events surrounding last year’s G20 fiasco in Toronto, every police officer was left to watch their reputations, and their cruisers, go up in flames due to the actions of a small group of baton-wielding thugs with badges. And SlutWalk is no different. So while you would be hard-pressed to find many men who would support Sanguinetti’s comments, in the eyes of many, any and every Toronto Police officer shares Sanguinetti’s thinking and may has well have made the comment himself. So while an opportunity to bring a certain state of mind to light and have meaningful discussion about correcting it has now come and gone, people are left to gawk and snicker at yet another example of misguided energy. Like many other past protests, the big picture seems to have been missed. And instead of turning a negative into a positive, a negative is being turned into a circus that will no doubt be remembered for its sizzle rather than its steak. The G20 legacy will be its riot-like atmosphere and misbehaving police officers and not its issues (what were they again?) and SlutWalk will have been just another reason to stay in the house on a Sunday in Toronto. Slut for a day An election is coming and some people are questioning whether the Liberals deserve a second shot, or whether we should stay the course with Conservatives. I’m not going to offer you any great insights here as to whether you should go left or right, I haven’t been studying politics long enough to start making those decisions and suggestions yet. What I can say is that I think it is time for a change. Maybe it isn’t time to change government, maybe it is. Maybe it’s time to change our local representation, maybe it isn’t. It is, however, definitely time for Canadians to become more involved in the electoral process. Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this before, because I’m sure you have. Voting is the big difference between our governmental archetypes and most of the others in the world. We have a choice, and we have a choice about making that choice. We can get involved, or we can sit on the sidelines. If we get involved, then we get to choose whom we support. Whether you’re a current voter or someone who has chosen not to use their democratic right to vote, I’m calling on you, Canada, to step it up. It almost seems as if the politicians realize that they need to be stepping up their tactics as well. Due to a condensed campaigning calendar, commercials having been aired for months, the mud is already being flung, and Stephen Harper is serving coffee at a well-known café while Michael Ignatieff is pretending to be a waiter and serve hot dogs (and no, those aren’t analogies). However, this is where the stepping up comes in. Don’t be drawn in by those calling Harper a liar. Don’t let claims of Ignatieff’s return to Canada being solely self-serving sway your vote. Don’t let the idea of coalition government influence you. Go do the research. Find out whether you want your government buying F-35 fighter jets and funding large green energy projects in Northern Quebec like the Conservative Government is trying to do. If you think those are good ideas, talk to incumbent Conservative MP for Huron-Bruce Ben Lobb. Or, if you find yourself leaning more towards wanting students, their parents and war veterans to save money on education, take a good long look at the Liberal plans for assisting with tuition and costs and get in touch with local candidate Charlie Bagnato. If you want a party to lead who represents the working family and seeks to make life more affordable, check out New Democratic Party candidate Grant Robertson and leader Jack Layton. If you feel that climate problems and the financial gap between the haves and the have- nots is a serious issue, tune in to Elizabeth May’s Green Party (as of press time a Green Party Candidate had not been announced for Huron-Bruce). Don’t ignore the Bloc Quebecois because there isn’t a candidate for them in our riding. Whether they seek independence, separation or greater rights for the Quebecois, they have been a huge factor in causing this election. So what can you do? Campaign for the candidate or party you feel strongly about. If you already regularly vote, this is the next logical step – try to convince others that your candidate and party are the ones who will best serve them. You can do this on your own, and simply talk to friends and families, but be aware, this can be controversial and lead to schisms in relationships. You can also help your candidate by going to their office and getting involved in their campaign on a more professional level. If you normally just vote for the Liberals or the Conservatives because it’s what you’ve always done, or it’s what your parents did start asking why they get your vote. Start thinking about voting. If you have a computer and access to the internet, look into RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, otherwise, make a phone call. An RSS feed is a simple way of viewing articles on the internet without having to visit many sites. Personally, I suggest using Google Reader. It’s simple, it’s web-based (So you can access it from any computer) and it’s free. Anyway, the RSS feed will allow you to follow news stories in real time from most major Canadian news sources in one window. Next, sign up for Twitter. All the major party leaders have Twitter feeds, see what they’re up to and what they say by following. Lastly, ask questions, and don’t be afraid to. Get out there, get connected and make the right decision. Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Campaigning is on the winds Denny Scott Denny’s Den