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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 20, 2017)
Wednesday, December 20, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon The Bunkhouse Chronicle Craig Rullman Columnist Steal this column The real crux of the word- ban issue at CDC isn’t that the words are “banned.” They aren’t, not really, and as of this morning there are no credible reports of bon- fires on Capitol Hill fueled by the ritual tomecide of policy manuals. Officially, the words are merely “discouraged.” What’s most troubling is the rationale put forward to explain such discouragement — which is that the words frighten people. We are told that certain words such as “fetus,” and phrases such as “evidence-based,” are so upsetting to various pols in Byzantium that merely seeing them, or references to them, may be enough to swing a budget vote in one direction or another. Pshaw. But policy wonks and bridge trolls are always afraid of language. As was a certain defense attorney in a criminal case I once testified in. She was outraged at appearances of the word “peanuthead” in my police report, which she argued revealed a global conspiracy bias against her client — a stabby street-gang tough with red lips tattooed on his neck. Nevertheless, words and phrases matter, which is why I have always favored “homi- cide bomber” over “suicide bomber.” The former just makes more sense in most cases, given the clear intent of someone who dons an explo- sive vest, or makes a pipe bomb, and then detonates it in a crowded restaurant or a train station. Through college I wore a button, about the size of a silver dollar, attached to my book bag, proudly declaring that: “I Read Banned Books.” I picked it up at a used book- store, since vanished, and it was my one visible protest against what the one-eyed oracle of the Upper Peninsula, and the only American-born gourmand, Jim Harrison, bril- liantly called the “expanding borders of the ineffable.” And during my most Maquisard phase, in gradu- ate school, I took great plea- sure in quietly dynamiting the occasional faculty troop-train before slipping away into the night. But my cover was blown when once I dared, publicly, to dispute a hard leftist professor — by which I mean that particularly ven- omous brand of academic commissar who is constantly vetting the proletariat for evi- dence of counter-revolution- ary thinking. What I learned, after a heated classroom argument over the actual height and weight of Guatamalan activ- ist and Nobel Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu, was that among the most politi- cally sanctimonious any free exchange of ideas quickly devolves into artless dogma, boring puritanism, and per- sonal rancor. There is probably a way to blame George Carlin for some of this, who at least knew how to turn seven banned words into clever and subversive stand-up. I first heard Carlin’s Seven Words routine on a cassette tape, playing loudly — I don’t know why — in a friend’s goat barn. The goats — which are abysmal animals — were not even slightly amused, but I can still manage an ad-hoc and rapid-fire delivery of all seven words. Sometimes, to shake up a flagging holiday party, I’ll deliver them loudly, in purest non-sequitur form, while standing in a corner next to the decorative gnomes and tinseled miniature Santas. The goat barn incident became even more weird when my friend’s mother, who was a registered nurse, later made a brazen pass at me in the kitchen. She did it while showing me a bowl full of colorized pebbles, dis- played on the kitchen table beside a porcelain frog and a decorative incense holder in the shape of a Viking longboat. Incanted in the right com- bination, she claimed, these gimcracks were possessed of curative powers. I admit to skepticism regarding the bowl of magic gravel but, titillated by her attentions, I completely forgot to sue for harassment. Elsewhere my sister, who is one of those throwback H’ H 115 NW Greenwood, Redmond | 541-588-6119 A’ H 192 E. Tall Fir Ct., Sisters | 541-549-1726 P’ P 182 E. Tall Fir Ct., Sisters | 541-549-1336 D L T | O/O Business Cell (541) 848-3194 “Enriching the lives of those we serve, one day at time” “O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: Come and save us, O Lord our God.” (Magnifi cat Antiphon, Vespers of December 24) Christmas Ch i Mass M S Schedule: h d l December 24, 2017 5:30 p.m. December 25, 2017 12 a.m. (Midnight Mass) December 25, 2017 6 a.m. (Latin Mass) December 25, 2017 10 a.m. Solemnity of Mary Mass Schedule December 31, 2017 5:30 p.m. January 1, 2018 10 a.m. St. E S Edward d d the h M Martyr R Roman C Catholic h l i C Church h h 123 Trinity Way, Sisters | 541-549-9391 | stedwardsisters.org | Very Rev. Andrew Szymakowski, J.C.L., Pastor physicians almost capable of a modest self-comportment — that is to say, without con- stantly reminding everyone that she is a doctor — has been waging the word-ban fight with an Austin, Texas, school board over what her kids are allowed to read in school. It’s a mystery why so many public school boards — whose record of util- ity nationwide deserves a long and thoughtful sec- ond look — should still so often be composed of skel- etal Savanorolas, prised out of their musty crypts and propped up on the dais to ban dancing, music, and JD Salinger. But we might, for the sake of perspective, seek to temper our histrionics on this latest bit of government word-gam- ing. It wasn’t invented last week. I’m not, by any stretch, suggesting that we go around grinning and doing cart- wheels, but in our consterna- tion we should also bear in mind some of the more seri- ous, and successful, efforts at censorship executed by the 15 various tentacles of American government. We could, for instance, remember the experience of war correspondent George Weller, the first American reporter to enter Nagasaki after the atomic bomb drop on August 9, 1945. Weller’s stories were spiked by the Occupation’s General Headquarters because what he saw, and reported on in the aftermath of nuclear warfare was, and remains, utterly shocking to the human conscience. And no discussion of this word-banning business would be complete without a nod to Abby Hoffman, whose best book — often banned outright due to fears that it would encourage mass shop- lifting amongst the weed-and- munchies set — was “Steal This Urine Test.” Of course, Hoffman also had the admirable temerity to wonder aloud, once, amongst the various censors and word- banishers of America: “What if they gave a war and nobody showed up?”
