You might say something to one audience which is as “linguistically conscientious” as possible, yet find someone has tweeted a remark (reported correctly or otherwise) and someone in the world has taken offence. Professor Tim Hunt — formerly of University College London — could tell anyone about that. Equally, one can write a piece for a cultured and worldly readership like that of Standpoint, only for one’s words to find their way to some illiterate with a grudge. This is the world today’s students are growing up in and one result is that they are beginning to distrust not just language, but ideas.
Nevertheless, I had news for my listeners. The world has many problems from which one cannot be protected. Birth is one, with the steps preceding and following it by no means devoid of incident and disturbance. Life itself presents a challenge, and then there is the ultimately unavoidable question of death. My point then, to my student audience, was that from the point of view of anyone seeking safety and comfort the whole business of life is very badly organised. I like to think that somewhere down the road this news will assist them.
***
For me, the word “bogus” hangs about Wellesley’s most famous alumnus like a fog. Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton are nonpareils in their ability to say things that just don’t quite ring true. Their claim that Bill slept on a sofa after the Monica Lewinsky affair (were there really no spare bedrooms in the White House?) might be considered a high-water mark. But even by this standard Mrs Clinton delivered a corker during the first Democratic candidates television debate. Getting competitive with the socialist candidate Bernie Sanders over how tough each would be with Wall Street, Hillary said, “I represented Wall Street as a senator from New York, and I went to Wall Street in 2007 — before the big crash — and I basically said, ‘Cut it out!’”
Ignoring for a moment the astronomical sums Hillary and her family have made from hedge funds and others, so far as I know nobody has yet asked her, “When did this happen? Who were you speaking to? And where precisely were you standing on Wall Street when you issued this command?”
Nevertheless, I had news for my listeners. The world has many problems from which one cannot be protected. Birth is one, with the steps preceding and following it by no means devoid of incident and disturbance. Life itself presents a challenge, and then there is the ultimately unavoidable question of death. My point then, to my student audience, was that from the point of view of anyone seeking safety and comfort the whole business of life is very badly organised. I like to think that somewhere down the road this news will assist them.
***
For me, the word “bogus” hangs about Wellesley’s most famous alumnus like a fog. Hillary and her husband Bill Clinton are nonpareils in their ability to say things that just don’t quite ring true. Their claim that Bill slept on a sofa after the Monica Lewinsky affair (were there really no spare bedrooms in the White House?) might be considered a high-water mark. But even by this standard Mrs Clinton delivered a corker during the first Democratic candidates television debate. Getting competitive with the socialist candidate Bernie Sanders over how tough each would be with Wall Street, Hillary said, “I represented Wall Street as a senator from New York, and I went to Wall Street in 2007 — before the big crash — and I basically said, ‘Cut it out!’”
Ignoring for a moment the astronomical sums Hillary and her family have made from hedge funds and others, so far as I know nobody has yet asked her, “When did this happen? Who were you speaking to? And where precisely were you standing on Wall Street when you issued this command?”
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