Grammar Bitch Online 2

This is one of my favorite grammatic quibbles, the sort of thing everyone gets wrong when they realize they’re speaking in public. Even Barack Obama. Earlier this week, at his measured, mature, eloquent, patient bridge-burning operation that should have laid to rest the matter of his former pastor once and for all, in a rational nation — a great healthy nation populated by thoughtful citizens curious about their candidates for president, concerned about freedom and justice rather than the freak show of stray friends and associates that must surround every candidate, including John McCain (and by the way has anyone noticed that the most damaging dirt anyone has found on Obama is not even about the man himself? I mean how long has he been on the campaign trail? Isn’t that another unprecedented aspect of this election?), not a nation populated by hotheads easily distracted by any non-controversy kicked up by an irresponsible tabloid-TV journalism culture — sorry, where were we? — um, Obama said this:

But he was somebody who was my pastor, and married Michelle and I, and baptized my children…

Michelle and ME.

For fuck’s sake, people. What is the mental block here? But it happens to everyone, or every American, especially when they’re staring into klieg lights and TV cameras. Because we all had it drilled into our heads in second grade while we were subject to the half-assed grammatic tyranny of Mrs. Schneider, or whoever, telling us it was flat wrong to say anything resembling “Mrs. Schneider? Michelle and me kind of need to go to the bathroom?” That sounded so atrocious that Mrs. Schneider would give us a lecture — instead of letting anyone pee — along the lines of, “Always say ‘Michelle and I.’” And God help your soul if you dared to say “Me and Michelle.” I saw a boy flogged for that once in the locker hall.

But Mrs. Schneider was wrong. “Michelle and me” is right in certain cases, namely the accusative. There’s an easy way to check this point of grammar, even while you’re staring into klieg lights. Ask yourself if you would ever say, “He married I.” Sorry, bad example. How about: “He took I.” He was my pastor, he took Michelle and I to the store?

Does that sound like good grammar to you?

In some distant corners of the old British Empire it was called pidgin:

Old pirates, yes, they rob I
Sold I to the merchant ships
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit

But when educated Americans make this mistake, they’re not thinking about the eloquent poetic license of Ras Tafari. They think they sound educated.

     posted 2 May 2008 by Michael Scott Moore

  1. I hear and read stuff all the time that would make Mencken, Strunk or White roll over in their graves. My latest one is “more than” vs. “over.” “Over” is a physical description of the relationship between two objects, “more than” is when you say that there is something you are counting that consists of greater measurement when compared to another thing. I am pretty sure this is an old fashioned lost cause at this point, though. I am also annoyed at the destruction of the semi-colon; I can’t believe it is really going the way of the Dodo Bird.

    e

    — e    May 3, 11:14 am    #

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