DISORDER(S): Two little girls teach a valuable lesson!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2024

As does their great aunt: As happenstance has it, we'll be seeing one of our own great nieces today.

Her parents are driving her north from Durham, then farther north from here. She's lucky enough to be on her way to her freshman year in college. 

She's lucky enough to be very involved in her schoolwork and in track. She's happy and excited to be taking this step.

That would be one of our (truly great) great nieces. Last night, there they were—two great nieces of Candidate Harris. Capably joined by Kerry Washington, they were teaching a valuable lesson:

LITTLE GIRL ONE (8/22/24): Hi, everybody! My name's Amara.

LITTLE GIRL TWO: And my name's Leela, her little sister.

WASHINGTON: And what are you here to do?

AMARA: To teach you how to say our auntie's name...

We're going to let NPR place its own framework around the event. Headline included, here's their account, even as the org provides videotape of the entire lesson:

How do you pronounce Kamala's name? Her great-nieces gave the DNC a lesson

Actress Kerry Washington introduced two of Kamala Harris’ great-nieces to set the record straight on how to pronounce their auntie’s name.

“Confusion is understandable,” Washington said on the oft-repeated mispronunciations of the vice president’s name. “Disrespect is not. So tonight, we are going to help everyone get it right.”

Harris’ nieces, Amara and Leela then joined Washington on stage.

“First you say ‘Kama,’ like a comma in a sentence,” Amara said.

“Then you say ‘La,’ like ‘la-la-la-la-la,’” little sister Leela pitched in, repeating the sound like a melody.

“Put it together,” Washington said, “And it’s Kamala!”

Former President Trump has repeatedly mispronounced Harris’ first name. At one rally in July, he said: “I couldn’t care less if I mispronounce it. I couldn’t care less.”

"Doe, a deer, a female deer?" We couldn't help being reminded!

In its account, NPR chose to quote the other candidate. For the record, he has done more than mispronounce the name in question. He has often delivered childish, mocking lectures about the three million different ways Candidate Harris allegedly says her own name.

NPR chose to mention Trump. Watching last night's lesson in how to say it, we thought of the relentless garbage can conduct broadcast each day by the Fox News Channel. 

We also thought of what Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) recently said on CNN. Truly, this was gruesome:

MACE (8/15/24): I will say "Kamala" any way that I want to...

In our view, Mace had lured two other panelists into taking the bait. But that statement by Mace taught a valuable lesson all by itself—a real lesson in something resembling a type of disrespect.

Regarding the Fox News Channel:

Luckily, it's as we've constantly told you. Luckily, there's no such thing as horrible people. 

If there were such a thing as horrible people, the channel would perhaps be the employer of possibly more than a few. They persist in their bungled pronunciations of the candidate's first name, long after it's been explained—again and again and again and again—how the name is pronounced.

To his credit, Greg Gutfeld pronounces the name correctly, though things tend to go downhill from there. Many others don't pronounce it correctly. Borrowing from Joyce, we'd say the disrespect is general over this propaganda network as its news directors—its suits—let this childish Babel continue.

If there were such a thing as bad people, some of these people might qualify, Luckily, we know that no such critters exist.

Capably assisted by Washington, Amara and Leela taught a valuable lesson last night. Later, so did their great aunt in an extremely well written, extremely well delivered speech.

In fact, their great aunt taught several lessons—for example, in how to move on:

In the words she chose to say, her political party was moving on from its not infrequent over-reliance on certain aspects of "identity" discourse. Beyond that, she and her convention were teaching a lesson in how to embody the change you seek, as opposed to the less effective practice of talking about it.

Our nation's various "demographic groups" filled the hall for four consecutive nights. 

As we all know, our benighted ancestors set in motion a series of brutal historical lessons which built our culture around the idea that we aren't just a bunch of people. Instead, our culture teaches that different types of people exist.

"Race" is just a social construct, the liberal world has been saying at least since the 1960s. That said, "race" is also one of the cornerstones our national culture was built upon, and it's very, very. very hard to turn a nation's culture around once it's deeply embedded in the soil.

Of course, people are still treated as if they belong to a "race." But the hall was filled with every demographic this week—and we were struck, as we watched, by the lack of awkwardness or discomfort on display as members of those various groups sat side-by-side, stood shoulder-to-shoulder, in that very large, very crowded hall.

The delegates seemed to be completely at ease with each other. Last night, up stepped the great aunt herself, who may also become the commander in chief. 

To our eye and ear, she performed a seamless transition into a type of American future as she said such things as these: 

HARRIS (8/22/24): As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families.

And I will always honor, and never disparage, their service and their sacrifice.

As a general matter, we're not in favor of killing people. That said, she conveyed the clear sense that she meant what she said—and she showed us what it looks like for a woman to adopt this role in a way which looks and sounds completely normal and convincing.

All in all, we'd relate the change she embodied to this other part of her speech:

HARRIS: Our opponents in this race are out there, every day, denigrating America, talking  about how terrible everything is. 

Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach. Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.

We'd say she showed us the change last night, without feeling the need to tell us what the change is. As we watched, we thought about one of our favorite passages from literature. 

We've posted this passage before.  We hope we can cite it again without seeming to be condescending. It's all part of the human experience.

The passage comes from Book II, Chapter 9 of Willa Cather's My Antonia. Cather's narrator—a very thinly disguised, gender-switched version of Cather herself—talks about the way the girls and young women he admired so much in his youth had finally emerged in a way which had long been earned, deserved.

These were the immigrant girls and young immigrant women of Cather's late 19th century Nebraska youth. Cather's narrator was gratified but unsurprised by their earned emergence:

My Antonia: Book II, Chapter 9

[...]

The American farmers in our county were quite as hard-pressed as their neighbors from other countries. All alike had come to Nebraska with little capital and no knowledge of the soil they must subdue. All had borrowed money on their land. But no matter in what straits the Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would not let his daughters go out into service. Unless his girls could teach a country school, they sat at home in poverty. 

The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers, because they had had no opportunity to learn the language. Determined to help in the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had no alternative but to go into service [within the homes of native-born families]. Some of them, after they came to town, remained as serious and as discreet in behavior as they had been when they ploughed and herded on their father’s farm. Others, like the three Bohemian Marys, tried to make up for the years of youth they had lost. But every one of them did what she had set out to do, and sent home those hard-earned dollars. The girls I knew were always helping to pay for ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten.

One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were out of debt, the daughters married the sons of neighbors—usually of like nationality—and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day managing big farms and fine families of their own; their children are better off than the children of the town women they used to serve.

I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls very stupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard’s grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn’t speak English. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence or cultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Ántonia’s father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they were all Bohemians, all “hired girls.”

I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls come into their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawk merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemian and Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses...

Cather always knew she'd live long enough to see those young women come into their own! There's much, much more to that superb and ardent chapter, but we thought of that passage as we watched the convention last night.

The nominee still has a long way to go. Victory isn't assured. She'll be tested in various ways.

Sadly, two little girls had to go on the stage last night to teach people like Mace a bone-simple lesson. Our guess?

They'll still be mispronouncing that name on the Fox News Channel. That channel teaches an anthropology lesson, one we expect to explore in more detail in the coming weeks.

As for our own great niece, she's fortunate enough to be off to college, and to be excited and hopeful about it. We remember her when she was even younger than the two girls who had to take the stage last night--for example, on the Thanksgiving of the year when she was 3-and-a-half.

Luckily, there's no such thing as horrible people. That said, top anthropologists widely agree:

We the humans do in fact frequently wander astray.

That's even true within our own tribe! We'll also be detailing that.