Friday, November 15, 2019

dumb is preferable?

Worth observing?

A question I don't know how to state clearly ... but something like this:

In a comedy movie, perhaps, a rap-happy black person comes head to head with a well-educated white person. The comedy rests on the fact that the well-educated (wo)man struggles to bring his or her lingo in sych with the black person's rap. The flubs are endless.

I can think of zero instances in which the rat-a-tat-tat rapper attempts to bring his or her linguistic abilities to align with the educated (wo)man's capacities.

This needs to be stated more clearly and I can't seem to do it. The dumber version invariably wins out. The smarter version is left to languish. Why is the one acceptable and even funny, while the other is not?

This needs to be brushed off and clarified. I feel inadequate to the task and yet think it is an interesting social question. Why is dumber better or more acceptable or whatever?

Why is "nucular" acceptable when the word is "nuclear," for a small side-light example. Why is "ast" OK when the word is "ask?"

There's a question in here somewhere ....

I'll come back to it, perhaps.

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