John Nollson / Badtime for Bonzo
"John Nollson / Badtime for Bonzo" John Nollson BADTIME FOR BONZO There...
...Muggs stretched out his disproportionatelylong right arm and helped himself to one of the hard-boiled eggs which sat in a bowl in the middle of the table...
...Another reporter wanting to know about Reagan and evolution, I suppose," he said with an air of resignation...
...After all, we thought that Darwin would show us the way to true liberation and selffillfillment...
...Well," said Bonzo, as he picked up a well-thumbed copy of Loren Eiseley's book Darwin's Century, "we Bonzos started the disinformation campaign about Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, the notorious Chuck and AI show...
...The outcome allegedly showed that "at all levels of education people whose native tongue is English seem to know that he, him, and his are gender-specific [lovely word?] and cannot do the double duty" of representing both men and women...
...Now, I ask you, who shall prevail...
...Every time a politician speaks up for the ape family, you guys set out to ruin him," he said bitterly...
...That's not the point at all...
...Bonzo offered me some grudging praise since I was the first author to track him down--except for Irving Stone, of course, who spent hours interviewing him while writing a fictionalized account of the life of Charles Darwin...
...But for those who feel they've been left behind, well, they take it out on themselves...
...And who but a committed feminist would conduct such an investigation...
...You're trying to stop Ron from speaking out...
...But it isn't odd at all that the only authority of any kind whom Miller and Swift actually quote by name in this section of their book is not a grammarian, linguist, writer, or other word-oriented person, but an obscure psychologist now called Wendy Martyna, though in a book she edited in 1972 she was still Wendy Martin...
...He stays in touch with other animals of political reputation...
...Communism is an evolutionist plot...
...And not even rabbits could produce parthenogenetically a litter between a main and a subordinate clause...
...That is the key difference...
...What's to be gained by that...
...Isn't it odd that in no non-Englishspeaking country have women's groups found it necessary to quarrel in this mode with the language for psychopolitical (or is it psychopathological) reasons...
...It's a serious problem in our community...
...Bonzo and Muggs very graciously provided directions to Marineland of the Pacific where, they assured me, there were several intelligent and articulate dolphins who would confirm everything they had said...
...John Simon is the author, most recently, of Paradigms Lost...
...You're trying to stifle dissent...
...Those unnamed twins whose eyes brimmed over with tears of anger, humiliation, or righteous indignation at such organized grammatical misogyny, or the tradition of good English that has functioned for centuries, that accords with other Indo-European languages, and that, despite the unrecapturable feelings THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 29...
...Since then, the evolutionists have been fighting among themselves and writing nasty letters to each other...
...Bear in mind, however, that no change ever stops there, wherever the particular there may be...
...Besides, it's a bum rap...
...This use, therefore, "did not reflect a belief that masculine pronouns could refer to both sexes," our authors claim, on what evidence they do not choose to state...
...He reported that Checkers, Nixon's spaniel, has lapsed into senility but that Fala, Roosevelt's puppy, is still going strong in his sixtieth year...
...Muggs is still bitter about it...
...Back in England, he jumped on Thomas Huxley during one of his proevolution lectures...
...Afraid so," I replied sheepishly...
...I can't speak for my colleagues," I said firmly, "but all I am trying to do is to get the facts out to the American people...
...After all, Darwin put apes on the map, affording them the singular honor of being the progenitors of man...
...I was much encouraged by the upbeat tone the interview had taken and I thought it an appropriate time to depart...
...Take, for example, the war on the masculine pronoun in its all-encompassing sense...
...Evolution is not a Communist plot...
...to attempt to refute the Handbook point by point, I would have to write a book myself and stoop so low as to debate the authors about why I still prefer "manhole .cover" to their "utilityhole cover," the kind of casuistry I'd just as soon put a lid on...
...He shares a large condominium in Newport Beach with his old friend, J. Fred Muggs...
...I mean, if Darwin is to be believed, some of us, years ago, managed to break out of our condition and make it all the way to the top of the animal kingdom...
...I shall address my remarks chiefly to this...
...And, with that, he did indeed begin to weep, taking several minutes to regain his composure...
...Touch...
...In fact, he himself is the source of those rumors, for he feared that reporters would set upon him and give him no rest now that his former co-star is a prominent political figure...
...But then I pointed out to him that On the Origin of Species and the first volume of Capital were both published in 1859...
...My great-grandfather was one of tile first to challenge Darwin...
...tively long chapter on "The Pronoun Problem...
...We just spread the word that Chuck plagiarized the whole thing from AI...
...But along comes Governor Reagan, who does nothing more than give us a chance to regain our self-respect as a species, and the left-wing press jumps all over him...
...I remember when I first raised this subject with Ron many years ago...
...Not that," said Bonzo disgustedly...
...In their previous collaboration, Words and Women, our crusading authors wrote: At a meeting ofthe Modern Language Association the story was told of twin girls who came home from school in tears one day because the teacher had explained the grammatical rule mandating the use of he when the referent is indefinite or unknown...
...Anger...
...We don't want the responsibility," Bonzo said soberly...
...It is not till 1850, however, that "an Act of Parliament gave official sanction to the . . . 'generic' he . . . . The new law said, 'words importing the masculine gender shall be deemed and taken to include females.' " The authors conclude that "as a linguistic device imposed on the language rather than a natural development arising from a broad consensus [is there such a thing as a narrow consensus?] 'generic' he is fatally flawed...
...Some of us, ashamed of our apehood, are mired in self-hatred because we haven't evolved...
...I do not care how many good writers have at times fallen into such i l l o g i c - - t h e r e simply is no way in which anyone or everyone can suddenly multiply, as if it were a rabbit, into a they...
...They do not tell us, however, how and by whom these investigations were conducted...
...In the just-published Handbook of Nonsexist Writing," Casey Miller and Kate Swift--two journalists who previously collaborated on the book Words and Women--have a rela"l.ippincott, $8.95...
...But, along with like-minded feminists, Miller and Swift insist that "like 'generic' man, 'generic' he fosters the misconception that the standard human being is male...
...Typical human reasoning," Muggs said impatiently...
...His hand was a bit shaky as he reached for the cocktail shaker and filled his glass...
...He has a comfortable pension...
...I'd think you'd be pleased...
...If I were frivolous, I could remark that at least half of such statements carry a negative value, and that women might count themselves lucky to be excluded from such asseverations as "Everyone is dumber than he ought to be" or "Anyone can become the victim of his gullibility...
...When I think of all the time we Wasted back in the old days trying to kick the Communists out of the union, when what we really should have been doing was going after the evolutionists, why, it's enough to make a grown chimp weep...
...Now we know better...
...Left-wing press...
...Yes," Bonzo agreed...
...I asked...
...I wondered aloud...
...Miller and Swift then refer to "several recent systematic investigations of how people of both sexes use and understand personal pronouns...
...Bonzo did not perish in a tragic fire, as has been erroneously reported...
...Well, I could go out into the street right now to do a little questioning of my own and find contrary evidence aplenty...
...The most insightful is R. Bonzo himself, the engaging chimpanzee who once starred with Ronald Reagan in a classic Hollywood film...
...In fact, a logical mind might be thrown by Eliot's sentence, and go looking for some antecedent to they other than that inappropriate anyone...
...Gee," I was forced to admit, "I never realized that Darwin was a Marxist...
...They put the old boy away for that, but we've been getting even ever since...
...The humanoid ain't been evolved who can pull the wool over the eyes of an ape...
...Bonzo cut in...
...I asked reprovingly...
...How so...
...Chimpanzees, for example, happen to have exquisite table manners, but they succumb to anthropological s t e r e o t y p i n g - - j u s t like Muggs here--by scattering eggshells all over the place...
...Humiliation...
...A sense of injustice...
...The real point was that Marx was a Darwinist...
...I'm proud of Ron for the stand he has taken," Bonzo said the other day, as we sat at poolside sipping banana daiquiris...
...He took a sip as he studied me...
...That certainly places things in a new light...
...Years ago, just like everybody else, we used to be Democrats...
...Whole treatises have been written by feminists to prove the enormous psychic damage done to women by the grammatical masculinity of everyone and anyone--by our saying, for instance, "Everyone was in his place" or "Anyone can make up his own mind," and the like...
...You see," said Muggs, "it took us a while to sort things out...
...We weren't born yesterday, and we weren't created yesterday either...
...Miller and Swift's first point in the representative chapter under discussion is that when the early English grammarians used masculine pronouns in a seemingly bisexual way, they were actually writing "grammars . . . for male readers in an age when few women were literate...
...Were they really lovers...
...After all these years, we're finally on the right track," he resumed, "and this time we're not about to fail...
...At this point, Muggs, wearing a navy blue blazer, a light blue LaCoste shirt, and a pair of gleaming white trousers, limped out to the table...
...iQQ~Q0O0I6ii0Q0I000Q00gI~0i0~00000~0oQo606QQQIQQQQ0QoQI0gOQI0I0QqQ~Q~g000O6O~QIoQgg0IQQ0Q0Qo0g00~g0OI00OQ0000D~gQ~080~0IQI6e8~8~Q0Og0QQ0O000t00ggB0I~0doOQ0Ia John Nollson BADTIME FOR BONZO There are some who know more than others about the ongoing political struggle between evolutionists and creationists...
...I exclaimed incredulously...
...We were in favor of the welfare state and the progressive income tax...
...It is unlikely that any woman can recapture her feelings when the arbitrariness of that rule first struck her consciousness: it happened a long time ago, no doubt, and it was only one among many assignments to secondary status...
...We know about these things," said Muggs, seconding the suggestion of his friend...
...Such usage has allegedly convinced countless women through history that they were second-class citizens, excluded from full participation in humankind or, as male supremacists through the ages have called it, mankind...
...Humpf," said Bonzo, revealing his teeth as he curled back his upper lip...
...But little Beagle still has to wear a hearing aid to compensate for the damage caused by I.yndon Johnson's rough handling of his ears...
...Take the case of feminist English and its demands from, and depredations on, Standard English...
...Eventually, the three of them were replaced by Tom Brokaw, who is more handsome than all of them put together...
...A HANDBOOK FOR MAIDENS by John Simon What, one might well ask, does the sacrifice of a few words matter as long as the social fabric is strengthened thereby...
...But, until now, no one has bothered to seek them out...
...We're caught in the middle of this, and the result is predictable: We're finding that many of us have enormous self-esteem problems...
...Well, the zoo hasn't withered away as he predicted, and it's only recently that we've been able to recover from the 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1980 bitter disappointment of it all...
...We're just trying to speak up for our species, to defend ourselves from the charge that we are descendents of the lower animals on the one hand and ancestors of the higher animals on the other...
...As he picked at the shell, his voice took on a tone of unexpected hostility...
...Sometimes, he used to cling lovingly to the eversmiling Jack Lescoulie...
...But let me be strictly serious...
...Grammarians, they continue, later invented the so-called "generic" he in an attempt to change the long-established English usage (as Miller and Swift call it) of "they as a singular pronoun," of which they give quite a few examples from good writers, e.g., Lord Chesterfield's remark, "If a person is born of a gloomy temper . . . they cannot help it...
...Bonzo explains that he joined the Screen Actors Guild at Reagan's urging...
...Muggs, as many remember, used to cling lovingly to Dave Garroway on the old "Today" show...
...These days, Bonzo ?9p refers to live quietly...
...For much as our embattled authors advocate such constructions as "I shouldn't like to punish anyone, even if they'd done me wrong" (this from George Eliot), the construction is manifestly illogical and grates on any ear connected to a thinking brain...
...What emotions had reduced them to tears...
...if by committed feminists, the results would most likely reflect what the investigators set out to prove...
...Much as Chuck and AI were willing to defame us apes, we've never responded in kind...
...For the first time in 50 years, we're finally getting a bit of attention as a political issue, and you guys are doing your best to smother it...
...He used to be a Democrat, you know, and that's why he believed in evolution...
...This was no accident, no mere coincidence...
Vol. 13 • November 1980 • No. 11
