| Subject: Live Music Fan |
Author:
Whitney Rice
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Date Posted: 22:08:43 03/07/02 Thu
You know, there's nothing like quality intellectual discussion and commentary on the Internet. The web is such a great forum for America's young people to show the world that they are fluent in well-articulated evaluative thought. We find just such an example of our generation's contribution to the annals of edifying criticism in the posting of one "Live Music Fan." Perusing this gem of thoughtful and pointed editorial response to the music section of Jason's site, I know that I feel as historians must feel when reading Thomas Jefferson's political and literary commentary--truly in awe of the breadth of knowledge displayed by a mind of unparalled analytical power. Oh, but wait, I guess the historians shouldn't be in awe, because, after all, "history's not that tough. It's not like it ever changes."
Jason mentioned in an email an invitation to comment on the grammar of "Live Music Fan." I felt that a posting of this caliber--unbiased in outlook, elegant in expression and form, original in content--deserved a thorough syntactical evaluation. I have harbored hopes of writing like "Live Music Fan"(hereinafter "LMF") one day myself, but after examining the work, I fear that I will never attain his level of genius. I feel that I am qualified to examine the posting grammatically and stylistically inasmuch as I received the highest score in the nation, a perfect score incidentally, on the ACT English portion as a 7th grader, aged 12 (forgive my tooting my own horn, but God forbide the "LMF" feel slighted by having his posting criticized by an amateur) and received my status as a National Merit Scholar based partly on a perfect English score on the SAT.
But all of that pales in light of the literary acumen of "LMF." My analysis revealed that he made a total of 51 grammatical and syntactical mistakes in his posting of only 17 sentences. That averages out to three mistakes per sentence. According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Literacy Standards, by the 2nd grade students should have mastered "speaking and writing standard English including grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization" (and I'm totally serious, I actually researched this). "LMF" did not show mastery or even awareness of any of these categories, leading us to the unfortunate conclusion that, intellectually, he is below the level of an average second grader.
Thus my contribution to Jason's web commentary highlights the achievements of "LMF" in particular and America's youth in general from the communications perspective. I have made no effort to comment on the clearly contradictory and blatantly untrue and unsupported aspects of the posting; I found ample material in the presentation itself. I would like to thank "LMF" for sharing his mental prowess and valuable opinions. He has provided us with just one more example of the continuing downward trend in American education and intelligence that will soon result in the average U.S. citizen's IQ being significantly lower than that of the average cornflake. I rest my case.
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