I'm not sure if it's a coincidence here that USC was the business that so many well-heeled L.A. types were willing to cheat in order to get their adult children enrolled.

The modern American college, it seems, exemplifies all the worst traits of Big Church and Big Business: the ridiculous shibboleths of the former and the exorbitant costs of the latter. I hope more people tumble to the fact that both are entirely optional, rather than worthy life goals.

On the other hand, here's Mr. Patton's faculty bio:

Greg Patton is an expert in communication, interpersonal and leadership effectiveness. He has received numerous teaching awards, been ranked as one of the top teaching faculty at USC and helped USC Marshall achieve numerous #1 worldwide rankings for Communication and Leadership skill development. Professor Patton has extensive international experience, has trained, coached and mentored thousands of leaders worldwide, and created scores of successful leadership programs. He has advised on several hundred consulting engagements throughout the Pacific Rim, serves as a keynote speaker and has held more than twenty leadership positions in national and international organizations.

I'm not sure how one is certified "an expert in communication, interpersonal and leadership effectiveness," nor even what that job description means. "Advised on several hundred consulting engagements" is even less clear. Regardless, there seem to be plenty of people willing to fork over major cash to have their children taught by him. Me, I'm not weeping many tears over the loss to American pedagogy here.

Strictly speaking, anybody who speaks Chinese needs to be sanctioned in one way or another.

These whining students exemplify the Chinese proverb, "A man wishing to be unhappy finds many ways to prove his course."

"Colleges Are Now Run By Weak Morons Sucking Up To The Woke"

Welcome to the year 2000.

Welcome to the year 2000. ~ Ben at September 6, 2020 7:02 AM

Go back farther than that, Ben. The '60s is when the inmates began taking over the asylum; when student groups occupied offices on campus with sit-ins and no one in authority did anything to evict them, instead appeasing them by listening to and eventually meeting their demands.

That yesterday's student radicals are today's establishment only increases the unwillingness of the establishment to cross the students to maintain some semblance of order. There are mechanisms for protest and redress of grievances that don't involve obstructing the populace from making a living.

BUT IT WASN'T RACIST LANGUAGE! IT WAS A CHINESE FILLER WORD.

Don't you understand? That doesn't matter, not anymore.

When a mayoral aide in DC used "niggardly" in a private conversation in 1999 and was fired for it, the warning flag went up. Anything that sounds even remotely like a racial epithet is verboten, no matter its actual lineage, usage, or meaning. What a word sounds like is more important than what it actually means - mostly because people don't know what those words mean anymore.

This goes back to our earlier thread about reading for pleasure and developing communication skills. People today, less likely to read for pleasure than their ancestors, have smaller vocabularies and struggle with the nuances of written and even spoken language.

Psychologist Jean Twenge, in her introduction to a recent paper on vocabulary decline in Americans:

We examined trends over time in vocabulary, a key component of verbal intelligence, in the nationally representative General Social Survey of U.S. adults (n=29,912). Participants answered multiple-choice questions about the definitions of 10 specific words. When controlled for educational attainment, the vocabulary of the average U.S. adult declined between the mid-1970s and the 2010s. Vocabulary declined across all levels of educational attainment (less than high school, high school or 2-year college graduate, bachelor's or graduate degree), with the largest declines among those with a bachelor's or graduate degree. [emphasis mine]

Television is again being proposed as the likely cause of the initial declines, since that decline was in early Boomers, the first generation regularly exposed to television; a generation in which reading canonic literature began declining. The post 2008 declines would seem to reflect the growing importance of cell phones and texting as a widely-used means of communication.

What a curious phenomenon.. . letting history's losers set the terms of the culture. There is precedent. Pontius Pilate ordered the crucifixion and then went to wash his hands.

We need plenty more like Greg Patton. Competency is in short supply.

"when student groups occupied offices on campus with sit-ins and no one in authority did anything to evict them"

Stakes for men then: getting drafted into an undeclared war being endlessly maintained for political points and losing life and/or limb in that cynical exercise, then coming home to be abandoned by your government, succumb to PTSD, or rot from exposure to Agent Orange.

Stakes for men now: Instagram popularity.

A man in a midwestern office (Indiana?) some years ago was into Scottish culture and was talking about his clan colors (not Klan)--ie his tartan and got fired. Once the black co-worker was offended, no amount of explanation was sufficient. Two male students in a frat were playing ping pong by an open window. The black student was calling the white student N-word ("okay N-word, stop this serve") and someone passing by called the admin. Do they want to prove that having black workers is bad for business, because that is what they seem to be trying to do.

You can't teach a class about black authors because they use the N word in their writings or even the title. Can't teach a law class about libel or fighting words or racial incitement because you have to use bad words. Can't teach a law class about rape because the poor snowflakes melt even hearing about it. But it doesn't matter because the Minn DA (or MN DA or such) says you should just call a social worker about rape because it isn't that big a deal.

Wow! that is quite a stretch!

See if this link let's Amy's readers hear the actual sound:

https://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chinese-english/translation-nage_that.htm

Ignore the ad at the top and click the blue arrow in the table.

Sure, sometimes the first syllable is pronounced more like "nei" as in rhymes with the Month of May, or like the nei in neighbor. But even that is a stretch!

So, do these same folks (oh, can I say "folks" as it sounds to close to the other F word?) think that Spanish shouldn't be spoken because of the color for black in Spanish?

P.S. Sorry Richard, I do speak Mandarin.

Cross-language wrong meanings are everywhere. In Farsi, Ann means shit which is a source of endless hilarity. Other words too.

"Negro" is just "black" in spanish, and we now say "black" without any repercussions ("black lives matter" blah blah) but not "negro".

If you want to be offended, there are infinite opportunities. Firing people for this is insane.

But the Chinese are dirty racists!
Speaking Mandarin words is also racist!
White, CIS male speaking Mandarin must be an Imperial Wizard of the Klan!!!

> Stakes for men now:
> Instagram popularity.

Taibbi considers your idea in greater & glorious detail.

The Chinese are unspeakably vile for having such a vile homonym in their language. How dare they say "nega, nega" and unmeasurable hurt to all the woke The Chinese must be shamed, the Chinese must be cancelled, the woke must stop eating Chinese food.

The Chinese are unspeakably vile for having such a vile homonym in their language. How dare they say "nega, nega" and unmeasurable hurt to all the woke The Chinese must be shamed, the Chinese must be cancelled, the woke must stop eating Chinese food.

The Chinese are unspeakably vile for having such a vile homonym in their language. How dare they say "nega, nega" and unmeasurable hurt to all the woke The Chinese must be shamed, the Chinese must be cancelled, the woke must stop eating Chinese food.

The Chinese are unspeakably vile for having such a vile homonym in their language. How dare they say "nega, nega" and unmeasurable hurt to all the woke The Chinese must be shamed, the Chinese must be cancelled, the woke must stop eating Chinese food.

Is USC going to take the only fair and appropriate action possible in this situation, and expel all Mandarin speakers?
The only problem with that is the average IQ of its student body would drop 20 points.