Miles Taylor, an anti-Trump die-hard Republican and former Trump appointed U.S. Department of Home Security Chief of Staff tweeted yesterday, “Donald Trump is a man without character… it’s why me and my colleagues have spoken out against him.”
Taylor has an American University arts degree and scholarship-funded Master of Philosophy degree from Oxford. Given these supposed educational qualifications how is his illiteracy possible?
Surely when writing “me has spoken out…” this would immediately feel massively wrong, but apparently not so.
My (assumption) explanations are first, this four year’s old speech says everything about contemporary university degrees, so many nowadays being a joke in any intellectual or academic sense.
The second possibility, indeed probability, is Taylor is not a reader. No book reader could possibly write “…me has spoken out…” any more than they would hack off their feet and eat them uncooked.
It’s odds on Taylor suffers from cell-phone addiction, a modern day plague only now being appreciated as to its immensely mind-rotting effects.
Consider this incident a few days ago. Strolling past one of my CBD office buildings with two new female employees, we entered the ground floor foyer to look at the artwork.
There we encountered a ferrety looking middle-aged bloke barking into a cell-phone. I told him to piss off and go into the street. His response,
“I had the courtesy not to enter the lifts and use the phone in a confined space with other people.”
To see any logic in that suggests serious mental decay.
First, it wasn’t an issue of options as it’s not bloody compulsory to bellow into those things in public spaces.
Second, as I pointed out to him, I don’t want to encounter him having a crap in our foyer and excusing it on the grounds he “didn’t do it in a crowded lift”.
He scuttled off to the lifts, hopefully a visitor as we try and maintain standards re lessees, such as no fat buggers for example.
Here’s another observation re cell-phones. Newspapers frequently show photos of people leaving courts in which they’re up on criminal charges or taking a beating in a civil matter. Almost without exception they’re shown bawling into a cell-phone.
I have a fairly extrovert nature, live a busy life and enjoy socialising with a wide range of people yet I’ve never once used a cell-phone, indeed I wouldn’t know how to. Despite that handicap I seem to struggle by somehow.
So back to the beginning, I’d wager serious money Miles Taylor is a cell-phone addict.
7 Comments
Perhaps Sir Bob you are familiar with the quip, “How do you know the difference between a kiwi businessman and a Japanese businessman”. The Kiwi has the groomed appearance, the bespoke suit with hand finished stitching, the corporate tie, the patent soft leather Italian shoes, and always a cellphone, the most modern up to date cellphone, constantly at his ear. The Japanese man has the groomed appearance, the bespoke suit with hand finished stitching, the corporate tie, the patent soft leather Italian shoes, But he is elegantly devoid of any cellphone, No the Japanese businessman has a “man” who has a cell phone.
I see Sir Bob, you are the exception yet again to the kiwi businessman mould, you dont have a cellphone, but I suspect one up on the Japanese, you have a Solicitor that has a cellphone. Hmmm
Apropos the misuse of me when it should be I, could you add the misuse of myself when it ought to be I to your campaign for better grammar, please.
Please add the word ‘premise’ which is frequently used (even on signboards!)) to describe a property. Premises – singular and plural. On that premise I am correct!
Bob – you must be cell phonaphobic
Cell phones are excellent for recent generations who in my opinion want to appear important in public -having turned on God they find a purposeless meaningless life (as Richard Dawkins has informed readers of in the Blind Watchmaker ) is a bitter pill to swallow
No worse than those who insist on saying “between you and I”.
Perhaps Mr Taylor is simply playing to his audience? Although this seems exceptionally sad.
Finally read through the backlog of articles now that I have a little more time now a saga of family tragedy is (hopefully) in the rear view mirror. I am back in Wellington till the end of the week and must say it is nice to see the new building coming along.
As to this article it’s a sad but true state of affairs there are so few of us now with no predilection to develop phone or social media use with their addictive qualities. Even still reasonably recently escaping from university with a traditional education as I did – I will always be the first to attest the abysmal and slipping standards of education institutions. It was the counterpart time I spent while not in University that really supplemented or indeed majorly contributed to my own education.
Learning in a self-directed fashion of course always continues, but the internet will continue to capture a greater share of that pie for the majority of people.
For many the inflating cost of university education is getting harder and harder to stomach in an age of physical distancing where the universities have been effectively selling their online competitor’s product for a year at massive markup before looking to switch back.
Of course if you think about it for but a moment one is not really paying for knowledge, which is freely available and largely not gatekept, even in the university lecture theatres themselves.
Instead it is things like the prestige, the ‘experience’ of campus life, the potential networking, and the accreditation of the piece of paper that are really what the money gets you. Universities only have a clear monopoly on one of those things, and with several factors like the declining standards it becomes a legitimate question if it is even worth it.
Arguably the letter of acceptance to places like the Ivy League is probably worth 80% of the final degree.
The observation about phone use outside courts is one I have made myself, but I expect many people just have an overwhelming impulse to promptly inform someone of their activity there.