Airplane movie, "I speak Jive", wasRe: Proposition 227 (was Re: NP Ebonics)

[Prsamsa at aol.com]

Oops, sorry to misthumb and send a blank letter to Jbon.

All this Ebonics debate reminds me, finally of the scene in the movie 
"Airplane"
where a passenger volunteers "I speak Jive" and subtitles run across the 
screen.  
It left me ROFL.  

What's being argued here?   Whether black dialect is a good or bad thing?   
No, it seems whether the teaching of it is wise..   If a school district 
wants to teach anything and has the funds, let them.  

Also it seems that black dialect especially as it shades into hipster dialect 
is subversive, creative and and grows out of a need for community.  

I remember growing up oh some time ago and and years of words like gross,
great, REAlly, cool (of course), goddam (reading Catcher in the Rye), stuff, 
chicks, 
hip (people reading brautigan) hep (reading Joyce and Fitzgerald), wow, 
vibes, karmic, blue, blah, bad and BAAad,  hysterical, mystical, right on 
(really, people
use to say that a lot, the folk historian in me insists), crappy, crumby, 
zap, grass,
cosmic,  catch-22 (applied to most of the compromises of adult life, it 
seemed), 
and  the days looking out the window of class at the snow or rain or May sun 
(summer was gonna be GREAT)--Boooring was a great putdown, and a Nixon was a 
jive turkey--Mr. Sikorski and his paddle in the principle's office were like, 
medieval,
man--(Am sure any folk historian can place my age within a 3-5 years w/clews)

And to lead this back on topic, I think the dialog in TP's work goes from 
bland to accurate to brilliant (it took me two or three readings to get the 
joke about Dave (jazz
pianist, memory fails me) and his hamhands on p.   of Slow Learner, Entropy), 
because as many have said, his fiction uses dialog like movies, esp. like 
B-movies
or noir gems, there's no wasted motion, and especially he's learned NOT to 
pontificate like some 50's writers like--okay less name names.   Ayn Rand is 
brilliant when you're 18, by age 30 you oughta realize her ideas may be valid 
but her prose style is pathetic.     

Of course, if only America had been "enlightened" enough to let her speak 
Russian when she got here, we'd have been spared some idealogical 
blunderbusses.  

My hip has hopped onto the shady side, raining out, good to read a few posts 
today.

Samsa.  
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