The Cynic Express(d) 1.01: Arrogant Ignorance

          The print lay deep and crisp and even on the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of twenty pound white bond paper. Even so, I slammed the operation lever of the little Multilith press to the "Stop" position, and production of our print shop's sales flier halted after about fifty sheets had been marred. A passing supervisor caught my eye and frustrated beckoning and approached. "Look here," I pointed to a single word, unassuming and anonymous, in the last paragraph. "That's the wrong form of the participle."

          "What?" she looked at the copy and didn't see it.

          "It's already done, so it should be a past participle, with the 'ed' ending, not the 'ing.'"

     "What are you, an English major?" she smirked before assuring me that the copy was acceptable the way it was, and that I should run the job.

     I rankled at the brush-off, hackles and feathers ruffled and every portion of my body language that could become sharp and spiny did, As a matter of fact, I had been an English major. I rankled at the implication that the usage was wrong only to one with an English degree. That the error was trivial and unimportant, irrelevant since high school and the days of English II.

     I've seen that brush-off too many times. Whenever it comes in response to a grammatical correction, it's the "Oh, he's an English major." Or, if it is in something else entirely, such as pointing out that Na F is not the chemical representation of sodium fluoride (which is, by the way, NaF), I am branded the "college boy."

     So they shove me and my factual correctness into margin; the rules I speak of apply only to the aetherized world of intellectuals and academics, with the common man (I am assuming--forgive me for broad brushstrokes of hasty generalization, but I am "college boy") doing things the practical way or the way they have always been done (however incorrectly). They can take mirth in the foolish ideas the English major has (participles! Ha!) about the written communication and pride that they were too smart to fall for the rules.

     From whence does this arrogant ignorance spring? As I don't have it, I can only make wild hypotheses. Does it hearken them back to their happy high school days, when they could push around the intelligent-but-sometimes-unassertive students (or be relieved that it was not they who were the brunt of the other students' attacks)? Is it simply numerical superiority? Being the intellectual type, I must trace the phenomenon back to the anti-authoritarian, anti-aristocratic tradition in American history. The moneyed send their kids to college; college taints anyone with that scent, even students from rural trailer parks or urban housing projects. Why, Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, when dreaming up the democracy of the common man, had farmers in mind, not professors or students thereof. Of course, what has been lost in the Jeffersonian anti-authoritarian strain is the fact that the farmers he envisioned were well-read and self-educated.

     Wherever this Ignorance-To-Power comes from, we must deal with it. I can only recommend my technique: Retaliate with a little arrogance of your own. The worst one can do is let the matter drop, let the ignoramus propagate her worldview by putting the "college boy" on the Didde-Glaser in the place she has made up especially for him and his kind. I'm not afraid of my own righteousness, even if it at times seems like mere self-righteousness. I can back it up with facts. I realize that I am unlikely to inspire the other person to emulate my attention to detail and love of knowledge. Once she opens her mouth but not her mind, all I can do is slap her with a rolled-up piece of truth. The harder, the better.