My mom has always said that she would make a great director of hell. She'd design fitting punishments for child molestors, rapists, murderers, and wayward televangelists, and once word got out, maybe things would change here. I'm not really patient enough to wait for my mom's new job, because I've got someplace I'd like to send syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker right now.
Parker generally annoys me enought that I can only skim through her columns or risk precipitous blood pressure rises. The day they run her column in the Livingston Enterprise is naturally less painful than the days they run Bill O'Reilly, but it's close. Her column in yesterday's paper was what made me want to arrange a nice long trip for her:
Para espanol, oprima el dos.
Even if one does not speak Spanish, most Americans are familiar with those words. They hear them nearly any time they make a call to the phone, utility or other company that offers service in two languages. "For Spanish, press two."
Even though I speak and love Spanish, I find myself increasingly annoyed by this unsubtle notice that the U.S. is gradually becoming a bilingual nation.
Clearly, Ms. Parker has never once tried to deal with bureaucracy in anything other than her native language. Which brings me to her trip. I'd like to drop-kick her into, say, Bolivia, and let her make her way with her evidently sparkling Spanish. She'd be there to stay, so it will be incumbent upon her to learn to speak banking Spanish, plumber Spanish, phone company Spanish, tax Spanish, landlord Spanish, and so on. Once she's tried fumbling through the dictionary to try to find the proper words to say, "The telephone you promised me 27 days ago has still not been installed in my flat, and yet you expect me to pay the equivalent of $55 per month for the privilege of waiting for your installer," I'm guessing she might feel a little more charitable about American companies that offer their services in more than one language.
Here's my other problem with her jump from dual-language phone operators to everyone overthrowing hamburgers for tacos: It's a long, long road from having more than one language available to people to a "bilingual nation." For one thing, in order to be a bilingual nation, we'd have to have effective foreign language instruction starting in grade school. And for another, what in diablo's name would be wrong with having a bilingual nation anyway? Doesn't she know we're the laughingstock of the world for thinking everyone everywhere should speak Goddamn English? What would be wrong with a little bilingualism?
When we were living in the Czech Republic, I maintained a little love in my heart for every company that offered English-language operators. It wasn't because I couldn't speak Czech and it wasn't because I thought the Czechs should take on English as an official language. It was because it is so much easier to express abstract and difficult concepts--and talk on the phone--in one's mother tongue. That's just a fact. Companies in the U.S. that offer service in more than one language understand that fact and cater to it because it makes good business sense, not because they are being forced into it by some radical, English-hating mob.
So, Kathleen, enjoy Bolivia. I think you'll especially enjoy the part where you try to explain to the only-Spanish-speaking doctor where it hurts. Or to the immigration police how you got there.
