English M*!@#*f*!@#*...Do You Speak It?!?

The other day at the Barney’s warehouse sale, I saw two Russians invade and occupy a rack of neckties marked up to 70% off of their original prices. At least, that’s what I thought they were doing, I don’t speak Russian. And lucky for them because they were talking loud enough for the whole room to hear them; and believe you me, I would have gladly sacrificed the armload of goodies I was holding to keep that treasure trove out of the hands of the Reds. But a moment’s hesitation caught me flat footed as I wondered whether they maybe just thought this was a black market of some kind (after all, there was a shockingly high number of security guards (who demonstrated a shockingly low level of productivity)). If they thought they were going to find a crucible of yellowcake under the discarded remnants of DKNY’s bad year at the office, I wasn’t going to be the one to stop them.

This raises the much larger but less national-security-related issue of people speaking foreign languages loudly in public places where others cannot understand them. Now I’m going to pick up where your mothers left off (or rather never started) and pull a page straight out of Miss Manners: this is RUDE! No one cares what you say in your home or what you whisper privately to the boy walking with you hoping that you get laryngitis. What makes this behavior so abhorrent is that it shows a conscious disregard for the other human beings in your presence.

I know I’m not alone in this. Joe Biden can’t even stand to be around people who speak English with an accent. Having to deal with someone who doesn’t speak English at all would probably make his hairs stand on end. And who could blame him? If you don’t take a stand early, you could end up with some kind of fungus.

On the other side of the coin (which ironically contains words in Latin) there are the feelings and sensitivities of the non-natives to consider. Perhaps carving out a bubble of isolation in our helter-skelter discount-seeking marketplace of ideas is exactly the respite they need after a long hard day of enjoying personal freedom and living under the blanket of protection afforded by our massive national security apparatus. After all, George Washington was mister isolationist (he would have won Mister Universe as well but it turns out he was bald as a ripe tomato without the powdered wigs).

Coming back to my side of the coin, I say go isolate yourself at home. The world is filled with enough misunderstanding and egoism to sink the ship that brought you here. I’d prefer you not go to such pains to make it clear that you see me as a household moveable that you are free to alternatively ignore and hold your drinks without a coaster. I am a human being, not a human thinking, not a human doing, and not a human who is afraid to knock the teeth out of a mouth that does not treat me as such.