Cursive: Hopefully A Lost Art

Can we quit teaching kids how to write in cursive? Seriously. It�s outdated. Eighteenth and nineteenth century clerks were trained to write in the exact same script to create an air of professionalism in correspondence. They did well � look how pretty the Declaration of Independence is. That was fine for awhile, but then the typewriter came along. Cursive was still more aesthetically pleasing that the half-assed Times New Roman that typewriters used, so cursive lived on. Now we have computers; now cursive must die. No one can read that shit anyway.

The world is run by cursive�s ugly cousin � printing. This is the direct result of developed technology. While computers are perfectly capable of producing script fonts, printed fonts are simply easier to read. Almost every book, newspaper, magazine and website therefore communicates through a printed font � one that is standardized and can be infinitely modified for aesthetic purposes. This creates for fewer encounters with what has become the cryptic language of cursive. I propose we let cursive join eight-tracks, washboards and irons that are actually made of iron on a museum shelf somewhere where it can be ignored for decades to come.

I don�t even know what a cursive Q looks like. Lowercase g, q, and y all wind up looking the same. Many adults have handwriting that is hard enough to read when each letter is composed on its own � trying to mash the ends of each letter together creates a page bearing a greater resemblance to a Rorschach inkblot test than a piece of writing. It�s time to break the allegiance to cursive and let our elementary school students focus on printing. Perhaps moving beyond cursive can do for handwriting what moving beyond the abacus did for math.

K.E.W.L. and the Gang

I almost didn�t click on the link to the news article �French Movie Producer Sues Google.� Oh my. Google/YouTube/MySpace has been sued. Someone call Reuters. However, since it was approaching 2 a.m. on a Thursday night and I wasn�t exactly busy, I said what the hell. Jean-Francois Lepetit, the producer of the film �The World According to Bush� is suing Google for making his video freely available on Google Video France. It seemed a bit ironic to me that the producer of such a politically oriented movie would be upset about spreading his opinion and influencing others. This irony was solidified after I read the description of �The World According to Bush.�

The first sentence of the synopsis doesn�t make any sense. Since I was only about twenty-five words I thought about letting it slide given that the film is French and the author of the synopsis is obviously (at least hopefully) not a native English speaker. I quickly came to my senses. If you are going to write a description of a movie that you know is going to offend Americans (at least 38% as of 11/19/06) and you are not able to write properly in English, hire someone to do it for you. Aside from just looking bad, it creates doubt about the researcher�s ability to properly comprehend things he has read or observed in English. If the first sentence tarnished credibility, the second obliterated it. What was this terrible infraction? William Karel and Eric Laurent (the film�s writers whom I will refer to as K.E.W.L.) point out how the �quiet dynasty� of the Bushes is �an unprecedented phenomenon in American history.� Of the forty-three United States Presidents, six have easily traceable familial relationships. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of William Henry Harrison. John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams. Oops. Looks like it isn�t without precedent. Once I was done deciding that K.E.W.L. can�t really speak English (despite Laurent having an apparent Berkeley education � I won�t count him as representative of UC Berkeley graduates) and don�t do accurate research, I was ready to finish reading the synopsis.

As the description of the movie rambles on, it tries to establish that the bin Ladens (hopefully not implying Osama) indirectly financed George W. Bush�s political career. I don�t mention hoping K.E.W.L. wasn�t implying Osama because I am afraid of establishing a connection between W and Osama, but rather because the bin Ladens publicly disowned Osama in 1994 making them just another Saudi Arabian family. Surely there isn�t any reason to object to an American family and a Saudi Arabian family being business partners. But just for fun, let�s go along with it and connect the dots between the bin Ladens� money and President Bush. If we do that, we have one more dot to add. K.E.W.L. and the gang themselves. So if the bin Ladens finance Bush, and K.E.W.L. makes money off a movie they made about Bush, K.E.W.L.�s profits are the direct result of terrorism. Doesn�t make sense? Neither does saying Osama funded Bush�s ascension.

��The World According to Bush� is based on fully verified facts and eyewitness accounts.� I tried my best to hold back laughter, but after the so called �unprecedented dynasty� I couldn�t help it. Maybe he meant based on like the movie �Rudy� was based on the Notre Dame football player. If you love the movie and don�t understand that, don�t look into it � it will just upset you.

The rest of the summary rattles off the usually �Bush is evil� rhetoric focusing on the current administration�s foreign policy. In a poorly constructed and drawn out analogy, K.E.W.L. claim the rest of the world is confined to playing an extra opposite Washington. From movie writers and apparent political analysts, I expect a little more. Maybe they were planning on using the money they made from this movie to pay for film school to learn about protagonist/antagonist relationships with extras and how to effectively convey a message without simply juxtaposing speeches and interviews in the same manner which Comedy Central news anchors use for cheap laughs. I also find it a bit funny that this movie protesting the extreme power of President bush comes from France. You know France, it�s that country where the president is directly chosen by the French electorate and then appoints a prime minister and cabinet who are responsible to parliament while the president remains unaccountable. Shall we talk concentration of power?

Now call me picky, but the synopsis concludes with a list of countries in which the movie was shown. One such country was Middle East. Who is the leader of old Middle East these days anyway? Middle East sure did well in the last Olympics! On my recent visit to the UN, I sat in the seat where the representative from Middle East sits. Yes, I�m being childish. But let�s not forget that a movie largely focusing on United States foreign policy is listing Middle East as a country in which the movie has been shown. I see two possibilities here. Laziness won out because typing individual countries is far too tedious, or these guys are even worse than I thought. I�ll give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to laziness. If this is the kind of garbage that comes through in their film promotion, I can only imagine the caliber of information in the film.

Now that you have heard my opinion on that, let�s turn to the silliness of the lawsuit. The content of the movie would imply that the ultimate goal of K.E.W.L. is spreading awareness of the �American dynasty� and advocating change. The actions of Flach Film, the French production house, imply that K.E.W.L. and Lepetit have a severe case of Lars Ulrich Syndrome. In a telephone interview, Lepetit had the arrogance to imply that the film was not only viewed on the internet, but undoubtedly downloaded and distributed without proper payment. I guess he had forgotten that the movie had been on television in several countries. Maybe France is still on Betamax. Regardless, the lawsuit captures the end goal of the film�s creator�s: money. They should have been happy to have the viewers, though the poor viewers are undoubtedly dumber having seen it. Now that K.E.W.L. and the gang have their money, hopefully they will go back to sitting in cafes, drinking espresso, and reading Camus. Once they shut up and stop promoting conspiracy theories, the people with brains can stop refuting their garbage and come up with real solutions to real problems.