HOMIES AT THE DEA ARE FREAKIN' OVER DRUG DEALIN' JIVE TURKEYS

Drug Enforcement Administration staffers must be asking themselves,
"Where is Barbara Billingsley when you need her?" Billingsley is most
famous for playing the mother in "Leave it to Beaver," but the DEA
doesn't need her to make boys toe the line.

The agency needs her because of the talent she so famously showcased
in the movie "Airplane" when she said: "Oh, stewardess, I speak jive."

Apparently, DEA agents don't speak jive themselves, but some of the
folks they are conducting surveillance on do. That's why, according to
a story by The Associated Press, the DEA is looking to hire nine
"ebonics" translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations
between suspected drug dealers.

Ebonics first came to the attention of the general public in 1996 when
an Oakland, Calif., school board argued that black English was a
separate language and should be treated as such. The school board
dropped that suggestion when nearly everybody in America, white or
black, who had any standards at all protested, practically in unison
that the idea was both addled and extraordinarily racist, implying as
it did that black people couldn't be expected to learn to speak properly.

It is no more legitimate to teach ebonics as a language than it is to
teach redneck.

And faster than you can say "for shizzle," the media rushed out to
find two equally wrongheaded but ideologically opposite people to wage
war over the issue of the DEA seeking some employees who can get them
the 411 they need. The fact that nothing either of them told the AP
related to the situation the DEA finds itself in is par for the course.

In one corner, we have the ebonics apologist, Stanford linguistics
professor H. Samy Alim, who said, "It seems ironic that schools that
are serving and educating black children have not recognized the
legitimacy of this language, yet the authorities and police are
recognizing that this is a language that they don't understand. It
really tells us a lot about where we are socially in terms of
recognizing African-American speech."

Umm ... no.

First of all, you, sir, are a proponent of ebonics, yet that quote
shows your preferred version of English is pretty much
indistinguishable from Winston Churchill's. In fact, you can
communicate complex thoughts to other people BECAUSE THE SCHOOLS YOU
ATTENDED DID NOT TEACH YOU TO SPEAK JIVE.

If they had, you'd be screwed. In fact, you might have to be a drug
dealer, since no one doing the hiring in the non-criminal world would
be able to understand you.

Representing the whack jobs across the aisle was Aloysius Hogan, the
government relations director of English First, a national lobbying
group that promotes the use of English. In the story, Hogan was quoted
as saying, "Hiring translators for languages that are of questionable
merit to begin with is just going in the wrong direction ... I support
the concept of pursuing drug dealers if they're using code words, but
this is definitely going in the wrong direction."

Hogan seems to be implying that hiring people who understood the
surveillance tapes would legitimize ebonics as a language. That's like
saying hiring ballistics experts legitimizes shooting people.

The DEA needs to understand the tapes, and if it needs to hire help,
fine. Most likely the folks who understand urban drug-speak best are
in jail, so maybe there is some kind of prison rehab potential.

But the real culprit in this story is The Associated Press and the
idea that every story needs a few facts, then one person in favor and
one against.

Not everything lends itself to offsetting opinions. It's begun to seem
that when Judgement Day comes the news accounts will include
statistics on how many ended up in heaven and hell, then quotes from
Satan and God, disagreeing about what it means.

The DEA needs interpreters to understand drug dealers. That's an
interesting story, but why pretend it has deeper societal meaning?

Honestly, it's enough to make June Cleaver throw a rod.