The "Tucson shooter," Jared Loughner, is not alone in thinking that rules of grammar are part of a ploy to push us around, I learned from a NY Times blog post. Many of his (Loughner's) online rants were quoted, the Saturday afternoon he'd tried to kill a Congresswoman and did kill six others, by at least one news channel -- Fox News. The readings were an effort to try to gain some insight into the mind of the killer in the hours just after his horrific assault.
There was broad acknowledgement a few weeks after the shootings that Loughner was a deeply troubled person for some time. The day of the shootings, though, I found his complaints about grammar to be writings coming from an obviously disturbed mind. He was struggling with much in life, and somehow, grammar rules were an assault on his freedom.
While some tried to connect far-right influences, radio and TV show hosts, and other people to this lone wolf with a gun, listening to the guy's rants about (among other subjects) grammar offered a glimpse into a very disjointed thinking process, and a poor writer. He was not obsessed with writing well, however, only with grammar as a control mechanism.
The NEW YORK TIMES piece reflects on the wider idea of grammar as a means of social control. The related links below include a few pieces on the troubled killer's obsessions.
NYC: Subjects and Verbs as Evil Plot
(The New York Times)
"Even before the Tucson shootings, Jared L. Loughner acted weirdly and darkly in many ways. Nonetheless, for bizarreness, his rants about grammar stand out": http://nyti.ms/hhyNu5
- jR
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