The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

“Flying between Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, a few weeks ago, a friend and I were discussing a recent publication. I asked him—a noted physicist- what he thought of the book, and his reply was, “Too many words, not enough ideas.”As biting as those words seem, they reflect what many of US have felt at the end of a speech or lecture, or for that matter, a sermon. This is a readily identifiable sentiment, I might add, for we are at a time in our nation’s history when we are condemned to hear political rhetoric crowded and clouded by words ad infinitum, ad nauseam. It is the price we pay for free speech in search of ideas that are worth pursuing. As one whose living is intrinsically tied to proclamation, I shall not come down too hard on those with whom I have at least one aspect in common, i.e. word usage. But I do want to raise the crucial issue of meaning behind the words.

It came upon me rather suddenly some months ago when I had punished myself by listening to a few political speeches back to back. I had continued to listen, not only from a sense of moral duty, but also from the shock factor of hearing so much talk about values. I knew something was wrong, radically wrong, systemically wrong, but I did not know how quite to touch the raw nerve of the problem. Then like a flash, I saw it: the modern malady in the political arena is one of a fundamental contradiction—there is an unblushing moralizing on politics and a shameless politicizing of morality. Just think about that statement and it becomes evident that it may well be the quicksand of contemporary wordsmiths as they smother us into moral suffocation.(more…)

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