Believe it or not, I noticed the grammatical error before the anti-“intellectual elitism” stance. C’mon, William, you’re supposed to be an intelligent and well-read man! SURELY you know you should’ve said “…and humble folk like you and me,” right?
Arrrgh! Next you’ll be publishing a substantive and in-depth analysis of the policies of the Bush Administration in Iraq, and write “all right” as one word!
“She says her love for me could never die,
But that’d change if she ever found out about you and I.”
Perhaps I’m in error here, and I’m sure you’ll correct me if so, but doesn’t he actually have it correctly? To continue the sentence wouldn’t it be “…humble folk like you and I are,” not “…like you and me are?”
SA:[…] doesn’t he actually have it correctly? To continue the sentence wouldn’t it be “…humble folk like you and I are,” not “…like you and me are?”
No. “Like” is a preposition and takes a noun or pronoun, or nominal clause, in the objective case: e.g., “there’s nobody like me”, not “there’s nobody like I”.
You’re getting prepositional modifiers like this one confused with comparative clauses using “than”, which require the nominative case when they correspond to a nominative subject. For example, it’s correct to say “they’re more humble than you and I [are]”, not “they’re more humble than you and me.”
Screw the grammar issues, however: what’s really jaw-dropping about that sentence is that the wealthy and influential William F. Buckley—the Europe-reared, Yale-educated son of an oil millionaire who for nearly half a century has been intimately involved with some of the most powerful figures in conservative politics—thinks he can get away with referring to himself as “humble folk”, as opposed to “faculties at elite universities”. If William F. Buckley is not part of the “elite”, the word simply has no meaning.
Clearly, I’ve been too many years out of school. Thank you for setting me straight.
Regarding Buckley, it only seems polite to respond since you took the time to show me the error of my grammatical ways, but I really didn’t find his comment all that offensive. He was just trying to differentiate himself from the faculties at the colleges he was speaking of, and I just took it at face value I guess. Somehow, I’ve just never taken Buckley that seriously one way or the other.
If John Kenneth Galbraith ever starts calling me up for casual chats on the state of the nation, you’ll all know it because I’ll be walking around wearing a big shiny button that reads “elite motherfucker”. You humble folk can go screw yourselves.
SA:Regarding Buckley, it only seems polite to respond since you took the time to show me the error of my grammatical ways, but I really didn’t find his comment all that offensive.
Me either—it’s not offensive for William F. Buckley to refer to himself as “humble folk” as distinct from the “elite”, any more than it would be offensive for me to refer to myself as “Interplanetary Empress of the Satellites of Jupiter”, say. “Totally cuckoo” rather than “offensive” is how I’d describe it.
*Somehow, I’ve just never taken Buckley that seriously one way or the other. *
** But he pointed to a curious and continuing division in thought between faculties in the elite colleges,
and humble folk like you and I. **- W.F. Buckley
So Kimstu said:
Ah , it pains the ear to hear prescriptivists speak; so authoritive, so unequivocal, so willing to sacrifice meaning for structure. Listen Kinstu. Can’t you hear the irony, the nuance, in Buckley’s voice? His is the style that introduces new usage to our language so that the world’s word pendants can occupy themsleves by making up new rules to cover his improvements.
Then** Kimstu** said:
Uh, Kimstu, your delimitation of the word “elite” might be a bit restrictive. Usage to a great extent determines meaning, and Bill Buckley, for we who know and love him, has always been an “outsider”, if fact he has been a long term thorn-in-the-side of the established elite for forty years. Bill has always identified with the humble folk. Like I.
________________________________________________________
Write him a letter about it. He has never claimed grammatical perfection, and appreciates when people point out problems in his writing and speaking style.
Except that Buckley is* a prescriptivist.*
As to your claim that he is not part of the elite–your own claims defeat you. If he is a “thorn in the side” to some great body of people, then he is part of a much smaller group. If he is the one who sets the boundaries of language, then he is clearly part of an elite group that possesses power that hoi polloi do not possess.
It is amusing to see you attempting to defend Buckley by associating with him, given that you appear to not actually read him. It is Safire who has long since shed precriptivism.
Indeed. Every issue of National Review has a section (Notes & Asides, IIRC; I’m too lazy to dig out my last issue) that is often little but readers and Buckley poring over some pedantic nitpick about grammar and proper word usage in Buckley’s writings.
There is a difference between the “elite” and “faculties at elite universities.” Buckley said the latter, not the former. Buckley is drawing a distinction between ivory-tower academics and the rest of the world, not between wealthy public intellectuals and Joe Sixpack.
And it is not a new stance. Buckley has long railed against the insularity of the acadamy, famously saying he’d rather be governed by the first one hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty at Harvard.
The only thing that really rankles in that sentence was that he said “humble folk like you and I” instead of “humble folk such as you and I.” Maybe it’s just me; I tend to notice the use and mis-use of “like” since it has become so much more common.
Buckley is my favorite Conservative although I disagree with him almost endlessly. Being a nitpicker himself, he would revel in being nailed on this one error – although he would probably try to argue his way out of it.
I pouted for days (about fifteen years ago) when he commented on the deterioration of the seminars at St. John’s Annapolis. When he spoke of “humble folks like you and I,” I suspect that he was referring to how some of the elite faculties would view us.
Why not one word “us,” instead of three “you and I?”
Oh well, I guess I don’t mind how he ends his statements, as long as he doesn’t begin them with “Listen, you queer…”
Milum: Ah , it pains the ear to hear prescriptivists speak; so authoritive, so unequivocal, so willing to sacrifice meaning for structure. Listen [Kimstu]. Can’t you hear the irony, the nuance, in Buckley’s voice?
Look, Starving Artist asked in all earnestness a prescriptivist question—which you sneakily omitted in quoting Buckley’s comment immediately followed by my response to SA—about whether “like you and I” is actually considered correct by the grammatical rules of standard English. I answered SA’s question.
You’re trying to make it look as though I was criticizing Buckley for violating grammatical rules to make a stylistic point. The poster you should be taking that issue up with* is the OP, Leaper.
or “with whom you should be taking up that issue”, as prescriptivists like Buckley would say.
And MY response is: not only do I not follow your argument, Milum, I don’t think he had anything of the sort in mind. Hell, if the other posters on this thread are right, it sounds like he’d appreciate being called on this.
For all I know, he might be just as much a traditionalist as I am. I wouldn’t know either way.
I remember once, when Buckley’s son was around college age, Buckley was asked about his frequent appearances in Playboy magazine, given his conservative stances on most issues.
He replied that it was the only way he had of communicating with his son.
