I wrote him a note last night. I used the word “pandering.” Sen. Alexander — whom I met in the newsroom a gazillion years ago — is a nice enough guy with a long history of serving his country. In the past, when then-Gov. Alexander made English the official language of Tennessee, he said he did not want our country to become a United Nations.

That’s kinda already happened, I think. Having lived in four diverse regions of this country (and I count South Florida as one region unto itself), I will tell you that I’ve always needed some translation help from the locals: “Black top” in rural Illinois is the preferred word for “road”; “GetdaF***outtahere” in Jersey is “No Way!”; and “That There Right Here” in Tennessee is simply “This” or “That.” I’m still not sure.

So you see, we’re already kinda UN-ish and yet commerce manages to happen.

If the Senator wants to proceed with this silly silly I would like him to also consider cleaning up the English language in his home state. Make it nice and vanilla so we can all understand each other. And, if a professional utters any of these incorrect and ugly words/phases at work, he gets taxed.

So, after we add “that there right here” to the clean-up list, let’s add these, which personally make me scratch my ears:

“Might could” (as in just plain “might”)
“Fixin’ to” (as in, “I’m going to”)
“Carry me” (which, for you non-natives means “take me to…”)
“Spelt” (not the grain, but in “how is that word spelt.”)
“Down the road a piece” (this is an easy one.)

Then, we’ll clean up Jersey-isms, don’t you think? And then we’ll get to the rest.

And, in the end, we can all be exactly the same.