Die, Truss, Die!

“Isn’t this sad? People who have been taught nothing about their own language are (contrary to educational expectations) spending all their leisure hours attempting to string sentences together for the edification of others. And there is no editing on the internet!” – Lynn Truss, ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’

It suddenly occurs to me
That Truss being a best seller
Was a government conspiracy
And only then everyone bought it for each other as presents.

Oh you lying, preaching, hypocrite,
Times journalist, falsely modest,
insidious, supercilious,
SNOB!

Everybody loves to preach grammar
But they’ve no idea how it should be teached.
Now “Zero Tolerance!” screams from every bookshelf,
Truss, the millionaire:
Tell her to go care in her own home
And not make war cries to the silent majority,
Who the fuck made her a grammar authority?

“Why do people persist in saying haitch?”
Asks a concerned Times reader
In a question and answer feature.
“Well,” says Truss, the punctuation preacher,
“It is regrettable that there are so many
Working class people
But do not forget that they have a venerable history
Of keeping us alive through their slave-pay labour.”

Who wants our kids to understand their language?
And who wants to band together
In the ivory tower of their snobbery,
Wishing more people would
understand the rules?

Sam Berkson, 2005