con ammirazione, Professore

Miss Kitty Literate purrs with pleasure at many things: among them elegant use of language, a song well sung, prolonged massages, and the commentary of Pier Massimo Forni, professor of Romance Languages at Johns Hopkins University. Besides being Italian and thus a superior life form, Professor Forni directs The Civility Initiative at Hopkins (http://web.jhu.edu/civility). His latest book, The Civility Solution: What to do When People are Rude, continues to develop his theme of the connections among civility, ethics, and quality of life, with a bit of psychoneuroimmunology added for good measure.

Last week, as I listened to the admirable Dr. Forni discuss his book with Diane Riehm, I was delighted to hear him cite “oversized portions of self-esteem” as one reason for the current crop of astonishingly rude people inhabiting every corner of society. And, as I pondered the linguistic implications of our cultural overemphasis on self-esteem at the expense of humility, and on entitlement rather than earned self-confidence, a cockroach of a sentence skittered across my consciousness:

“Are you okay with that?”

Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? But listen and look again. Look at the subject. Remember when the standard question was “Is that okay with you?” There is a world of difference in the reversal of subject and prepositional object, my friends. In the former case, the emphasis is on whatever you are asking the person to comment upon—a plan, a choice of restaurant, a wedding date, maybe even a situation requiring acceptance of a bitter reality. In the latter, you (or I) become the center of attention. The sentence morphs into an extension of “are you okay?”, an inquiry into a person’s state of being, not his or her opinion or reaction. Thus, with a simple switch of parts of speech, we have fallen into Narcissus’s pond, where nothing really matters but one’s own reflection. Such a construction is not only narcissistic, it also gives off the nostril-curling odor of victimization. Hmmm… narcissism and victimization—is it any wonder that such pervasive values turn up in the seemingly most innocuous turns of phrase?

So, please, dear readers, do yourselves a favor and return to the older construction, the one that puts you at a prepositional remove from the matter at hand. Not only does it sound better, it will make you feel better, for wouldn’t you rather toss off a jaunty or pointed “It’s (not) okay with me” than a cringing or wingeing, “I’m (not) okay with that”?

And if you think I’m picking the fly shit out of the pepper, then please feel free to express yourself, as the exquisitely polite Professor Forni puts it, through the art of finger puppetry.