Columbus Dispatch. March 3, 2023.
Editorial: Bee there, sit a spell
On Saturday, Mississippi’s top young spellers will compete in the Mississippi Spelling Bee on the campus of Mississippi University for Women. The field will include 42 local spelling bee champs from 40 counties, ranging from grades 2 through 8.
One thing these young people have in common is their obvious disagreement with Andrew Jackson, our nation’s 7th president, about the importance of proper spelling.
It was Jackson who famously responded to criticism of his own careless spelling by saying, “It’s a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
There is also the old story of a coach whose players were constantly making bone-headed mistakes and thoughtless errors.
“I’m not saying they’re dumb,” the coach mumbled to reporters after another inept performance. “But when I tell ‘em there’s no ‘i’ in ‘team,’ they just have to take my word for it.”
The 42 young people who will compete at Nissan Auditorium provide a stark contrast to those examples, fortunately.
In the almost 600 years since the invention of the printing press, there is no power greater than the written word, and proper spelling is an essential element of that power.
In casual communications, some latitude is provided in our spelling. We often use abbreviated or phonetic spellings, especially on social media, and no one is the worse for it.
But there are times when our writing demands accuracy. When we are trying to articulate an important idea and persuade others to our position, proper spelling is not optional. In those instances, few things undermine the credibility of the author of a written communication more than sloppy spelling. For example, you might have great credentials for a job, but if your resume is littered with misspelled words, you’re far less likely to get the job.
For the uninitiated, spelling bees might be considered as little more than memorizing the spelling of difficult and obscure words.
But when you consider the hours of study these young people have devoted in preparation for these competitions, you understand they are learning more than that. As part of the preparation, they are not just learning the spelling of the word, but its origin and definition. In doing so, they are expanding their vocabulary, which gives them a multitude of tools to express themselves. As Mark Twain wrote, “The difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Because there is a symbiotic relationship between spelling and readers, good spellers are almost always good readers, and a well-read person often has a distinct advantage over his or her peers.
Given that, it’s likely that these 42 students will have a head start on many of their peers as they approach high school and beyond.
Saturday’s spelling bee is set for 10 a.m. at Nissan Auditorium and the public is encouraged to attend (organizers urged spectators to be in their seats by 9:30).
We encourage residents to attend, not just to support these young people, but to be entertained and inspired.
To all of the spellers: Welcome to Columbus and to the Mississippi Spelling Bee!
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Greenwood Commonwealth. March 7, 2023.
Editorial: Mistake To Hand Nod To Presley
The Mississippi Democratic Party is trying to give Brandon Presley a free pass to the party’s nomination.
Its thinking must be that the less energy and money that Presley has to spend securing the nomination, the more he can focus on Gov. Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent he is trying to unseat.
Both the method and the rationale, however, are specious.
First the method: In disqualifying Presley’s two little-known challengers, the party used the excuse that Bob Hickingbottom and Greg Wash had failed to file their “statement of economic interest” with the state Ethics Commission by the legally prescribed deadline.
Problem is, if that is a legitimate reason to disqualify a candidate, there are dozens of others that should have been disqualified, too. Magnolia Tribune, the online news site, did a quick count and found 56 other Democrats — five for statewide office, 51 for the Legislature — that committed that same allegedly disqualifying omission but whose candidacies were not thrown out.
At least one of the disqualified gubernatorial candidates, Bob Hickingbottom, has notified the state Democratic Party of his intentions to sue if it doesn’t reinstate his candidacy. He also filed last week the belated report with the Ethics Commission.
The Democratic Party would save itself some money and some additional bad publicity if it reinstates Hickingbottom and probably Wash, too. There is no plausible explanation for the disparate treatment these two have received other than as a thinly disguised effort to make Presley’s path to the party’s nomination uncontested.
That might not be such a favor, though.
One of Presley’s biggest obstacles is building up his name identification statewide. He is not well-known outside of the northern third of the state, which he has represented on the Public Service Commission since 2008 A primary contest, even a presumably low-key one, could help spread his name around for relatively little cost.
The Democratic hierarchy might have been influenced by its bad memories of what happened in 2015. That year, the party’s presumptive nominee, Vicki Slater, lost the primary to a truck driver who raised no money, did not campaign and did not even vote in the contest but was first on the ballot and had the advantage of a common name, Robert Gray.
That experience, though, is only relevant in demonstrating how weak a candidate Slater was. If Presley can’t beat two little-financed, unknown challengers in his own party, he has no business in a general election contest with Reeves.
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