The English language, AWOL
By Suzanne Fields
Monday, August 7, 2006

Where is Winston Churchill now that we need him? Where is a leader with a voice that roars with passion, purrs with reassuring eloquence, thunders with power, a voice that Edward R. Murrow said "mobilized the English language and sent it into battle"? Who among us could rally his countrymen with "nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat"?

There are few left among us who have thrilled to a voice with such power and energy. Many lesser men spin words in defense of ideas, but Churchillian appeals to sacrifice for what's right have been deconstructed, splintered and manipulated into images that rarely persuade or inspire anybody. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but such images are as distorted as a Picasso cubist portrait in broken fragments -- a nose here, an eye there, a mouth upside down.
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