Opinion: To Sirs, with no love

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During my drive in this morning, KUSC personality Dennis Bartel (who is not, I’m afraid, one of my aliases), announced an informal poll result that left me not astounded but disappointed.

The question: Should the station continue using United Kingdom titles such as Sir Edward Elgar, Sir William Walton, Sir Loin of Beef, etc. when announcing musical luminaries?

According to Bartel, either two-thirds or three-quarters of his listeners opted to retain these titles on the air. he didn’t provide exact numbers, but it was a landslide in favor of toadying to foreign potentates.

He did mention that folks in the anti-title minority were quite energetic, many of them referring to Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution (though as Bartel noted, correctly in my view, this text only enjoins the U.S. from bestowing titles, not private citizens from accepting or honoring them.) He also invited all and sundry to continue emailing their votes and thoughts to him at dbartel@kusc.org.

Please send him an email. In my America only dominatrixes deserve to be referred to by fancy royal titles, so I’m hoping to flip those poll results around. But it wouldn’t be very freedom-loving of me to tell you how to vote. Pro or anti, send your ideas to dbartel@kusc.org.