Bling-Bling! Say what?

BLING-BLING! Huh . . . say what ?

Normally, I've always tried to be patient, understanding--even admonishing myself for being too frequently "rigid" in my outlook. In other words, I try, as much as is practical, to step away from the mainstream (if I ever fall into it) and stay up on linguistic trends among the generations soon to take charge of running things.

But I discovered a few days ago that I've been totally blindsided, and I'm not sure I can explain why it happened. This time, I may have reached my limit in my flexibility to accept new trends.

If my first impression is reasonably accurate, BLING-BLING refers to the audacious and impractical dress style of gangsta-rappers, East L.A. Bloods and Cripps and other undesirable anti-social groups--right?

Ball caps with the bills placed askew on the head. Sweat shirts that flow freely to mid-thigh, over jean pants that fall over the Nikes, so that the wearer has to tread (or stumble) on them with each step. Finally, the over-sized tee shirts over the sweats, bearing all sorts of blasphemous, outrageous, sexist, and other ignorant "messages."

Time Magazine recently had an article (I only looked in disbelief at the pix and read the subtitles) that seems to confirm--this is for real.

O.K., so I happen to hate this anti-social style, but among the young, my taste doesn't count. What distresses me, however, is that the hundreds of under-educated, outrageously overly paid ball dribblers have adopted BLING-BLING as their preferred "cool" dress mode. Naturally, a good percentage of their pre-teen, teen, and puberty-retarded adult fans will slavishly imitate this anti-social dress style, embarrassing everyone but themselves. Fortunately, it seems I'm not the only one offended by the brainless new trend--I just read somewhere that the NBA has decreed that BLING-BLING dress style by its dribblers would not be acceptable in any NBA-related event. Bravo for the NBA, but I'm not going to bet that this rule will stick; after all, the monsters that sports fans have created now rule their masters.

As a footnote, the gals who hang with the dribbling crowd or their fans are also emulating their male counterparts' dress trends, but that's nothing new--it's an extension of the 1960s "unisex" mentality. But it was part and parcel of feminism's influence on young women and it hasn't receded easily.

A quick check of my 1999 unabridged Webster's doesn't contain "BLINK-BLINK," but Google revealed a very discouraging recent decision by the Brits. Astonishingly, they have already officially added the term to their stodgy, conservative dictionary--the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. According to our British cousins, it means: "jiggy," "breakbeat," "dopey" and "phat."

Jiggy, breakbeat, dopey, phat!! Except for "dopey" (unless the Brits have another meaning for it), I haven't the slightest idea of what these definitions mean. I only pray they're definitions peculiar to the British dialect, so that maybe Webster's-- if it decides to follow suit and canonize the term--will use some American English definitions I can understand. But at the moment, I stand naked (linguistically speaking) and helpless. I think I now know how a speaker of, say, Urdu, must feel during the first week of instruction in English when his instructor says, "Look it up in the dictionary!"

Wasn't it Judge Robert Bork who wrote Slouching Toward Gomorrah? Perhaps I ought read it, especially if the Judge offers suggestions on how to rationalize BLING-BLING. And where is Bill Cosby when we need him? Or in even framing that question, am I beginning to tread on racial sensitivities? I'm assuming I'd be vindicated for this possible insensitive transgression when I can prove that lots of white guys (Latinos don't count, because I suspect BLING-BLING has its origins in their culture) are also stumbling on their over-long pants.

Have I finally reached the linguistic Jordan? Should I stay put on this side of the river, or should I wade in and head for the other side?

Would my being blindsided by this linguistic surprise have been avoided, had I at some time in the past watched even one full length MTV program? Come to think of it, I now know what BLING-BLING refers to, but where the hell did the words BLING-BLING come from?