I very much enjoyed your treatment of Mr. Tancredo's linguistic winds. I think, however, you may give him too much credit. As a Coloradan, I am often subject to Tancredo's credos, bloviations, flatulations, borborygmic voids, and pontifications, so I can say with certainty that (and in no way do I mean this to perforate the reach or legitimacy of your larger point), in his case the problem is not a matter of "trying to cram too much meaning into too few words" but rather the result of having more words than meaning. Tancredo's struggle for articulate thought is so great, when he finds expression of a thought in a particular set of words, they become precious beyond belief: his indignation is that of the aphasic. "The right words were here moments ago; what will I do now that they are gone?

Tangentially, I am interested in the nature of linguistic complaint by those who are basically linguistically inept. In a student, I might understand such complaint as the origin of critical consciousness that might evolve into sophistication. Here, however, as elsewhere among the supposedly educated and respectable, such complaint tends more often than not to expose the limits of one's grasp on the use and growth of language and, more importantly, the limits of one's willingness to understand language as essentially social, not mathematical. I'd be interested in the print-cultivators' direct address of such phenomena, if you would be willing to view the present case in such a light.

Thanks, as always, for a fine article.

Best,

Jake Adam York
http://www.jakeadamyork.com/ladder/