THE OTHER DAY the TV in my office was on, tuned to Spike or Discovery or maybe The History Channel and a program called Gangland. It’s a series about gangs in various U.S. cities. The show I happened to drop in on was about the gang scene in Memphis, Tennessee.
Three things I noticed about every gang member interviewed:
1. Their speech was so completely unintelligible that every word they uttered was translated and displayed on the screen in subtitles.
2. They could not complete two consecutive sentences or even phrases without inserting, “know what I’m sayin.”
3. They had no problem whatsoever relating their exploits on camera, no shame, no guilt, no remorse. “So I stabbed this dude, nome sain, and when he didn’t go down I slashed him, nome sain, and then I just put a bullet in his brain, nome sain.”
Yeah, unfortunately we know what you’re saying.
