Letters to the Editor
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The MoveOn advert - correction
(Had an HTML tag incident in my earlier post)
Here MoveOn is worried about Petraeus betraying us.
The democrat congress is a whole hell of a lot worse for betraying us, the constitution and every tenet of the founding fathers!
You want to know whose finger prints are on the knife in the back of Democracy? Look to those that refuse to stoop to the level of defending it.
The true target THE TRUE TARGET!!! of the MoveOn ad SHOULD have been THE SPINELESS DEMOCRAT CONGRESS!
If MoveOn takes the 'democrat' congress to the woodshed, I'll personally give them $500.00 as a contribution AND I'll personally deliver it to their headquarters!!! (I can't afford it but would go into debt to support them in their attacks on the dino-crats)
The true enemy of democracy and freedom isn't Bush now, it's the lick spittle democrat 'lawmakers' that pee themselves in their efforts to please the most unpopular president in the history of this country!
That's what I get out of the comment on the ad.
As an aside: I've always wondered why AT&T (at&t) was able to get so big again and Verizon is rising to the top of the cesspool and Qwest was prosecuted so forcefully. It pays to have friends on low places.
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@ Sysprog
You're wrong when you say that other people shouldn't feel offended anyway.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I'm not arguing that calling someone a "pussy" isn't offensive. On the contrary, I absolutely intended to be offensive. However, I intended to be offensive by virtue of having called someone a coward, not by demeaning women as women.
You're quite wrong to imply that blacks don't have racist feelings against blacks (just watch how black taxi drivers treat their white and black customers)
In my view, this really stretches the meaning of "racist". Treating different races differently based on empirical probabilities is not necessarily racist. It's assuming that one race (or gender) is inherently inferior to another and underestimating the influence of situational factors that makes you a racist (sexist).
Crime is correlated with poverty. Being black is correlated with poverty. Therefore crime is correlated with being black, but it isn't caused by it. That cabbie is not necessarily a self-hating racist, that cabbie is an empiricist, applying a simple categorical decision rule in a situation where he is safer to err on the side of caution.
You're dead wrong when you look for words that insult privileged groups and try to equate them to words that insult subordinated groups.
You almost have a point here. I made this same kind of argument in defense of Imus getting fired. However, I don't think this argument really applies to the case of calling cowards "pussies". I agree that it is worse for a white American to call a black person "nigger" than it is for a black American to call a white person "cracker" for the reasons you cite. (Its also, despite what some Imus defenders argued, much worse for a white person to call a black person "nigger" than for a black person to call another black person "nigger".)
The difference is that it is clear that the word "cracker" in that context is derogatory of whites, but when I call someone a "dick" that is not derogatory toward men as men at all. So the situations are not analagous.
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Thanks, sysprog & Svensker...
Fool... you are completely (perhaps willfully?) clueless.
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@Karen M
Wow, that's a very powerful argument, Karen.
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Sinister Intentions
"Yes, there is the analogous "dick", but there is no "good" female genitalia word, only the equation with wimpiness"
That's not really true. Some people use "tits" as a compliment, as in "yeah, dude, that car is the tits!"
In any case, its not a question of whether there is a fair distribution of positive and negative words based on anatomy. This whole line of argument is a species of the genetic fallacy anyway. Whatever the reasons a word came to have its meaning, its meaning is its meaning and evaluation of the use of that word is based on its meaning not its origin.
For example, the word "sinister" means "Suggesting or threatening evil; presaging trouble, ominous". Now etymologically the word sinister came to have its negative connotation originally because it was associated with people who are left-handed who were seen as different than the majority righthanders and therefore somehow evil. Thus, in its origins, the word sinister is "handist" and prejudiced against left handers.
But no one -- and I mean no one -- thinks that using the word "sinister" is inherently derogatory toward left handers, whatever its origins. On April 17, 2006 the New York Times ran a headline, "A Sinister Web Entraps Victims of Cyberstalkers". If a group of lefthanders organized a peitition against the Times for being prejudiced against them because of the use of the word "sinister," I think most people would think those people were ridiculous.
Conclusion: Joan Walsh is not offended by my use of the word "pussy" because she imagines I was making a sexist attack on her. She's just miffed that I called her a coward, and crying sexism is a useful rhetorical strategy.
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More examples
Likewise terms like "black comedy" or "film noire". Is it inherently racist to call a film a "black comedy"?
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"Dire Consequences"?
So, what are those "dire consequences" if telecons are not provided immunity: Accountability? Restoration of faith and respect for the Rule of Law? Reassertion of a healthy democratic process, where citizens know what is being done in their name? Is this what these people fear?
My, how deep is the rot in the keel of our democracy.
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Amnesty For Fisa
Certainly, this group in Congress has been spied on and Bush, must has the goods on these Democrats, which would be a reason why they to go along, with amnesty for FISA. I can see no other reason, other then perhaps these lobbyist are also being paid off.
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Not an argument...
just a conclusion.
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@Karen M
Well, Karen, the problem is you concluded before you were finished.
I hope you don't think I'm sexist if I conclude that your failure to respond indicates an inability to respond.