Regarding the Grist for Right -Wing Outrage, I find it ironic that these universities are coming up with lists that ban words that might offend a very small subset of society ("brown bag" offending those who knew about exclusionary practices of black college sorority women) and yet the F-bomb is increasingly thrown around in casual speech and I hear it daily.
Lori Lightfoot record on crime..strike 1 Lori Lightfoot promise to have a transparent administration..strike 2. Lori Lightfoot handling of street racing and noise by having a NASCAR event in center city…strike 3. I will NOT be voting for her this year.
“But the “haters” rhetoric merely reinforces the impression that Lightfoot is thin-skinned and combative, taking personally the frustrations that many Chicagoans feel.” -- Zorn
“Haters” can mean people who contentiously oppose one another in political contests, frequently resulting in the use of the term “hate” to mean some sort of (racial in this case) discrimination; if the opposition disagrees with the contravening views, then automatically they are labeled racists: It is code for racial discrimination against African Americans generally. In essence, in this sense, calling political opponents “haters” -- often a false-accusation -- is to conflate “hatred” – racial discrimination -- with political opposition; it is manipulative, deceptive, and false; it is a gross generalization. To oppose one another in political contests is in the nature of the contest itself; to be accused in the arena of “hatred” by one another in the sense it's used in the mayor’s campaign ad is misleading: Political opposition is not hatred (especially in the legal sense dealing with proscribed hate-motivated speech).
So, will Pete Buttigieg be requiring the FAA to reimburse the passengers that were affected by the NOTAM outage they caused? An antiquated system that they bungled the maintenance on. Seems like the guy that has been slamming the industry might want to do more than just look into it after promising to be so aggressive with the airlines. Maybe also come up with a plan to do something about all of the antiquated FAA air traffic systems.
The Stanford guy took down the list because it was a hot potato, not because it was a bad idea. His claim that it was 'counter to inclusivity' is vague and disingenuous. I think it is more likely that they found the backlash too annoying and not that they found it valid.
I put prayer alongside country and old-time music - things that people feel intellectually and culturally allergic to without understanding how these things work for millions or billions of smart people. I’m immediately unimpressed by those opinions if I probe and see they are uninformed, and probably locked onto as schoolkids.
I don’t like the use of the term “straight” to mean heterosexual. Such use suggests that those of us who aren’t heterosexual are crooked or immoral. I think the etymology of the use of the word “straight” to mean heterosexual would reflect that. One of the definitions of “straight” is “upright.” In the Boy Scout oath, Boy Scouts are taught to pledge to do their best to keep themselves “morally straight.” Does that mean that those of us who aren’t heterosexual are morally crooked? Now, I don’t freak out when people use the term “straight” to mean heterosexual. I just figure the speaker is probably a clueless heterosexual, unaware of the offensive nature of that use of the word. There is some validity to both sides in the “cancel culture” debate. The opponents of “cancel culture” tend to feel that policing their language to make it less offensive to marginalized communities is an unnecessary restriction on their “freedom.” And the folks on the other side tend to favor draconian penalties for the use of language which was acceptable during our lifetimes.
The Illinois Assault weapon ban is farcical. political theater. The Highland Park shooting is the only instance of a mass shooting with an 'assault weapon' in Illinois, ever. There is no evidence that the ban would have prevented the deranged murderer from killing multiple people that day. There is also nothing in the ban to address the gang crime that killed and wounded people in Chicago last year, which were more than 100 times as many as Highland Park. Conflating legal gun ownership and behavior with rampant violent crime is worse than useless. It isn't even a symbolic step in the right direction as it addresses no part of the problem.
As to your derisive remark about mental illness, a UC San Diego study found that 80% of mass shooters had severe, untreated mental illness.
The strengthening of the 'red flag' law, adding an anti-gun trafficking role to the state, and banning components to convert firearms to fully automatic are useful parts of the law. But they are also useless, if they are not properly funded for staffing and training of the appropriate agencies. Which is the current state of our grossly understaffed and underfunded state police, crime labs, and gun trafficking investigation capability.
Yet again, the ludicrous notion that to see, hear, or read something that offends is to sustain actual “harm” reappears, and in two items this week. This patently false and utterly asinine idea seems to have spread to all corners of our culture, but clearly, college students have a particular susceptibility to it.
A while back, Dick Cavett wrote an essay entitled “In Defense of Offense” (it can be found in one of his collections). Among the many great points that he made, he wondered how and why we arrived at a place where being offended by something became one of life’s great cataclysms, like losing a limb, or a child. He also pondered the boring, barren banality of a life lead free from offense of any kind, and the feats of avoidance that one would need to undertake in order to achieve this. But the best, and most prescient point that he made was his lament of, to paraphrase, the infantilism of the phrase “the n-word”. Why must a word that everyone knows be endowed with such magical powers that it is not allowed to be uttered? How did these powers grow so great that they could enable the censoring of Mark Twain? What other artists and works should not go untouched? Joseph Conrad (“Person of Color of the Narcissus” maybe)? John and Yoko (“Woman is the N-Word of the World”)?
The irony is that the people that promote all of this nonsense say they are “progressive”. To believe that a word cannot be spoken lest it anger the gods is anything but progress.
Does anyone other than I see an optics problem with people in the culturally dominant group telling members of disparaged minority groups that their feelings of offense in regard to certain language that relates to the minority group or its history are not valid feelings? Is it the place of a person in the culturally dominant group to tell people in the disparaged minority group to “suck it up,” that this is the way we speak?
Not many people see this the way I do, but the description “sucks” is problematic. It clearly derives from anti-gay and possibly misogynistic attitudes. It comes from cocksucker - an old insult aimed at men only, equating them with homosexuals.
Oh, Eric - please, please, please - bring back the Songs of Bad Cheer show!
Regarding the Grist for Right -Wing Outrage, I find it ironic that these universities are coming up with lists that ban words that might offend a very small subset of society ("brown bag" offending those who knew about exclusionary practices of black college sorority women) and yet the F-bomb is increasingly thrown around in casual speech and I hear it daily.
Lori Lightfoot record on crime..strike 1 Lori Lightfoot promise to have a transparent administration..strike 2. Lori Lightfoot handling of street racing and noise by having a NASCAR event in center city…strike 3. I will NOT be voting for her this year.
Only had to wait a week for a big rebound in funny tweets. Thanks!
I thought the Paul Vallas commercials were pretty good. The Brandon Johnson ad was just empty claims and promises.
“But the “haters” rhetoric merely reinforces the impression that Lightfoot is thin-skinned and combative, taking personally the frustrations that many Chicagoans feel.” -- Zorn
“Haters” can mean people who contentiously oppose one another in political contests, frequently resulting in the use of the term “hate” to mean some sort of (racial in this case) discrimination; if the opposition disagrees with the contravening views, then automatically they are labeled racists: It is code for racial discrimination against African Americans generally. In essence, in this sense, calling political opponents “haters” -- often a false-accusation -- is to conflate “hatred” – racial discrimination -- with political opposition; it is manipulative, deceptive, and false; it is a gross generalization. To oppose one another in political contests is in the nature of the contest itself; to be accused in the arena of “hatred” by one another in the sense it's used in the mayor’s campaign ad is misleading: Political opposition is not hatred (especially in the legal sense dealing with proscribed hate-motivated speech).
So, will Pete Buttigieg be requiring the FAA to reimburse the passengers that were affected by the NOTAM outage they caused? An antiquated system that they bungled the maintenance on. Seems like the guy that has been slamming the industry might want to do more than just look into it after promising to be so aggressive with the airlines. Maybe also come up with a plan to do something about all of the antiquated FAA air traffic systems.
The Stanford guy took down the list because it was a hot potato, not because it was a bad idea. His claim that it was 'counter to inclusivity' is vague and disingenuous. I think it is more likely that they found the backlash too annoying and not that they found it valid.
I put prayer alongside country and old-time music - things that people feel intellectually and culturally allergic to without understanding how these things work for millions or billions of smart people. I’m immediately unimpressed by those opinions if I probe and see they are uninformed, and probably locked onto as schoolkids.
I don’t like the use of the term “straight” to mean heterosexual. Such use suggests that those of us who aren’t heterosexual are crooked or immoral. I think the etymology of the use of the word “straight” to mean heterosexual would reflect that. One of the definitions of “straight” is “upright.” In the Boy Scout oath, Boy Scouts are taught to pledge to do their best to keep themselves “morally straight.” Does that mean that those of us who aren’t heterosexual are morally crooked? Now, I don’t freak out when people use the term “straight” to mean heterosexual. I just figure the speaker is probably a clueless heterosexual, unaware of the offensive nature of that use of the word. There is some validity to both sides in the “cancel culture” debate. The opponents of “cancel culture” tend to feel that policing their language to make it less offensive to marginalized communities is an unnecessary restriction on their “freedom.” And the folks on the other side tend to favor draconian penalties for the use of language which was acceptable during our lifetimes.
The Illinois Assault weapon ban is farcical. political theater. The Highland Park shooting is the only instance of a mass shooting with an 'assault weapon' in Illinois, ever. There is no evidence that the ban would have prevented the deranged murderer from killing multiple people that day. There is also nothing in the ban to address the gang crime that killed and wounded people in Chicago last year, which were more than 100 times as many as Highland Park. Conflating legal gun ownership and behavior with rampant violent crime is worse than useless. It isn't even a symbolic step in the right direction as it addresses no part of the problem.
As to your derisive remark about mental illness, a UC San Diego study found that 80% of mass shooters had severe, untreated mental illness.
https://myhealth.ucsd.edu/RelatedItems/6,1653363897
The strengthening of the 'red flag' law, adding an anti-gun trafficking role to the state, and banning components to convert firearms to fully automatic are useful parts of the law. But they are also useless, if they are not properly funded for staffing and training of the appropriate agencies. Which is the current state of our grossly understaffed and underfunded state police, crime labs, and gun trafficking investigation capability.
If field work is offensive, what's next? Factory worker? Or are we only to consider terms involving people of color?
Yet again, the ludicrous notion that to see, hear, or read something that offends is to sustain actual “harm” reappears, and in two items this week. This patently false and utterly asinine idea seems to have spread to all corners of our culture, but clearly, college students have a particular susceptibility to it.
A while back, Dick Cavett wrote an essay entitled “In Defense of Offense” (it can be found in one of his collections). Among the many great points that he made, he wondered how and why we arrived at a place where being offended by something became one of life’s great cataclysms, like losing a limb, or a child. He also pondered the boring, barren banality of a life lead free from offense of any kind, and the feats of avoidance that one would need to undertake in order to achieve this. But the best, and most prescient point that he made was his lament of, to paraphrase, the infantilism of the phrase “the n-word”. Why must a word that everyone knows be endowed with such magical powers that it is not allowed to be uttered? How did these powers grow so great that they could enable the censoring of Mark Twain? What other artists and works should not go untouched? Joseph Conrad (“Person of Color of the Narcissus” maybe)? John and Yoko (“Woman is the N-Word of the World”)?
The irony is that the people that promote all of this nonsense say they are “progressive”. To believe that a word cannot be spoken lest it anger the gods is anything but progress.
Why exactly, are “Oriental” and “committed suicide” supposed to be objectionable?
Does anyone other than I see an optics problem with people in the culturally dominant group telling members of disparaged minority groups that their feelings of offense in regard to certain language that relates to the minority group or its history are not valid feelings? Is it the place of a person in the culturally dominant group to tell people in the disparaged minority group to “suck it up,” that this is the way we speak?
Not many people see this the way I do, but the description “sucks” is problematic. It clearly derives from anti-gay and possibly misogynistic attitudes. It comes from cocksucker - an old insult aimed at men only, equating them with homosexuals.