I find this simply fascinating.

In a blog post that I thought was about Congress, a self described progressive suddenly takes a hard left turn into fatty-hate:

We are a nation of sacred cows. I'm talking about two aspects of America. One is our personal tonnage and the other is our indignation when anyone looks askance at someone who is obese. If feeling disgust and annoyance around people who are seriously obese is unfair, well, count me as one of the unfair. One reason has to do with feeling uncomfortable and frustrated in the company of people who are both self-destructive and heedless. The other has to do with those whose addictions add to everyone's difficulties. They cost us all a lot. The losses are measurable exactly as war's costs are measurable -- in young lives and a nation's treasure.

I wonder if this is going to be the new meme, now that hating on Republicans seems to be becoming passe', especially since the supposedly progressive President is starting to sound like one. And since obesity knows no color line, there are all sorts of entertaining implications to this line of thinking.

I suspect that this particular blogger is a retired baby-boomer, since he (the voice sounds like a he to me) has the time to post dozens of posts a day. I notice this blog showing up on memorandum much too often for a blog that appears to have no readers. Or at least no one who comments.

That gives me a thought.

Ymar, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to show this person error of their ways in your winning style. See how long it takes for him to start deleting your comments. (Anyone else who wishes to, can join in as well.) There is certainly enough to comment on over there.

Guns: A Tale of Two Traditions

Guns: A Tale of Two Traditions

For a special day at school, a Rhode Island 8-year-old decorated a hat with patriotic themes, including camouflage, an American flag, and tiny plastic toy soldiers. The school banned the hat. “Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns.”

Hey, I'm just surprised they didn't object to the flag.

The Rhode Island principal explained that "the hat would be fine if the boy replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn't have any." (Post-modern soldiers, holding copies of U.N. sanctions, are available at enlightened toy stores.) The school felt that the toy soldiers were the equivalent of wearing images of marijuana leaves on t-shirts.

The director of the Rhode Island National Guard gamely stepped in and tried to talk some sense to the school: "The American soldier is armed. That's why they're called the armed forces," he said. "If you're going to portray it any other way, you miss the point." I imagine him speaking very slowly and calmly.

Here’s another approach to guns, inspired by news reports of a Presidential Internet “kill-switch” to be triggered by an “emergency measure or action" announced by the Department of Homeland Security. Glen Reynolds responded: “If they shut down the Internet, I’m getting out my gun. And I think everyone should take it as a signal to do the same — because one way or the other, it means the country’s under attack.”

My solution to the boy’s hat? Use a razor blade to cut the plastic weapons loose, and replace them with tiny nerf bats. But as Bruno Bettelheim noted, the reason boys play with tin soldiers is that it’s not much fun to play with tin pacifists.

Update: Once again, embarrassment works. This gives me hope for November.

The Art of Euphemism

The Art of Euphemism

The Net is abuzz, including at Cassandra’s place, with the sad spectacle of a blogger threatening a series of critics with libel actions. I’m not familiar with the blogger and haven’t the patience to figure out what she’s on about, but I do have some helpful advice on how to avoid lawsuits of this kind. Truth is a defense, of course, but beyond that, let euphemism be your friend.

I haven’t any entertaining euphemisms on this specific subject, beyond the possible “leak in the think tank,” but I did find an entertaining column the other day about euphemisms for drunkenness. If you’ve never tried “The Word Detective,” now would be a good time to start. I ran across this recent column about the origin of the expression “snootful.” The Detective points us toward last year’s book by Paul Dickson, “Drunk: The Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary” (Melville House, 2009), which lists and explains thousands of synonyms for that blunt accusation, including “not quite himself,” “overwrought,” “outgoing,” or “ruddy-faced.”

The Detective admired “full of loud mouth soup,” but the example most helpful for our purposes today has been employed by British journalists to protect themselves against strict libel laws. The tradition may have begun in 1967, when a press agent for Labour Cabinet Minister George Brown explained one of his notorious public displays by saying he was “tired and emotional.” The phrase proved useful for decades afterward.

The British seem to have a special flair for this kind of thing. One of their expressions, new to this writer, is “pissed as a newt.” A Foreign Office official, informed of Brown’s press agent’s explanation, suggested that Brown had been “tired and emotional as a newt.”

Alas, PC evasions can ever be only temporary. Once the meaning becomes well understood, even the euphemism can land the writer in trouble. An expert writing in 2001 suggested that the phrase “tired and emotional” might expose the writer to liability even if it was meant literally. It must remain the job of restless wordsmiths to expand the boundaries of gentle evasions in every generation.