What Ever Happened to ‘Sticks and Stones?’
We live in a world where you really have to watch what you say. As Ben Stiller recently discovered, even authors and film directors are not exempt from censorious crusaders. A few days before the release of the film Tropic Thunder, co-written and directed by Stiller, protesters denounced this comedy for its repeated use of the word “retard” to describe one of the characters.
You don’t need to be a director of a multi-million dollar comedy to become subject to the attention of censors. The other day I received a helpful guide to the words that I should not use by a publisher who was interested in my work. As expected, the guide warned me about using the word “retard” to refer to retarded people. But I was surprised to discover that the term “mentally ill” was now deemed so offensive that I was instructed to use the term “mental health service user.”
One day I will write a book about the kind of mental state and imagination that leads people to cobble together such a long list of blasphemous words.
But what struck me was how out of touch I had become with the sensibility of contemporary censorship. I was genuinely taken aback when I discovered that the term “Chinese Whisper” was offensive because of its apparently racist connotations. I was moved to despair when I found out that one of my favorite words, “civilized,” ought not be used by a culturally sensitive author because of its alleged racist implications. But “seminal”? Who other than a sad retard could imagine that the word conveyed a powerful hint of patriarchal domination.
The censorious moment
Censorship has a long history. Back in Roman times two magistrates — or “censors” — were charged not only with counting the population but also with the supervision of public morals. Although in the 19th and 20th centuries censorship was frequently driven by a political imperative, its aim remained essentially the policing of moral behavior.
Twenty-first century censorship continues this tradition of moral enterprise. Today censorship is not simply the project of state or religious authorities. Advocacy groups, educators, media organizations, and professionals are actively engaged in rhetorical crusades to ban certain words and/or to promote their own favored ones. In modern times there has never been an era such as ours where language is so carefully regulated and policed by both private and public institutions.
The worst part about the “Tropic Thunder” kerfuffle was that even a cursory examination of the movie would show that the remark was intend to satirize hollywood types who exploit the mentally retarded to further their careers. It would be akin to protesting the use of the word “nigger” in Blazing Saddles.
You don’t necessarily have to see a movie to properly speak against it. But at least have the sense to find out what it’s about.
Once upon a time, the rudiments of logical thinking were taught in elementary school. These days you can get a PhD and never have taken a single logic course. One need only surf through the horrors of daytime TV in order to see the intellectually weaponless underclass (both white and black) on The Jerry Springer show using an “in your face”, “louder and longer” style of debate, which raises their frustration level and is antecedent to getting pissed off and throwing a fist or worse, picking up a gun and blowing someone’s head off. Violence and intellectual primitivism go together.
In the underclass, you win a debate by shouting longer and louder than your opponent. It’s called The Argumentum ad Baculum. “Agree with me or I’ll punch your lights out”. (obviously, my more, ahem, vivid translation).
And “louder and longer” is by no means a technique used only by the uneducated. I still wince when Eleanor Clift on THE MCLAUGHLIN GROUP — at a decibel level so piercing that it sets the neighborhood dogs to howling — uses the “I will shriek longer and louder than you” style of debate that in less educated hands frequently leads to violence. That’s intellectual food fighting not rational debate.
Alan Colmes greatly irritates me by talking over Conservatives as they’re trying to make their arguments, arguments I want to hear, and other Democrat operatives do the same. Why do Democrats find competing viewpoints and ideas so threatening?
Lawyers learn: if the facts are on your side, argue the facts; if the law’s on your side, argue the law, if neither the facts nor the law are on your side, attack the indivdual. Such personal attacks are called AD HOMINEMS. Read most of what’s been written about Sarah by the Palin Derangement Syndrome crowd for examples.
Then, there’s “poisoning the well* (no one drinks from a poisoned well. Sarah Palin was deemed so dangerous by the MSM that in the first week after McCain introduced her and she performed so brilliantly, the press went on a full-bore effort to poison the well so thoroughly that McCain would have to replace her on the ticket. Suckers! They merely raised the curiosity of the American people as to how McCain could have been so demented as to choose this, this, this, pro-life, practicing Christian, from Hicksville, who hadn’t even gone to an Ivy League University. Oh, Oh, the horror of it.
I’m sure someone meddled with her teleprompter at the convention– and I take full responsibility, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, because I prayed to God to please, please do this to Obama. Boomerang. But still Sarah took that moment to tell a great joke about Hockey Moms and soldiered on brilliantly. And American men, women, children fell in love with our beautiful, brilliant and witty Sarah.
The Argumentum ad Hominem is sometimes answered by a “tu quoque” popularly translated as: “Oh yeah? You’re one, too!.” For example, the Dimms are trying to argue that Sarah’s an earmarker too. She cut a half billion from the budget. No matter. She was for the bridge before she was against it.
The Argumentum ad Verecundiam, or Appeal to Authority usually trots out clowns like Wesley Clark on military matters and Joe Biden on foreign policy. “Slow Joe” who has been wrong on virtually every foreign policy issue for 35 years.
Film fascists frequently argue that a film is good because Martin Scorcese or some famous film critic said so. With respect to film, as with all the arts, one is dealing with matters of taste and value, with matters of OPINION — not FACT.
The Argumentum ad Verecundiam also surfaces in the “4 out of 5 doctors” ads and commercials I’ve read and heard all my life. Ever wonder about that 5th doctor? I once heard him speak at a Whole Earth Expo where he said that annual physical exams are a health risk, hospitals are dangerous places for the sick, most operations do little good and many do harm, medical testing laboratories are scandalously inaccurate, many drugs cause more problems than they cure, and the X-ray machine is the most pervasive and dangerous tool in the doctor’s office. The applause shook Moscone Center’s rafters. His name was Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn (deceased) and he wittily defended his outrageous opinions in CONFESSIONS OF A MEDICAL HERETIC.
if everyone subscribed to Dr. Mendelsohn’s ideas, medical costs would plummet. Just saying.
Interesting article, although the first thing that came to mind wasn’t Tropic Thunder, or even the lipstick on a pig nonsense. It was moveon.org and their “General Betray-Us” ad. I found the reaction to that, and the subsequent resolution to condemn them in Congress, to be quite disturbing. More disturbing than the ad itself.
Gee, I didn’t realize that the use of the words in my gray matter lexicon were so offensive to people.
Is it still okay to call my dog mentally ill and retarded?
Stand Up For Chuck!
Herb:
Interesting article, although the first thing that came to mind wasn’t Tropic Thunder, or even the lipstick on a pig nonsense. It was moveon.org and their “General Betray-Us” ad. I found the reaction to that, and the subsequent resolution to condemn them in Congress, to be quite disturbing. More disturbing than the ad itself.
Herb, there are limits to free speech and there is also accountability when speech crosses clear legal lines of slander, libel, or what courts consider legitimate fighting words that directly confront the honor and reputation of the person subject to verbal assailing.
It’s not at all like public school….
In Petraeus’s case, moveon.org stupidly crossed a clear bright line that no one in politics should ever drag military into a political battle or directly assault the honor and integrity of troops serving -especically those in the field in time of war, and in turn, the military is barred from joining in battle in civilian politics.
If you look at who condemned the moveon.org idiots, you will notice many liberals who strongly believe in not dragging the military into politics signed it. Because it is a bedrock principle of our Republic that the young twit Eli Parisier and pals ignored when they decided a personal attack on a military person implementing policies of civilian leadership would be “sexy, daring”.
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And the childhood chant of “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” has been fairly well rebutted by studies showing that there can be severe psychological and physiological effects from constant verbal bullying in spouses, employees, and schoolkids.
And when the victim gets fed up? And the tormentors don’t back off? Then you have the root cause of 1/3rd of domestic, workplace, and school murders.
Sandra, I completely agree with you regarding logic. Logic should be a critical component of education, yet it seems there are so few people today that have taken a logic course. I have seen so many arguments, by seeminly intelligenct people, that would fail even the most basic logical examination.
One of my favorite,
a) Palin wants abstinence only education (a false premise, by the way)
b) Palin’s daughter is pregnant before being married
ergo c) Abstinence only education doesn’t work
Wow, really?
George Orwell and George Carlin were both dead right on this subject.
Carlin noted that those who insist on changing the name of a condition think it changes the condition. His specific example, IIRC, was WWI’s “shell shock” becoming WWII’s “combat fatigue” and the modern “PTSD.” He also lamented that “crippled” morphed first to “handicapped” and then to “differently abled.”
As for Orwell…. I suggest you read “Politics and the English Language” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”
H.L. Mencken and Ambrose Bierce are two other authors whose works you might want to read.
Tell that to the McCain Palin crowd as they twist insults and slights out of every gesture of Obama and some major news outlets. So now the GOP is the victim of racism, classism, and sexism.
Sandra M, the rudiments of logic are curiously absent in your pointless, predictable whine. You are so subjectively in love with Palin, that you have abandoned what little objective intellectual powers that you have with your boring, utterly predictable Palin-the-Victim rant.
Javelin said: “the rudiments of logic are curiously absent in your pointless, predictable whine.”{
I defined the argumentum ad baculum (threat of violence), the argumentam ad verecundiam (authority) the argumentam ad hominem, (attacking the person and not the argument) “poisoning the well and the tu quo que. (you’re one too).
So sorry you found it boring. I find that accusing far-lefties of ad hominem attacks makes them froth wondefully at the mouth with pure rage, which I find verrrrry satisfying.
Javelin, in future, let’s make a pact. I won’t read your comments and you won’t read mine. OK?
It’s hard to take seriously notions that people aren’t logical and intellectual while so many are jumping on Sandra’s idea that the MSM uniformly followed that path, that she’s “dangerous”, and loved by all. Paranoid and delusional.
And yes, poor conservatives are victims by mean ol’ Alan Colmes. I prefer opinions from The Economist to trash like this. They aren’t nearly so whiny.
Javelin,
You too have fallen for the McCain trap. It works so, so easily against Obamabats.
McCain is using ridicule and humor in a very effective way. And it is working. Even the ad about the lipstick episode is, if you listen to the music, meant as a tease.
But it is fun to watch the left, who love to play the victim game (often for other people in a sort of Munchhausen by Proxy) getting skewered on their own stick. Heck, they invented the game, and Obama has used it time and again. But when it’s turned on him…
Oh… the unfairness of it all! Oh… the Republicans are playing the “victim card” – they aren’t allowed to do that! Only we can be victims!
Well Carlin was wrong about shell shock. Shell shock was a misnomer cause they wrongly attributed the battle fatigue to the shock of exploding high explosive shells. So shell shock was rightfully jettisoned for battle fatigue. Better is mentally retarded, which was a scientific term that replaced earlier scientific terms like cretin, imbecile and moron, which, in their times were improvements over colloquial terms like dummy, stupid, lame brain. So, eventually, mentally retarded got jettisoned for developmentally disabled, which in a few years will have to be thrown away once people start calling stupid people developmentals or something similar. It seems once a word for retards becomes colloquial, it has to be abandoned for yet another pseudo scientific term.
That’s the thing. You complain about victim thinking, then engage in it yourself. Your side complains about earmarks, and she scoops up loads of them. They complain about inexperience, and pick someone who by McCain’s own standards from last year, is not experienced. They complain about the press favoring one candidate, but now they do it to your side with her just as they did it with him eight years ago, and it’s not a problem. And social conservatives used to complain about (and some still do, such as Dr. Laura, who dislikes the Palin choice) about women trying to “have it all” to the neglect of their families. It was Hillary and her kind pushing feminism 30+ years ago, not conservatives. But, aside from Dr. Laura, where are those voices now?
If you wish to have any respect, then find a set of principles and stick with them, through thick and thin. That’s not too much to ask.
silviomossa said:
“It’s hard to take seriously notions that people aren’t logical and intellectual while so many are jumping on Sandra’s idea that the MSM uniformly followed that path, that she’s “dangerous”, and loved by all. Paranoid and delusional.”
Your poor grammar makes you tad difficult to follow. Sarah obviously is not loved by all. To think so would be “delusional.” but the media’s piling on would make one think they find her dangerous. And you’re not “paranoid” if they’re really after you. Most Conservative observers seem to agree Sarah is being treaated much more harshly than Obama. You are not a Conservative, so you have a different view.
“And yes, poor conservatives are victims by mean ol’ Alan Colmes.”
Do you deny he talks over Conservative guests when they’re trying to make their points?
” I prefer opinions from The Economist to trash like this. They aren’t nearly so whiny.”
Funny you don’t write as if you read The Economist.
Sandra
Greg said:
Sandra, I completely agree with you regarding logic. Logic should be a critical component of education, yet it seems there are so few people today that have taken a logic course. I have seen so many arguments, by seeminly intelligenct people, that would fail even the most basic logical examination.
In the middle ages, the first three subjects one studied were, the trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric, called the three-fold path to eloquence. followed by the quadrivium, the four-fold path to knowledge: music, astronomy, arithmetic and geometry.
Through most of our history students studied logic, Catholic schools, still do to some extent because of the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was influenced by Aristotle. Logic exposes fallacy and flawed thinking and Liberals recoil from logic as Vampires recoil from crucifixes.
It’s called a show of RESPECT to address the person first.. For example, person with mental illness..
That you chose to indifferently refer to “retarded people” sent the rest of anything else you might have had to share from your Fingertips straight to the trash bucket..
Deliberate use of that derogatory phrase set the stage for that you intend only to consciously antagonize, devalue, and offend your fellow Humans solely just to do so.. Too much else on the Net to play with to be bothered with that..
Kudos to your once prospective publisher..
“Perversely, the exercise of free speech is associated with elite privilege. It is represented as affirming the status of the powerful and the negation of the oppressed and the vulnerable.”
What we have here is the postmodern interpretation of what constitutes ‘speech’. Postmoderns are Right and Leftist collectivists who think nothing of coercing the individual into conforming to the Common Will of the collective. This is the aim of the politically correct campaign. We are being hived, and we don’t know it.
cedarford, The moveon.org ad did not cross clear legal lines of slander or libel or anything else that would actually end up in a court room. Was it provocative and offensive? Yes, and that’s putting it lightly, but it wasn’t something that would have put them in legal trouble.
So when Congress convened and realized they couldn’t do anything legally to Moveon.org for being jerks, they instead passed their symbolic condemnation. Handy fodder for an attack ad during their re-election campaign, so who cares if it’s non-binding?
As for this, “no one in politics should ever drag military into a political battle…” I agree. But let’s not pretend that moveon.org was the first or even the most egregious. After all, if Bush hadn’t made Petraeus the lead blocker for his Iraq policies, it’s unlikely moveon.org would have even mentioned his name.
This doesn’t absolve them from being offensive button-pushers. But even offensive button-pushers have the right to constitutionally protected speech.
There are really only two mental states: the intellectual, calm, dispassionate one that sees the world as it truly is, and the other emotional one that overreacts to anything and everything, usually with disatrous results. These can also be described as emotionally mature and immature.
It’s the immature who call simple disagreement “hate speech”, a typical overreaction that substitutes as logic. The admonition about sticks and stones simply tells the immature to calm down, grow up and become an adult like the rest of us.
Anyone remember when Disney put out the Mr. Magoo movie and got complaints from “visually impaired” people that their feelings were hurt? I come from a family of 5, wherein 4 of us are extrememly near-sighted and astigmatic. We always referred to ourselves as being “blind as bats” and thought the Mr. Magoo cartoon series was hysterical. We could relate. People need to lighten up.
Anymore I find making conversation with others difficult because I might say something that will hurt their poor little feelings. My neighbor corrected me the other day by telling me I wasn’t supposed to refer to Jet Li as an Oriental but rather an Asian. Thankfully, Jet Li has a backbone so I doubt he’d be offended; lots of others need to grow a backbone too.
I believe this is just a load of hooey placed on us by people whose agenda is simply to eliminate conversations between people that go beyond the weather. It’s right out of “1984,” where they fear ideas might actually make people think and take any action for change.
To all those guardians out there of political correctness, I declare right here and now: I’m old, not a senior. I’m fat, not pleasingly plump or calorically challenged. I’m darn near blind as a bat, not visually-impaired and becoming deaf, not hearing-impaired. If that’s not okay with you–my choice of descriptive words, not my medical conditions–I guess you’ll just have to kiss my big, fat glutamous maximus.
Herb, what agent of the government deprived those idiots at MoveOn of their constitutionally-protected speech?
Oh, that’s right — none!
What commercial enterprise deprived them on their non-protected speech?
Oh, that’s right — none!
Cedarford is obviously right and you know it. So does MoveOn — that was an *infamous* ad they will never live down and it has not been paraded around since.
I will take issue with cedarford on this: that wasn’t merely a childhood chant. That was civilized wisdom passed down for generations designed to mitigate the admittedly juvenile but quite effective tactic of baiting someone into a physical altercation.
Human beings are not perfectible; the “sticks and stones” admonition fits on a continuum that represents a coping mechanism about as good as we’re going to get when it comes to conflict.
Rattlergator, you miss my point. The government COULDN’T prevent moveon.org from running their ad. But that didn’t stop them from throwing their little hissy fit.
Sorry, dude, cedarford wasn’t right. And neither are you.
wonderful article. there is no right to not be offended.
sadly, this is not recognized by most . . .
One merely has to look at Obama using his koolaid drinkers to mau-mau talks hows and other critics in order to shut them up or deny access to the airwaves to see who the censors are.