When we surrender control of language to the receiver—that is, when we insist that the important intent in the communications process belongs to the person decoding the message—we open ourselves up to the very kinds of ludicrous arguments that Crooks and Liars’ John Amato makes here:
Brit Hume called former Senator John Glenn a “partisanâ€â€spearchucker” to describe his role in a Fred Thompson investigation back in his old Senate days on FOX News Sunday. (via Wikpedia: Glenn also served as the ranking minority member on a special Senate investigative committee chaired by Tennessee senator and actor Fred Dalton Thompson that looked into allegations China attempted to influence U. S. politicians prior to the 1996 elections)
I had to watch it a few times for it to sink in. I looked up “spearchucker,” on Dictionary.com, but they didn’t recognize it so I wonder how he will explain this one away?
Well, let’s see. Were I him, I’d begin by noting that, from the context, it is clear I’m referring to Glenn as somebody who either chucks a spear, metaphorically speaking, or else carries one, colloquially speaking:
Hume: …he had a mixed record in the Senate and he’s a man who always seems somewhat frustrated and bored by the Senate…I particularly remember an investigation that occurred after the Clinton/Dole campaign. We were new here at FOX news and we carried a lot of the hearings live. It was in the campaign finance alleged irregularities with monies supposedly seeping into the American political campaign of Bill Clinton from Chinese sources and so onâ€â€it was pretty juicy stuff it looked like a very big deal.
Fred Thompson was the chairman of the Investigating committee and it went absolutely nowhere. He was effectively buffaloed in that investigation by none other than John Glennâ€â€who was a wonderful man, but not somebody normally you would think capable of being a real partisan..ahh…ahh.. spearchucker, who could, who could undo an investigation. So it didn’t go very well and I think Fred Thompson has acknowledged since then that it wasn’t his finest hour…
Amato helpfully defines “spearchucker” for us, noting that in colloquial speech (last made famous by noted racist (and socialist) Ring Lardner Jr in the script for MASH), the word means, “A derogatory phrase for a black male used in reference to his primitive abilities to hunt animals with a long sharpened object.”
And, while I never thought I’d ever have to do this, I suppose for John’s benefit—and to help ol’ cracker Brit out of his racist tar patch—I’ll first point out that John Glenn is, well, white as a Wesleyan freshman’s ass. So were Hume actually aiming a racist epithet at the former Ohio Senator and world famous astronaut, he’d have been better off going with something like “Ofay.”
Secondly, I’ll point out that spearchucker can mean, obviously, “a person who chucks a spear”—and in this instance, Hume’s assertion is that nobody would have expected Glenn, who was not considered one of the Democrat’s most forceful partisans [a spearcarrier, perhaps, as Toby points out in the comments], could derail the investigation by asserting himself quite so aggressively. He was, therefore, an unlikely candidate to kill Thompson’s investigating committee. With a long, sharpened stick or otherwise.
To believe Hume uses “spearchucker” as a racial epithet, then, one must believe that 1) Hume is in the habit of using the term to refer to blacks, and he mistakenly thought Glenn to be black; 2) that Hume is in the habit of using the term to refer to blacks, and he got confused, reached for the word he meant [spearcarrier?], but let slip instead a sneak peek into his dark and racist soul; or 3) that Hume is capable of using “spearchucker” in a way that is either denotative, or else in a way that is metaphorical—but which doesn’t redound to issues of race (which he could have expected listeners to understand, given that Glenn is not, as noted earlier, black, and given that Hume is in a position to know as much).
My guess is, Amato has interpreted the remarks through the lens of number 2—which, potentially, speaks as much to Amato’s prejudices against white conservatives like Hume as is does to Hume’s supposed racial prejudices (which again, aren’t in evidence here, given that he is speaking about a man who is so white that white people have often stopped to note just how fucking white he is).
Or, to bring this back to the realm of intentionalism, Amato has ascribed to Hume an intent that, contextually, doesn’t stand up to honest scrutiny.
And the reason he does this is that he believes he can tie a word that in a different context has acted as a racial epithet to someone he believes is secretly harboring racist beliefs.
But sometimes a spade is just a spade is just a garden tool. Amato is, of course, allowed to interpret Hume’s remarks anyway he chooses—and we, as separate interpreters, are free to point out that he seems to be straining for an interpretation that the textual and contextual clues don’t corroborate; where we get in trouble, though, is during the step that inevitably follows, where someone points out that even if Hume didn’t mean to use the term in a way that invoked a racist history, he should have known better—at which point we surrender meaning to those who would presume to decide on it themselves, even as they tether that meaning to the utterer in the acknowledged absence of any intent to mean what they insist the utterance can be made to mean, should someone decide to resignify in a way that is beyond the control of the utterer.
And in fact, Amato goes that route when he notes:
This isn’t the first time a Republican has used a racist term as a description. Tony Snow used “tar baby,” as the WH press secretary, but later said he would no longer use that phrase. Mitt Romney used “tar baby” also, but he apologized for it […]
I covered the ridiculous attack on Snow earlier (just as I earlier excoriated those who “apologized” for Bill Bennett’s remarks)—but it’s worth rehearsing the Think Progress / Crooks and Liars “tar baby” argument here again, because it gets to the heart of these semantic matters, and makes it perfectly clear why certain incoherent ideas about how interpretation works are dangerous—and can have the very real effect of chilling public speech:
Date: May 16, 2006
To: White House Press Secretary Tony Snow
From: ThinkProgress.orgRe: The use of the term “tar babyâ€Â
â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Today in your first press briefing you referred to the term “tar baby†on two occasions:
SNOW: Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program, the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.
….
QUESTION: What are your personal goals? What do you hope to achieve here? Will you continue to televise these briefings? And would you put into English the phrase (OFF-MIKE) the tarbaby?
SNOW: Well, I believe hug the tarbaby, we could trace that back to American lore.
Based on the context of the term, we believe you meant tar baby to mean: “a situation almost impossible to get out of; a problem virtually unsolvable.â€Â
But in “American lore,†the expression tar baby is also a racial slur “used occasionally as a derogatory term for black people.†Use of the term has resulted in people being fired.
As Random House notes, “some people suggest avoiding the use of the term in any context.†Now that you are no longer at Fox News, you may want to take them up on their advice.
[My emphasis]
Virtually everything you need to know about why I believe intentionalism is the only coherent interpretive paradigm is contained within the brief bit I’ve bolded.
[…]Think Progress is admitting that they believe Snow’s use of “tar baby”—how he intended to use the term—was in keeping with its well-known conventional history. Specifically, he was using the term to mean something along the lines of “a situation almost impossible to get out of; a problem virtually unsolvable.”
But having admitted that, TP then goes on to suggest that, though Snow meant one thing, his words nevertheless could, were one inclined to do so, be taken as a racial slur —though to perform such a reading, the interpreter would have to dismiss what TP has already conceded was Snow’s meaning.
And such is the nature of signification, and the importance of intent in governing it: TP’s argument seems to be that it doesn’t much matter what Snow meant by the term (given the context, it is just as appropriate to conclude Snow was alluding to Robert Anton Wilson’s “Tar- Baby Principle”– which posits that one is attached to what one attacks”—as it is to assume he was alluding to Joel Chandler Harris’ “Uncle Remus” tales, though it doesn’t much matter which you choose). Instead, because the term “tar-baby” has been used ”occasionally as a derogatory term for black people”—and because ”some people suggest avoiding the use of the term in any context” (presumably, the same kind of people who are affecting outrage here)1—TP is arguing that the expression should be off-limits to people like Snow, using as a justification for this (incoherent) linguistic argument the possibility that someone somewhere (and it bears noting, this hypothetical “someone” is necessarily being posited as one who is less astute then the good folks at Think Progress, who had no problem whatsoever understanding Snow’s intent) might misinterpret Snow’s remarks. In short, they are using as a justification for demonizing his speech the possibility that someone, somewhere, might either 1) misinterpret Snow’s meaning, believing him to have intended to use the phrase as a racial slur; or 2) misinterpret Snow’s meaning, because they believe that, regardless of what he may or may not have intended, the words themselves carry with them the necessary social taint of racism.
In the first case, the hypothetical (and not quite sufficiently erudite) interpreter TP invents is engaging in an intentionalist reading of Snow’s comment, albeit one that contextual and conventional clues would argue is an incorrect one. In the second case—which is the far more problematic (and dangerous) of the two—the interpreter is engaging in a formalist reading, one in which the signifiers (to borrow from Derrida) are haunted by the ghosts of all their previous signifieds.
In other words, once a signifier (“tar-baby”) has been used to index a particular referent (“black people,” used derogatively), it will always carry with it, inherent to the signifier itself, that referent as one of its potential signifieds (what the utterer attaches to the signifier to provide it with meaning).
Under this description, the utterer (Snow) is responsible for the entire history of the signifier’s usage. Which, followed to it’s logical extreme suggests that it is language that controls the utterer, and not the other way around.
What makes such a suggestion dangerous is that, once we concede this (erroneous) semiotic point, we have surrendered our right to mean what we mean to the whims of a particular interpretative community—who, as is the case with TP and their ilk, may be so disposed to suggest (either cynically or because of some fundamental misunderstanding of how interpretation works) that our meaning, created at the moment we add our signified(s) to the signifier, is secondary to the “meaning” others can make out of our utterances.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, once our meaning is successfully marginalized, the intentions of the interpreter to make our utterances “mean” what he or she says it means (through force of will, and using as a justification the fact that the sounds like those we have uttered have been used in the past to mean something other than what we meant when we uttered them) creates the conditions for relativism that are at the heart of any interpretive paradigm refusing to honor original intent.
Worse, such an incoherent linguistic maneuver allows interpreters to pick and choose how to frame the meaning of the utterer (be the utterer Tony Snow or Bill Bennett or Captain Ed), and it is not difficult to see how very convenient such a procedure is for those willing to put it to strong ideological use.
To be clear, my position is that intentionalism is the default state of affairs in situations requiring interpretation. Given that, we should be privileging the intent of the utterer if our goal is to interpret the meaning of an utterance.
With Hume’s “spearchucker” remark, Amato has attributed to Hume racist intent; with the “tar-baby” comment from Snow, Think Progress specifically refuses to ascribe racist intent to Snow, but insists, in spite of that, that his words themselves were racist, given that they could potentially be construed as such by someone who is not convinced that Snow’s intent was benign.
Which is really only another way of saying that Snow’s use of “tar-baby” will be racist precisely when someone decides to see it that way—and despite how he actually meant it. And Snow, therefore, must avoid using such phrases if he wishes to avoid being accused, somewhere down the line, of being a racist.
And people find it strange that by the end of his career, Samuel Beckett was writing nothing?
It’s good that you’re not niggardly with your words, Jeff.
You certainly “bitchslapped” that fellow.
By the context, I magine Might Hume was thinking of spear carrier?
Wow, preview is your friend.
By the context, I imagine Hume was thinking of spear carrier?
niggardly, niggardly, niggardly, ad infinitum. Or until the spearchuckers get me. What the fuck is wrong with these people? Don’t answer that. It was rhetorical.
I always like the way my brain feels after reading one of your intentionalism posts, Jeff. Like an elliptical trainer for the mind.
How would Midway have turned out differently had the cryptography been left to deconstructionists, I wonder?
On the other hand, I think it would be hilarious to see Hume offer Glenn a face-to-face apology.
I read Amato’s post on Monday and thought he was just as crazy as you do. Look, I hate Brit Hume as much as the next John Amato, but, Dear Lord, his argument here is ridiculous.
I mean, what’s next, going through the transcript and picking out syllables to phonetically spell a racist word? Hume is a bastard (personal opinion), but I doubt he’s a racist. I think the difference is I don’t expect public figures to be racists just because I disagree with them. Apparently, Mr. Amato feels differently.
And might the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge have assumed Gen. McAuliffe was offering his testicles as tokens of surrender?
TW: army67. It’d be 69 but one party was short a pair.
Well – Hume’s choice of words was poor.
Though if Hume had said ‘hoplite’ – Amato would have twisted that into some sort of gaybashing reference.
Willful obtuseness trumps all.
timmah – It is really magnanimous of you to not believe that Hume is a racist, given that there is nothing that would indicate that he is. At the same time, you are willing to believe that he is a bastard, because you believe that his political beliefs do not mesh with yours. That says a lot about you.
I can see it if Hume’d called Al Sharpton the “lead spearchucker for the black outrage movement”.
Otherwise it is a giant yawn…. unless Hume has ever said “ghetto blaster”. Which would change everything.
Don’t you think rhyming slang would be more likely? As in spearchucker ==> motherfucker?
But don’t change your mind on my account92.
Jesus, I can’t even agree with you, JD, without you getting your panties in a bunch.
I happen to think Hume is a bastard because of his general personality, not because of his politics. Being right wing does no cause the Tim to hate you. Otherwise, family reunions would be much more uncomfortable and I wouldn’t EVER be able to travel to Columbus to see my aunt. Hell, I love Grandma, but after she called Hillary a “bitch”, I would have to hate her too.
I am not, in case you did not know, the opposite side of the Pablo or B Moe coin. I spent, for instance, a winter redoing my basement and listening to Rush, since Dad was helping me.
If I hated all right-wingers, would I keep reading PW? I have a long list of PWers who are cool. Start being nice and you too can rise above the general Pablo/B Moe vileness and into the light of reasoned conversation.
Who is in possession of the Left’s master list of words that are not to evr be uttered by a white non-Democrat? I think it would help everyone if they would just publish that list, so that we can avoid using those random words that might offend some grievance group. Or, is this like porn, they know it when they see it, and thus there will never be a definitive listing of words that may offend, all tracing back to their attempt to bastadize language.
JD, I’ll see if Spike Lee can forward that list to you ASAP.void(0);
wink
Thanks, timmyb. While you are at it, can you get NOW, CAIR, GLAAD, and the rest of the alphabet grievance groups to produce theirs ?
In M*A*S*H Spearchucker was so called because of his arm, he was a football star in college.
Don’t give them ideas.
So, you’re not claiming to have information that his mother and father were not legally married?
Seems to me the personality trait that has come to be associated with that word may be a result of people getting fed up with people calling them bastards.
The one thing I’ve noticed about the loonier left is that they’ll pick any nit, however perceived, in the hopes that something will stick. Sadly, there’s a lot of idiots out there who will believe this tool’s distortions as canon.
And hell yeah I think Amato’s the real racist here. You could (and someone should) just as easily–and with real, actual righteousness–ask him why the first thing that popped in his head when confronted with the word ‘spearchucker’ was ‘black man’.
/Amato must have heard it on the street87
Um…I hate to break this to y’all, but Spearchucker was Spearchucker because…well…he threw the javelin. You know: a spear.
Interestingly, although the Wikipedia page I linked to links “spearchucker” as a racial slur, the list of racial slurs it points to doesn’t contain “spearchucker”.
Make of that what you will.
The American carriers would have been deconstructed.
Oh, here it is:
SPEARCHUCKER
If I can make a suggestion, Coach.
HENRY
The way I run an organization, any
man in it has the right to speak his
mind.
SPEARCHUCKER
In that case, here are ten basic
plays. I think that’s about all this
bunch can handle.
He hands Henry ten sheets of paper, on each of which a running
or pass play is diagrammed down to the finest detail.
HENRY
Thank you, Spearchucker. I’ll
certainly take a look at these. Where
the hell did you ever get that name?
SPEARCHUCKER
I used to throw the javelin.
He meant, that much that episode of Buck Rogers, where he pretended to steal the nuclear codes, in order to get a flight on the space probe Ranger 3
which would freeze and return him to earth 500 years later; Glenn had a quid pro quo
In other words: oh, the humanity.
I always thought it was some kind of masochism thing.
Anyway…..
Jeff, my recommendation to Britt Hume would be to tell John Amato to go piss up a rope.
Toby got it right. What Hume meant to say was spearcarrier, which has a very different and not-racist definition. That he may not know the difference may lead to all sorts of inferences, but I don’t think any racism is proven in this instance.
Though an apology is a damn good idea, since a racist term was used. An apology to whom is a question, but really it’s a simple semantic flub. I hope.
An unimportant background figure on the stage. toby is obviously right, this is another example of a semi-literate lefty trying to remember some of what he learned in childhood but failing.
Here though, is an example of well remembered education being turned into sheer comic poetry:
Beautiful. hoplite immediately takes over from “light on his loafers” as my slur of choice.
From dictionary.com:
Well, Glenn being white and all, that it was a racial slur doesn’t make any sense at all.
Uh oh.
Victor Davis Hanson is in big, BIG trouble.
Says the former “neoconstink”, who just chastised me for daring to request they address the topic of the thread rather than make shotgun blast accusations all over the board.
Because it’s your goal to stir up anger.
It certainly can’t be for debate; if that were your goal, you’d at least try to show some signs of intelligence and honesty.
jon – What is fucking racist about calling someone a partisan spear chucker ? If he had called him a partisan bomb thrower, should Muslims be all up in arms ? Apologize ?! For what ?
Though an apology is a damn good idea, since a racist term was used.
Absolutely and by no means should he issue an apology.
I am waiting, WAITING, for the day when someone says something that could be construed by a moron as offensive but actually is NOT, and the utterer of the term is called on the carpet, and he says:
“I will be glad to clarify my meaning for those who misunderstood me, but I will not apologize. If you insist on willfully misinterpreting my comments, that’s your problem.”
And then the clouds will part, and JESUS will ride down in a flaming chariot and anoint that person God For The Day.
My money is on Fred!Thompson.
To clarify, I would say that “spearchucker” is a pretty fucking racist term. As would be “nigger”. And to use it by mistake is worth an apology. Not a specific-to-anyone apology, but a general apology, like “I shouldn’t have used that term, I meant to say….”
However, if he meant it in the racist way, he can feel free to not apologize and carry on. But he’d better not complain if this haunts him forever.
Major John, OT, ever come across a guy called Bay in your line of work?
Whoever said “spearchucker” was probably thinking of “spear carrier” i.e., a foot soldier fighting for someone else.
We’ve been over “tar baby” before. The irony is that the concept that Harris enshrined in his tales is a well-known motif in West African folklore. Maybe I said that last time.
All these trips are just games. Baiting games. Either you fall for them, or you don’t. Unfortunately, if you are a public figure, you learn that if you defy “your warning” not to use words ABC, or not to refer to interpretations XYZ, you will get into big trouble. Just the way our public life works.
Too bad.
But the public as mob has never been distinguished by its intelligence.
I’m with dicentra. He meant nothing racist—and who knows? Maybe he just got done watching a Robert Altman film.
He owes no one an apology, because it is clear from both the context and the target that the word wasn’t being used in a way that is racist.
“spearchucker” is NOT inherently racist. Assigning it that signified gives it its racist meaning. That the term has a history of racist usage simply means that that is one of the clues by which we are free to try to decode Hume’s meaning.
In this instance, it is clear he didn’t mean “black savage”. So there is no reason to apologize—and to do so just gives ground to those who would like to see the “interpretive community” gain control over meaning.
Which is a recipe for totalitarianism.
I am also reminded of Eddie Murphy #1 in Bowfinger, who considered the name “Shakespeare” to be racist for similar reasons. The concessions to paranoid touchiness are bottomless ….
And I would say you’re pretty fucking stupid.
So, who the racist now, Grand Klugel?
Wait, you didn’t comprehend one word of what Jeff wrote, right?
He used a specific term. If you’re too stupid to figure out what it really means, that’s on you.
Yep, comprehension sure ain’t your stroing suit, eh bunky?
The wonder is that he actually knows how to use the “submit” button.
What a load of macaca.
Maybe Hume could follow it up by calling Obama a Liberal Leprechaun.
Maybee, has anyone ever accused you of being mischievous?
Begorrah! I’ll kick yer feckin’ arse, me bein’ Black Irish an’ all!
Notice the nice little catch-22 scenario jonny set up here ? Either he apologize and give substance to this patently un-serious situation, or not apologize, which jon would have us believe means that Hume intended to use a racist term.
What a pile of steaming crap.
This one is nearly as bad as as the Tony Snow – Tar Baby fiasco. Nearly, but not quite.
This thread makes me wanna get drunk, put on an american flag t-shirt, and shout along to the chorus of Born in the USA.
Total ripoff of “I’m So Bored with the USA”.
What’s the point, shinola? What, are you from Heimytown or something?
shine is a racist name.
jon, he quite clearly meant to say “spear carrier”, which has no conceivable racist connotations. His slip into saying ‘spearchucker’ was not a freudian racist slip, it was a thick lefty slip.
You are getting would up about nothing.
timmyb, I have to say that I almost always find B Moe’s and Pablo’s contributions clear, amusing and well thought through and expressed.
For “would” read “wound”.
A thai pronunciation racist slip, or a thick finger?
What does one on the left say when confronted with all these obvious examples of stalinist behaviour/ ie hate crime,niggardly,speech codes in acadamia? I mean besides name calling? Thank God the voting machines are fixed
As in COL Austin Bay?
Damn. It’s good to see you back, Jeff.
I long for the day when there is a Republican that actually has the spine to stand up to these victim-mongers. Reagan and Atwater would have. I am not sure we have that guy or gal out there now.
People like jon make my blood boil.
Just read all of today’s posts in one sitting. You were on fire today.
respect64
I think the movie is Zulu Dawn… the scene where all those astronauts show up on the horizon looking for a place to vote…. or golf. It’s been a while…
That scene was actually filmed on the moon but they made up a set to look like Africa. One of the greatest hoaxes of all time.
I love the intentionalism posts. Seems to draw the stereotype flies, though. But that’s OK, there’s some folks around here that are good with the flyswatter.
Haveta wonder if Hume didn’t just have a brainfart and meant to say ‘spear carrier…’
Amato’s first sin was mis-characterizing what Brit Hume said. Brit did not call Glenn* a “partisan spearchucker”. From there Amato could go anywhere but in a sensible direction.
*Glenn has an apartment in the same condo as my mother. I have seen him numerous times, up close and personal, and I can say that you don’t get whiter than John Glenn.
P.S. Did you know that Ted Williams, a/k/a the Thumper, the Splendid Splinter, Teddy Ball-game, was Glenn’s wing man in Korea?
I chip in my “I’m not a linguist but I’m cunning nonetheless” comment: Looks like Hume was blocking on the word he wanted, from the transcript, and “spearchucker” bubbled up first.
Heaven knows why. I can only think that M*A*S*H must be embedded more firmly in the braingoo of earlier generations, or somethin’.
Also, I’m seeing that issue with Wikipedia, too. They have racial slurs I didn’t even know existed (and, admittedly, my vocabulary in that area is deficient), but not spearchucker?
Jon,
You seem to be taking the position in this thread that Hume’s words could equally well be understood as as a semantic mistake or a deliberate racist epithet. You are leaning toward giving him the benefit of the doubt just because you are such a generous guy.
Actually, if Hume “meant it in the racist way” then we would have to assume he was being deliberately nonsensical, since the racist usage applies to blacks, and John Glenn would never be mistaken for a black man.
Egads! At least at one time I could bemoan the fate of a number of noble pines sacrificed in the name of such silliness. Alas! Nobody cares for pixels. Just like nobody cares for the poor skeet.
And besides, Jeff, you know as well as I do that if the Humanities (85% of the Leftist contingent) ever embraced Intentionalism, entire departments would perish for lack of things to publish.
There are only so many things you can say about the “canon.” They would be forced to turn to heretofore uncommented genres likeâ€â€gasp!â€â€sci-fi, fantasy, westerns, romance, mysteriesâ€â€where the author’s intention is crystal clear, and they’re left having to evaluate texts based on their skill at character, plot, and thematic development.
I know, I know. When pigs sprout propellers. They’d never deign to touch literature that actually reads well and entertains.
BECAUSE OF THE BOURGEOIS VALUES!
“The question is who’s to be Master, that’s all.”
— Humpty Dumpty
I was surprised to be offered a literature credit for a Science Fiction and Fantasy course. One of the novels was Ender’s Game, was the beginning of the end of little leftist B Moe. Should be required reading in High School.
What’s funny about that, B Moe, is the leftards that liberally infest http://www.ornery.org’s forums seem to think that Ender’s Game is all about leftist values, and that OSC is a wannabe Right-Wing Death Beast agitating for genocide and environmental destruction–JUST THE KIND OF THING HE WROTE AGAINST IN ENDER’S GAME OMG YOU GUYS
I sum up my feelings on the matter in the words of the dudes from River City Ransom: *barf*
That is because they are all fucking illiterate. They reject intentionalism because their reading comprehension is so bad they can’t figure out what the author is saying. The comment threads here prove that on a daily basis.
Major,
No, Walter, in your other work
It seems that Mr Glenn has, in fact, chunked a spear.
Sweet Irony
1. jon used the “n” word, and someone may have been offended seeing it in print. Thus, he really should be forced to make a general apology, or—by jon’s own way of thinking—accept the consequences of his silence.
2. If Amato is looking into Hume’s psyche, what should others make of Amato’s psyche, which seems terribly obsessed with anything remotely resembling a racist epithet?
Dang I thought he was a football player. Maybe he did some of that too, I knew it was a sports reference, not some racial slur. Altman was trying to be clever.
So very, very true.
I really need to stop going into those forums. I love OSC to bits and pieces, but his train of trolls makes me very, very angry.
Mm, spear-fishing.
Ever notice how much the “anti-intentionalism” as practiced by Amato, et al, resembles the worst of a dysfunctional relationship?
yin: come on, why are you acting mad?
yang: I’m not acting.
yin: so why are you mad?
yang: you know
yin: I know what?
yang: you know what you did.
yin: what did I do?
yang: see? that proves it. you either know what you did and you’re just such an awful person you won’t apologize, or you’re just too awful to realize what you did.
The passive-aggressive person is attempting to exercise power over the other by using the other’s own good character. The other does worry inadvertently hurting someone else and would pale at any suggestion of intentionlly inflicting unnecessary harm. So the passive-aggressive person acts perpetually offended, further defining and discovering new and better ways to be “hurt”, hoping to tie the other into such knots that the other just gives up and hands over whatever power the passive-aggressive desires.
Along with “anti-intentionalism” comes word inflation. When “torture” means female interrogators of Islamist males is the equivalent of gouging out eyeballs and “rape” means sober morning regrets is the equivalent of being dragged off the street and violently savaged, it allows the bad faith arguer who ingages in word inflation to point a finger at a person who hesistates at the word “torture” saying “but that’s not really torture” and charge “YOU, sir, are a TORTURE APOLOGIST! Good day!”
here is a picture
the east coast fucks up everything
i sleep now
which makes me wonder about timmy’s use of the word “bastard” in regards to Brit Hume.
I know what I mean if I label someone a “bastard.” It deals pretty much with a person’s overt cruel behavior. I haven’t seen nor read anything that would make me classify Hume as a “bastard”. And here is timmy making an assertion without substantiation.
Comeon, timmy. Share your experience. You lived next to Hume and saw him beat his kids? Did he shoot your dog? Run over your cat with his SUV?
Or is it, just as it is with all Left cult members, a matter where the personal is the political and Hume as right-of-center isn’t mistaken, he’s just a bastard?
During the notorious “Bodyline” tour, the England Captain, Douglas Jardine, complained to his Australian opposite number that one of the Australian team had called him (Jardine) a Bastard.
The Aussie took Jardine into the Australian dressing room and addressed his team.
“Right. Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”
It is more or less a term of endearment down under (Though probably not when addressed to Jardine).
Were all the Aussie players named Bruce?
Certainly. Bruce Bastard, I thru XI.
Yes, a personal opinion that neatly expresses the deeply entrenched patriarchy.
Sexist!
Here’s a fun game:
Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… in contrast with… what exactly?
Bill Clinton?
I’m surprised that no one here has considered that Hume might have hesitated because he did in fact first intend to say “spear carrier” (in light of Glenn’s general party-following), and then deliberately changed it to “spear chucker” to indicate (read it in context again) that Glenn had thrown the party “spear” he’d been expected to merely carry.
Just my opinion, of course….
Perfect, B Moe.
Wait.
Isn’t Bill Clinton black?
No Bill aint back , its worse, Hillary is here.
This interview with Bob Dylan perfectly illustrates the point that intentionalism is a farce designed by those who want things to mean and say things that they arent’ intended to mean or say by the senders (and owners of the “meaning”) of those utterances.
Here, he’s reeming a TIME journalist for trying too hard to gleen meaning and profundity from his live performances and his lyrics. And he takes great umbridge at others trying to make “messages” out of things that aren’t intended to be messages by the sender (Dylan himself).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8YuIGqWi4
tw: The times99 they are a changin’…
Funnniest thing I ever heard in my life was this guy I used to know doing an absolutely flawless and perfectly simultaneous urban black/Irish impression. Fall down funny. I suggested he at least get a gig on radio.
Guess you had to be there. As you were, folks.
Oh, and great post, Jeff. I’ll take all credit for saying do what you do and they’ll come.
In my history in corporate culture, a oft-used term that would be synonymous with “spearchucker” in this context is “sharp-shooter”. That would be someone who does not contribute in a substantive way in a meeting, but attempts to score political points with the boss by sharp-shooting the presenter(s).
As described, Hume was clearly calling Glenn a “sharp-shooter” in this case in trying to derail the case without actually adding to the discussion.
The only, only other time I’d heard the term “spearchucker” was when a new-via-marriage relative explained my sister’s shoulder muscles to his twin brother by saying she was a “Spear chucker. You know, a jock”.
She was, in fact, a swimmer and a track athlete, although she ran hurdles rather than threw the javelin. Her strong shoulders came from being a swimmer.
However, she was not then nor is she now black, and the relative- although new to the family- did know that at the time of his utterance.
It is ridiculous to try to throw this on the pile of yet another never-before heard yet offensively and obviously racist terms. I won’t have it.
Having said that, Britt Hume obviously has a target on his back. I saw a spearchucker thread at Daily Kos yesterday, before Amato got a hold of it. Last week, there was a diary there about Hume being drunk.
Also, is there an actual point to this whole “scandal” ? Or is the left just trying to jin up some kind of “political bias at Fox” nonsense to counter the daily assault of the liberal bias at every other media outlet on the planet ?
Tempest in a teapot is a vast exageration in this case. I would call it more of a tempest in a thimble.
Why not? Does she have some particular reason for not wanting to be black???
</Amato-style lunatic>
Lighten up people. It’s not like Hume called him articulate or anything really nasty.
I would have commented earlier but I was playing bridge with Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Spike Lee at the club. I bid three spades and the waiter punched me out.
deadrody,
I think it’s “djinn” up.
Well, of course, you would Furris. First, they agree with you and secondly they save their vitriol for evil left wingers. Sort of “That Jeffrey Dahmer
was a nice neighbor.” Well, sure he was, he didn’t eat YOU!
Before the two little girls get all upset and start the profanity showers, I’m not suggesting you ate anyone…just that you are the rudest, least considerate, most intellectually dishonest people on PW. Again, that’s my personal opinion and, as such, is not written into the fabric of space time.
Darleen, Hume is dismissive, brusque, whiny, and unethical (serves as a commenter on one show and an “objective” anchor of another…Holy Howie Kurtz!). He has been utterly and consistently wrong about every aspect of the “GWoT” and I am constantly annoyed with his twisting of the facts.
So, I don’t like him. I also don’t think he’s a racist or a “Glennist”. Do I have to like everyone? Is that a rule?
I’ve been on the other side of this intentionalism argument.
Some of you may recall the long thread after Jon Cary’s loafer sandwich over “…you get sent to Iraq.” Someone made a telling argument that if the concepts of intentionalism were applied to Cary’s slip, we would absolve him of this slight and accept his explaination that he had botched a bad joke.
I refused to embrace this proposal. Why?
Because of all of the politicians on the national political stage, I despise Cary the most (butressed by delibrately mispelling his name.) It is a visceral, barely logical anger related to his arrogance and pomposity. I had the opportunity to interpret his remarks in several different ways. I chose the conclusion that made him look the worst because, emotionally, that was the one that gave me the most visceral satisfaction.
However, at least I had a (barely) logical leg on which to stand. It utterly defies intentionalism and logic to suggest that what Hume said in referencing a white politician has racial overtones simply because some people, somewhere, at some time either used this term in a racist, derogatory manner or determined that the term was racist.
For the latter, who died and made them Language Emperors?
My biggest complaint with many on the left is so much of their proclamations about the meaning of other people’s words is driven by their powerful emotional position on certain individuals. Look at timmy, who deigns to agree with Jeff’s assesment but can’t help himself in expressing his visceral disgust for “bastard” Hume.
To his credit, however, he was willing to put aside the emotional and let the intent prevail, showing more rationalism than I did with
pompous blowhole… er … Cary. That does not excuse him for those times when his anger/disgust/hate rears its ugly head on other issues.All of our discourse would be deeper and more meaningful if we could consistantly recognise when our positions are colored by strong emotions.
But, of course, there is always heet, who is like a specialty cable channel:
ALL ANGER AND HATE ALL THE TIME
No, that’s not why. I enjoy their contributions because they are witty, insightful and germane.
You on the other hand often come across like a blowhard pretending he is up for a fight.
But that’s just my opinion.
BJ, does that still apply to me, since I’m always right. My positions are colored with emotions because of their essential correctness!!!
Since, I’ve never figured out how to correctly insert a “wink”, let me type” I am kidding.
As for Furris, I think your latest post says far more distinctly what my ham-handed one did not: it’s a matter of presepctive.
OT, Dan said you traveled a lot for business in the East, how far East. I’ve always wanted to visit India and Thailand, but I’ve heard India is a scary place. Have you been there? I don’t get to travel, but someday!
If you feel that’s too personal or you don’t want to respond out of personal animus, I will drop it. i was just jealous and curious.
Is that as opposed to those who are absolutely partisan with histories of working for Dems (Sephanopolous, Russert, Matthews, etc.) who now pass themselves off as imparial journalists?
At least Hume has the honesty to admit his personal bias.
[…] explode in a general election campaign against Barack Obama. Not at all. There is no amount of intentionalism that will save […]
[…] who’s read here long enough knows my position on such things — and I’ve taken to the woodshed over attempts to marginalize intentionalism (which […]