Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Thursday, June 07, 2007
The decline of manners in modern Britain
Carol Gould has a terrible time of it, the poor dear. She simply happened to mention that the McCann family don't love their children because they are not Jewish (or American), and it started an argument!
Carol Gould really doesn't have the luck though; she just seems to keep finding people who hate her everywhere she goes in London. She regularly considers leaving, but has somehow stuck it out for thirty years. Well done, Carol. Perhaps the only advice I could give would be that you might have an easier time of things if you were not such a spiteful old witch.
Update: I've just realised that this is the sort of thing that is often cited as an example of intellectual dishonesty or some such "now the Left shows its true colours, he failed to engage with my arguments and just called me a spiteful old witch". But really, what's to do here? If I were to start arguing about the question of whether it's appropriate or even human to write an article like Carol Gould's, then I would have already conceded the point that pissing all over a couple who have lost their baby is the sort of thing that reasonable human beings can have a debate about. It's not. Calling the author a spiteful old witch is the only sensible response here and is in fact the logical response, whereas a logical response would not be. cf Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations.
Second Update: I will, however, entertain arguments for the case that the specific epithet used "spiteful old witch" was sexist and I should have come up with something else. I personally think that this is well within the bounds of acceptable abusive language - the reference to Carol Gould's age is in the nature of a personal insult rather than a more general piece of misogyny, and while it is gender-specific, I don't think that "witch" is an intrinsically misogynistic epithet in the way that, say, "bitch" would have been. It is in the nature of personal abuse that it has to be personal, and therefore I don't see how you can rule out all references to specific personal attributes of the target, such as whether they're a woman or a man. If anyone thinks that I shouldn't be stooping to personal abuse at all, I remind them that the context is the article linked above, and once more include by citation the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. By the way, check out the comments for a restaurant review that is an absolute pearl.
this item posted by the management 6/07/2007 02:41:00 AM
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