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Innocent Words (and Names) Are Under Attack Login/Join 
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted
Townhall.com
Victor Davis Hanson |Posted: Aug 31, 2017 12:01 AM

"The Bard," William Shakespeare, had a healthy distrust of the sort of mob hysteria typified by our current epidemics of statue-busting and name-changing.

In Shakespeare's tragedy "Julius Caesar" -- a story adopted from Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" -- a frenzied Roman mob, in furor over the assassination of Julius Caesar, encounters on the street a poet named Cinna. The innocent poet was not the conspiratorial assassin Cinna, but unfortunately shared a name with the killer.

The terrified poet points out to the mob this case of mistaken identity: "I am Cinna the poet."

The mob answers: "Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses! ... It is no matter, his name's Cinna!"

Shakespeare certainly would recognize that, like the playwright's Roman mob, we have launched a war against words in our frenzy to find targets for our politically correct madness.

Recently, there were progressive calls at the University of Southern California to rename the school's mascot, the white Andalusian horse "Traveler." Members of the left thought that the mute animal's name too closely resembled the name "Traveller," the favorite horse of Confederate general and sudden demon of 2017 Robert E. Lee.

But the mob was not finished there. An Asian-American sportscaster named Robert Lee was recently yanked by the sports channel ESPN from broadcasting a University of Virginia football game. Apparently, Lee's name was too close to that of Robert E. Lee.

Nearly a century and a half after his death, General Lee has gone from tragic figure to Public Enemy No. 1 of the left.

Lee the sportscaster, like Cinna the poet, was found guilty on the basis of ignorant association with his name. If the politically correct herd could not get its hands on the long-dead Robert E. Lee, it would apparently settle for anyone in the present who shared nearly the same name.

Why would a supposedly civilized country descend into such linguistic fascism?

Part of the problem is the presumption by elites that a supposedly illiterate public must be protected from itself. But does anyone really believe that average people will confuse an Asian-American sportscaster who has the common Chinese surname "Lee" and the all-American first name "Robert" with a Confederate general -- or that the sportscaster could thus be somehow tangentially connected with the recent violence in Charlottesville?

ESPN, however, does not bet on the intelligence of the average American. It prefers to virtue-signal that it is above all suspicion of sympathy for the Confederacy. In its search for cosmic justice, it cares little about the injustice it metes out to real live people.

ESPN has long politicized sports and continues to lose viewers over its adolescent political correctness. Not long ago, the network fired tennis commentator Doug Adler. He had characterized the aggressive play of tennis star Venus Williams as employing the "guerrilla effect." ("And you'll see Venus move in and put the guerrilla effect on, charging," Adler had said.) Adler's reference was drawn from the once-popular term "guerrilla tennis" that denoted a tough, brawling, take-no-prisoners style from the 1990s.

The word "guerilla," remember, is a diminutive of the Spanish word "guerra," ("war"). In Spanish, "guerrilla" means "little war." In English, "guerilla" is commonly used to describe a type of unconventional fighting.

But Adler forgot that "guerilla" is pronounced the same as its English homophone "gorilla." Some ESPN viewers did not understand the guerilla reference and charged that Adler was using "gorilla" as a racist smear. Adler tried to explain the reference, but he was fired and his career was ruined, making him a modern-day Cinna the poet, torn apart by the mob.

Why the linguistic McCarthyism?

When a cowardly and self-righteous ESPN assumes the worst in people, it hopes to find protection for itself from the thought police.

When chronic inner-city problems -- epidemic levels of murder, drug use and out-of-wedlock births -- cannot be solved, frustrated progressives start looking for extraneous targets to blame. And so attention turns to, for example, an Andalusian horse -- as if changing the animal's name is at least proof that they care.

Most revolutions eat their own. Monday's most fanatical revolutionary becomes a counterrevolutionary sellout by Tuesday.

Once left-wing activists forced cities and states to pull down their politically incorrect statues in the dead of night, and once they got off scot-free in defacing and destroying publicly owned monuments, it was an easy step up to the next level: waging war against words themselves.

In totalitarian societies, cities change their names regularly. Statues go up and are torn down. Words, as the historian Thucydides warned 2,400 years ago, habitually change their meanings to reflect passing political orthodoxy -- and thugs, commissars and brownshirts oversee the charade.

For an antidote to these statue-smashers and name-changers, Americans seek just one honest public official who dares to say "no more" -- and arrests rather than appeases those who destroy public property, or shames those who ruin people through guilt by association.

Link




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Muzzle flash
aficionado
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The "guerrilla" confusion is very similar to the problem with "niggardly" that some correspondent used a number of years ago. (It has nothing in common with the epithet "n....r"--look it up.)

Certain ethnic groups constantly seek reasons to be offended, and often latch onto usage of words they are not familiar with that sound similar to ones they despise. One would hope that better education would eliminate or at least reduce the instance of these mistakes, but that ethnicity seems particularly hostile to the very idea of learning about such things.

flashguy




Texan by choice, not accident of birth
 
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Legalize the Constitution
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quote:
Recently, there were progressive calls at the University of Southern California to rename the school's mascot, the white Andalusian horse "Traveler." Members of the left thought that the mute animal's name too closely resembled the name "Traveller," the favorite horse of Confederate general and sudden demon of 2017 Robert E. Lee.

You're joking, right?


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despite them
 
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Staring back
from the abyss
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quote:
Originally posted by TMats:

You're joking, right?

Sadly...no.


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"Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton.
 
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Thank you
Very little
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Confederate Motorcycles changes its name to Curtiss Motorcycles over fear of backlash

http://cyrilhuzeblog.com/2017/...curtiss-motorcycles/



 
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quote:
Recently, there were progressive calls at the University of Southern California to rename the school's mascot, the white Andalusian horse "Traveler." Members of the left thought that the mute animal's name too closely resembled the name "Traveller," the favorite horse of Confederate general and sudden demon of 2017 Robert E. Lee.
Did either of the horses own any slaves? Maybe a few black ponies? After all, both were white. Roll Eyes

Just more stupid on steroids from the mentally ill segment of society.


quote:
Originally posted by HRK:
quote:
Why the linguistic McCarthyism?



Confederate Motorcycles changes its name to Curtiss Motorcycles over fear of backlash

http://cyrilhuzeblog.com/2017/...curtiss-motorcycles/
“The Confederate brand was no longer viable. I think we lost a lot a business with that name” said Matt Chambers, adding “We’ve missed out on branding opportunities. So, it’s time to retire it.” No, you lost business opportunities because the product you market is so insanely expensive, only a very select few of the motorcycling community could even contemplate purchasing one. My bet, under the new name sales volumes will be the same as they were under the previous name, if as good.


-----------------------------
Guns are awesome because they shoot solid lead freedom. Every man should have several guns. And several dogs, because a man with a cat is a woman. Kurt Schlichter
 
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Muzzle flash
aficionado
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quote:
Originally posted by HRK:
Confederate Motorcycles changes its name to Curtiss Motorcycles over fear of backlash

http://cyrilhuzeblog.com/2017/...curtiss-motorcycles/
Some years ago the "Confederate Air Force" (organization that restores and flies old historic aircraft) with the logo "CAF" changed its name to "Commemorative Air Force" (same logo). No doubt because of negative connotations with the "Confederate" name. However, one could argue that they just decided to drop a once-hip and non-descriptive word for one that was more accurate.

flashguy




Texan by choice, not accident of birth
 
Posts: 27902 | Location: Dallas, TX | Registered: May 08, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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As a child, 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.'

How far we've come since my childhood.




"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy
"A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book
 
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When does the scientific term "black hole" get outlawed? I say before the end of 2018 based on the present rate of spiraling leftist lunacy.



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Posts: 8603 | Registered: September 26, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Had a friend once who loved to play a certain card in which the term "renege" is used; euchre is game, I believe. Anyway, way back in the 1970s, he was playing the game in a McDonald's late one night in an area of town that was predominantly black. At one point, he excitedly shouted out "renege! renege!". Several heads turned and his companions thought they were going to die right there. Fortunately the friend who shouted the term is a tiny, very white, very nerdy fellow and I think the people sensed he was not some jerk redneck, and/or they understood the word, and they let it go without incident.

I don't know if he would be that lucky today.



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half-genius,
half-wit
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A few years back I had a problem with a gun-related story I had submitted to a well-known shooting magazine here in UK.

I made the mistake of using the word 'snigger' in describing my reaction to an anti-gun remark. The word in my text was red-lined AND red-circled and the whole text returned to me for correction.

I couldn't come up with another word that had quite the same connotation as 'snigger', so I changed it to 'snegro' and left it up to the editorial staff.

Oddly enough, I never heard a word back from them, from that day to this...

tac
 
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Muzzle flash
aficionado
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quote:
Originally posted by tacfoley:
A few years back I had a problem with a gun-related story I had submitted to a well-known shooting magazine here in UK.

I made the mistake of using the word 'snigger' in describing my reaction to an anti-gun remark. The word in my text was red-lined AND red-circled and the whole text returned to me for correction.

I couldn't come up with another word that had quite the same connotation as 'snigger', so I changed it to 'snegro' and left it up to the editorial staff.

Oddly enough, I never heard a word back from them, from that day to this...

tac
I would probably have used the work "snickered".

flashguy




Texan by choice, not accident of birth
 
Posts: 27902 | Location: Dallas, TX | Registered: May 08, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I'm worried they'll be taking Sara Lee pastries off the shelves, on the off chance she's related to Gen. Robert E.
 
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Sheala Jackson Lee better look out.
 
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Corgis Rock
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In 1999 David Howard, a member of the Washington DC government used the word "niggardly" in describing how he would have to manage a fund's tight budget."
The D.C. Mayor Anthony "Williams, whose quick acceptance of David Howard's resignation last month led to a national debate over racial sensitivity and political correctness, indicated in a statement yesterday that he had made a mistake and "acted too hastily" in allowing Howard to resign as head of the city's constituent services office.

The mayor said that an internal review had "confirmed for me that Mr. Howard did use the word 'niggardly,' but did not use a racial epithet" during a Jan. 15 discussion with two employees of the Office of the Public Advocate. "Niggardly" means miserly and has no racial connotation.

Williams said that one of the employees, identified by Howard as Marshall Brown, interpreted Howard's remark as a racial slur. Brown has declined to comment on the incident." Brown was black. Julian Bond "then chairman of the NAACP, deplored the offense that had been taken at Howard's use of the word. "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding", he said. "David Howard should not have quit. Mayor Williams should bring him back—and order dictionaries issued to all staff who need them."

Today, I'm sure no one would defend Howard.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...s/williams020499.htm



“ The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation is slow, laborious and dull.
 
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Bad dog!
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It's not as silly as it seems. This is about control, and control = power. Control what people can say and not say, and you begin to control what they can think and not think.


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"You get much farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone."
 
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Drug Dealer
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I think it's about time to reread Nineteen Eighty-Four.



When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth. - George Bernard Shaw
 
Posts: 15471 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 03, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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quote:
I'm worried they'll be taking Sara Lee pastries off the shelves, on the off chance she's related to Gen. Robert E.


I wonder if they would let Spike Lee call the game?
Spike Lee and Sara Lee are frequently confused, in the minds of of some people. You know the slogan, Who doesn't love SPIKE LEE?
 
Posts: 17177 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Too old to run,
too mean to quit!
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quote:
One would hope that better education would eliminate or at least reduce the instance of these mistakes, but that ethnicity seems particularly hostile to the very idea of learning about such things.



Given the crop of "educators" we have in place, what is the probability that we will be able to find someone with the actual education to even begin to correct this madness?


Elk

There has never been an occasion where a people gave up their weapons in the interest of peace that didn't end in their massacre. (Louis L'Amour)

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. "
-Thomas Jefferson

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." Alexis de Tocqueville

FBHO!!!



The Idaho Elk Hunter
 
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Waiting for Hachiko
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North Korea could drop some missiles on the USA, and that would be the story among liberals and the news media for about 3 days.

On the 4th day, it would be back to eradicating the Confederacy and those words they love to hate.


美しい犬
 
Posts: 6673 | Location: Near the Metropolis of Tightsqueeze, Va | Registered: February 18, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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