Jimbo wrote:
I am quite sure that many Democratic activists (perhaps the sort who like to call their political opponents "dumbasses", not naming any names here) will read our Bush article with similar joy, due to it naming some facts that these partisans feel are scandalous, but which Bush supporters may greet with either a yawn or even admiration.
For the record, I am not a Democratic activist. In 2000, I publicly endorsed Ralph Nader's third-party campaign. (This time around, I plan to vote for Kerry, but that doesn't make me a Democratic activist any more than voting for Bush makes someone a Republican activist.)
As for my use of the term "Republican dumbasses," it wasn't intended to apply across the board to all Republicans. However, the person who wrote the article for bushcountry.org (the article that mentioned Wikipedia and thereby triggered this thread) deserves in my opinion to be considered a dumbass. He's a dishonest dumbass because he selectively presents information from the Wikipedia article to serve his political agenda, interpolating his own editorial glosses in a way that makes it sound as though his opinions have been taken from Wikipedia. (If you simply read his dumbass article, for example, you would come away with the false impression that Wikipedia says Kerry's shooting of a Viet Cong soldier was either a war crime or a "sham.") He's a racist dumbass because he uses the fact that Kerry had a Jewish grandfather to insinuate that he isn't a true Catholic. He's a provincial dumbass because he insinuates that there is something sinister about having been born in France and because he thinks there is something dangerous about being "influenced by Europeans." And he's a narrow-minded dumbass because he insinuates that there is something sinister about having a friend who is prominent in the Green Party.
Of course, that's just my humble opinion.
--Sheldon Rampton
--- Sheldon Rampton sheldon.rampton@verizon.net wrote: (If you simply read his dumbass article, for example, you would come away with the false impression that Wikipedia says Kerry's shooting of a Viet Cong soldier was either a war crime or a "sham.")
I didnt get this at all. I got from it that he read the intro, which had a couple twists and turns; and these twists and turns inspired him to try to match the WP article's sophistication, by matching it with a "sophistication" of his own. False impressions are a part of politics, be they Elephantine, Donkeyesque, or Herbiagist.
But on the subject of NPOV terms, "dumbass" IMHO, is entirely unnecessary and only invites vitriolic counters from the opposing view. David wrote:"Understate; let the facts speak for themselves." I am no Anglophile, but the English are are an older culture which has many times over reinvented the art of the tactful insult; we can perhaps attribute the longevity of their culltures to the artfulness of civility. Therefore, some suggested neutral terms in place of "dumbass":
* "of aspiring intelligence" * "gracefully incongruent * "charming" * "extremely irrational in the least" * "unreasonable" * "neither sane nor sound" * "detrimental" * "detritus-ish" * "unprobable and unlikely" * "sophisticated" * "distasteful for rationality" * "without logic or basis" * "God-awful" * "ludicrous" * "counterintelligent" * "jive-ass"
S
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