Thursday, February 11, 2010

Jackasses

On the advice of Michael Bérubé, I'm retiring the words "retard", "moron", and other similar words used to deprecate another person's intellectual character. Instead, again on his advice, I will use the term "jackass". (When and if I refer directly to animal-rights activists, I will use the term "jackass-American".)

While I don't agree wholeheartedly with Bérubé's argument, the new term adequately expresses my dislike and contempt of people whose intellectual and moral character I strongly disapprove of, and it avoids offending those who I do not wish to offend and (justly or unjustly) who do take offense at the retired words. It's much easier to switch terms than to continue to argue the point, and I don't sacrifice the clear and direct expression of my indignation.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.

With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.

No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.

See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.

Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.

I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.

Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.

I've already answered some typical comments.

I have jqMath enabled for the blog. If you have a dollar sign (\$) in your comment, put a \\ in front of it: \\\$, unless you want to include a formula in your comment.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.