Scare Quotes

Amusing takedown of scare quote over-use:

They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

Though one particularly effective orgy of deliberate over-use was conducted by Tim Blair back in 2002:

THE BBC has published a story about global warming, Tuvalu, and Australia. Here's the BBC's piece, with clarifying sarcastic punctuation added:

Australian legal "experts" have warned the government to take "seriously" a "challenge" by the tiny island "nation" of Tuvalu.

Tuvalu is "under threat" of "sinking" if sea levels rise due to "climate change" - and "could be" washed away within 50 years.

Its "Prime Minister", Koloa Talake, has announced that Tuvalu and two other island "nations", Kiribati and Maldives, plan to take "legal" action against major "polluting" countries...

Rejecting Rorty AND Rummy

Interesting takedown of Rorty, the pomo many love to hate:

In Britain and the US theories of knowledge and truth have seldom been seen as politically relevant. But this is changing. The US has seen a conservative furore against postmodernism as something that has sapped the ideological resolve of the west, and my being asked to write this article in a non-specialist journal is part of this rise in awareness.

Lest we think this Cambridge professor of philosophy sympathizes with W, however...

A pointed illustration comes from one of Rorty's essays, on George Orwell's 1984. Here Rorty finds it hard to understand what Orwell was on about, since the whole nightmare in that book concerns the loss of truth and the loss of right reason and, for Rorty, these count as no loss at all. Because he could control everybody's thoughts, Big Brother was very good at social solidarity, so what was Winston afraid of? The fact that he finds this question difficult exposes Rorty more than Orwell. Most of us understand Winston's nightmare all too well, especially when we think of the Downing Street propaganda machine, or Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, and the state of the American press.

Interesting examples, eh? But seriously, what 2+2=5 whoppers does he attribute to Rummy or Ashcroft? What lies characteristic of a totalitarian state? See "Accusations True by Virtue of Being Made" below.

Smoking Ban Claims Another Life

In the NY Daily News:

A brawny bouncer at a trendy East Village nightspot was stabbed to death yesterday after he confronted a man who lit up a cigarette in defiance of the city's tough new anti-smoking law, police said.

Dana (Shazam) Blake, 32, of Queens, was allegedly set upon by two Chinatown brothers after one of them refused to stop puffing inside Guernica on Avenue B, cops said.

"My brother lost his life because of this stupid smoking law," said the Rev. Tony Blake, who preaches against smoking and drinking at his Humble Way Church of God in Christ in Queens.

"This is not the end of the violence because of it," he added.

Many have felt it helpful and illuminating to question whether Operation Iraqi Freedom was "worth it" by means of looking at photos of Iraqi children injured by American bombs. The problem with this technique is that it's done without reference to the many children being harmed because the US was not invading. Iraq claims 84,000 children were killed by sanctions alone in 2001, and less than 1,300 civilians total were killed in the war. Add the many children who were killed, tortured, imprisoned, or made orphans by Saddam himself.

If one wants to try to reason by means of emoting over inflammatory photos, one should at least line up some photos from the other side. If you still can't summon the wherewithal to do basic arithmetic in the face of maimed children, then please: make two piles of photos, stare at them, videotape it so people can see how moved you are, then let your head explode, like those computers in Star Trek that can't deal with contradiction. Then the adults can go back to a reasoned discussion about policy that could actually benefit these children.

And so I post this story about a murder caused by the smoking ban. And I ask: "Can the human costs of this smoking ban possibly be worth the benefits?"

That is a question on the same intellectual level as those who point to a photo of an injured child, and ask whether Iraq's liberation could possibly be worth it. I say this because most dead-child-photo-emoters are probably reflexively anti-smoking, and this analogy might get through to them.

"Well, you can't judge the smoking ban by that alone...there were other costs...."

Yes...YES! Now you're talking like adults! Thank you!