Somehow a very appropriate way to end the thread, don’t you think, John E?

And by all means, be amused! I’ve only seen that winger zinger a few dozen times. Why don’t you also say

yawn

to show how bored you are while you’re being amused by us?

I do find Greenwald specious and intellectually dishonest, particularly with respect to his use of sources, and for that reason I lob barbs in his direction. His recent argument based on the resemblance of the Victory Caucus logo (whoever they may be) with that of V for Vendetta is beyond absurdity; if he were an interlocutor in the Cratylus, Socrates would have whacked him over the head with a rock for that one. If my mockery of his self-construction constitutes some form of prohibited speech (not that he notices, because sockpuppets tell me that his blog’s been quoted on the Senate floor by Russ Feingold (WI-D)), then what classification to you extend to Marcotte’s abuse of Catholicism, and her defense, recently issued, that it ought to be a legitimate target because so many people in the country self-identify as Christians?

The determination of what constitutes a valid point of view and what is discredited, and what is theoretically within or beyond the pale is certainly not as much a fascination with me as it is with the academy. By and large it is a fashion system, in my estimation. But I’ve seen Gleen conveniently misprision too many times to take him seriously, and the idea that you can endorse him as relevant on one hand, and dismiss me as screamingly hysterical and opportunistic amuses me.

I would have thought that my comparison of Gleen to Matt Lesko would have raised more of a welt.

There are people who make an effort to be honest, and there are liars.

And if you determine that someone is the latter, all this bullshit about civility and fair play goes out the window. Someone’s sexuality or ethnicity or gender is fair game. You think Greenwald’s a liar, and that makes his homosexuality a justifiable target. So all the people who find Malkin beyond the pale are perfectly justified in using Asian-whore jokes to denigrate her.

Right? Just want to make sure that we’re clear here.

This seems profoundly silly to me. Sockpuppeting is an offense that didn’t even exist ten years ago, and I have no idea what the penalty should be. Collins believes that lifetime disqualification from internet dialogue should be the penalty, but he just pulled that out of his butt. You have to extremely blogcentric to be that extreme.

Greenwald’s posts (right or wrong, but I think they’re mostly right) are normally contentful, well-argued, and well-documented, and I while it would be convenient for Collins to be able to ignore them, I don’t think that we should take Collins’ screamingly hysterical opportunism here very seriously.

There are people who make an effort to be honest, and there are liars.

It makes very little difference to me if they are idiots/morons/delusional paranoiacs/saddled by the baggage of false consciousness, so long as they are making a good faith effort. Otherwise, you and I and everyone can sit around debating the nature of everyone else’s confirmation bias for eternity, secure in the knowledge that we, and only we (however we define it) possess the privileged perspective from which these issues must be viewed if one wishes not to be deceived.

I am mocking the semiotics of authenticity, if you like.

Those who wish to deploy irony successfully need to signal that they have some inkling of the limits of their ability to perceive “the truth.”

There are gay men, and then there are faggots. There are black people, and then there are niggers.

Am I reading you correctly, Mr. Collins?

To me the bottom line is that Democrats identify themselves as the non-racist non-sexist party. The MLYLT slur doesn’t fit with that—you can say it’s wrong, or you can say it’s bad politics.

If we were talking about a master satirist or over-the-top humorist, I might grant a pass, though guys like that should not represent political parties. But the stuff I’ve seen about Malkin (and the “Mann Coulter” stuff too) isn’t at a high level. It’s really indistinguishable from nasty Republican frat-boy jokes about Tijuana.

One can’t stand about demanding the return of vicious language in public discourse

I hadn’t realized it had gone away. But let’s accept your argument with respect to Malkin. Does it not sound somewhat like my own with respect to Marcotte? I also made a similar argument to those on the right who were referring to the Duke “victim” as a whore; in my view, it was a slander against whores.

1) Malkin defends the right to say offensive things about whoever she wants, based on their race or religion
2) people apply this right to her (as they should be able to under her ideals)
3) Malkin is offended

Putting aside the faux nature of her outrage (she will claim indecent behaviour by the left no matter what we say), her being offended has served to prove a point, namely that she can’t demand the right to impugn islam and deny the right to impugn asians. Doesn’t work. The questions that then arise are simple questions like “did Malkin ever demand this right”, “is it worth using nasty language”, and “what will the consequences be for us?”

One can’t stand about demanding the return of vicious language in public discourse, and expect to be above its use; and in showing this, the responsibility may well fall on someone to abuse the person demanding this right. If noone from the correct minority group is around to do it, well I suppose someone else will have to. To really make the point the abuse has to be on the basis of a racial or religious trait of the person demanding the right to insult other peoples’ race or religion (not some other thing).

Also, a large part of the argument against using bad language in this thread has been that it demeans the groups who are insulted by it. Thus calling Trotsky a “whore” is offensive to women regardless of whether or not Trotsky is a woman. In fact i would argue that using the word “whore” to describe someone who sells out their principles is really offensive to women and sex workers; and if you are willing to do this in describing a communist man, you are committing the same sin you decry when applied to Michelle Malkin.

Abb1, almost every time before that I’ve heard the MLYLT kind of joke, it came from a male American (maybe British) sleazo, perhaps ex-military or ex-”contractor’, talking about his fun R&R times in a non-white third world whorehouse. That’s the Full Metal Jacket context too. Something like that doesn’t become clean if it’s used in a movie.

Who it is you are talking about is relevant. Calling David Broder a whore would be quite a different thing. If Lenin had used a specifically anti-Semitic slur on Trotsky, you’d have to interpret it as anti-Semitism. But not “whore”.

There’s not doubt in my mind that people picking up the movie line and applying it to Malkin were being racist.