Will Bart Stupak Kill Health Reform?

DEMOCRACY: the Loser's Obligation

“[T]he real test of a democracy is not so much the behavior of the winners; it will be the behavior of the losers.” U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.
- Christopher Hill, quoted in this week’s Newsweek

This is a test that the Republican Party has greatly failed during the last 15 months. Losers of elections are not expected to roll over and do nothing but neither should they stand in the way and use every extraordinary means at their disposal to thwart majority rule. It may produce short-term gain for their team but the very democracy upon which this nation is founded has been harmed by this immature approach to governance.

Democrat Party II

Have you ever seen an atheist write the word “Christian” as “Xtian”? When called on this, he will usually feign innocence and explain that he meant no disrespect—that “X” as an abbreviation for “Christ” is a centuries-old tradition, blah, blah, blah. In reality, everyone knows that he uses this convention to express his contempt for and make a subtle dig at a religion in which he finds disfavor. I find expressions of “It’s just a minor grammar error” in reference to the construction “Democrat Party” to be similarly disingenuous.

There is, in fact, a long history of using this term as a little insult. GOP wordsmiths Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich have urged their fellow partisans to put this mean little term into general usage. There is much to document this phenomenon:

“There’s no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. ‘Democrat Party’ is a slur, or intended to be—a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but ‘Democrat Party’ is jarring verging on ugly.”
Hendrik Hertzberg
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/08/07/060807ta_talk_hertzberg

“[I]t's rude to call people by a term that makes them bristle, even a seemingly innocuous one. There's also something grating and coarse-sounding about this abbreviated appellation, like saying ‘Jew’ instead of ‘Jewish’ It is, conservative wordsmith William F. Buckley wrote in National Review in 2002, ‘offensive to the ear.’”
Ruth Marcus
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112101223.html

“I go back and forth sometimes on usage, try to stick with Democratic Party, but I’ll shorten it to Democrat if it helps me make a stinging point.”
Philip Bryan, Communications Director, Alabama Republican Party
http://www2.oanow.com/oan/OAN_Political_Blog/comments/the_problem_of_ic/29484/

“[T]he adjective Democratic is used in its official name, the Democratic Party. Democrat as an adjective is still sometimes used by some twentieth-century Republicans as a campaign tool but was used with particular virulence by the late senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, a Republican who sought by repeatedly calling it the Democrat party to deny it any possible benefit of the suggestion that it might also be democratic.”
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
http://books.google.com/books?id=L2ChiO2yEZ0C&pg=PA130&lpg=PA130&dq=%22Columbia+Guide+to+Standard+American+English%22+%22Democrat+as+an+adjective%22&source=bl&ots=hxxsW7dAa9&sig=71GZnCUmyH_MPW-KTvtegbp8Jps&hl=en&ei=LfeES8vGHZGENvzMqDU&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

You can embrace or eschew snide, snarky language as you choose. You can label my earlier 284-word post as a “dissertation” and an example of “over-the-top outrage” (I maintain that they are neither). But please do not indulge in the fake-innocent “who me?” pretense that it was just an innocent little slip. We both know better.

It's Not the Democrat Party

(from an exchange on Facebook)

You can be disgusted. You can change your mind. However, if you deliberately use a name that the named person doesn't like, you are indicating your disrespect. It doesn't matter if you think they shouldn't mind. It doesn't matter if you can construct a compelling case as to why they are stupid to object to the name you have conferred up on them. If they do mind and you are a respectful person, you will moderate your behavior, not expect them to moderate theirs.

If William doesn't like to be called "Bill" but if you continue to call him "Bill" anyway, then you are disrespecting William. I can speculate that it pleases you to irk him in that manner.

Would you call your attorney, who happens to be Jewish, a "Jew lawyer", even if his ethnicity/religion were relevant to the conversation? You would do so only if you meant to be subtly demeaning.

In the old Bewitched series, Samantha's mother often called Darren, "Derwood" --or some variation-- just because it rankled him. Her disrespect was one of the running jokes of the show.

Tip O'Neil made a point of not pronouncing the second "g" in Newt Gingrich's name, calling him "Mr. Ginrich." It was not meant to be anything but a little insult. O'Neil bragged that this was from an old Boston pol's bag of tricks.

People like Limbaugh and you who insist on calling the Democratic Party the "Democrat Party" are being snotty and disrespectful. I am sure you already know this. I suspect that this is precisely why you indulge yourself in this little slur. There is no sincerity in your apology because it was no apology at all.

HYPOCRITICS

Do you have an employer whom you can never please? Perhaps it is a parent or a spouse or a sibling who forever judges you inadequate. It is a kind of abuse; the abuser’s reward comes from denying you the satisfaction that you are performing within his/her expectations -– expectations that shift as abruptly as Lucy moves her football.

President Obama’s conservative critics are abusive in a similar manner. They twist their principles and distort their standards so that they can wail in indignation at the most recent incompetence and/or power grab by this vaguely un-American usurper. To characterize this behavior as rank hypocrisy is to be too generous to the ravenous naysayers. These people are playing a very childish game that is detrimental to our very democracy. I realize that this is an extreme statement but I write it with no hint of hyperbole whatsoever.

Palin Around With Terrorists

If the U.S. Senate Conducted Itself Like a Jazz Ensemble

Some of the people all of the time

Palm Pilot

Republican't

Palin Reads Another Palm

Russia From My House

Schadenfreude

41-59

Sphincter

Extraordinary

Retarded Idiots

In the late 19th Century, the word “retarded” was introduced into the English language as a compassionate substitute for more onerous appellations such as “imbecile” or “idiot” – the clinical terms then used to describe people with mental limitations, er, uh, developmental disabilities. [Another is “cretin”, which is derived from the French word for “Christian”.] Since people still loved to use “idiot” and “imbecile” to refer to those with whom they disagree, those terms lost connection to their original definitions and became arrows in the quiver of insults.

Over the decades, “retarded” lost its neutral imprimatur and has become a general insult to be applied to people and things one deems stupid, not exclusively to the special populations it was originally meant to reference. It’s time to liberate the word from professional umbrage-takers like Ms. Palin. Let’s agree that “retarded” is never to be used as a scientific or objective term; we will cease to apply it to any of “God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities.” It will be used henceforth only as a semi-harsh insult like “idiot” or “moron” to convey contempt for selected targets within the general population—-the driver in front of you, for example.