Verbal Land Mines

14Jul08

Back in grad school I developed the idea that certain things were wrong in complicated ways, such that even explaining how they were was something that would likely lead further incorrect conclusions. My primary example of this was traditional gender relations, which I think most everyone could agree were wrong, but it would also be wrong to simply reverse them and put them on their head.

Here’s kinda of silly discussion that I hope I can use to illustrate that smears usually fall into this category. I saw this old post which is basically a spin off argument between the hippies suck crowd and the pro war bloggers suck crowd. The best way to describe it’s content is to say that the nominal point of the post was that the blogger in question isn’t rich and whether or not “latte sipping intellectual” is an antisemitic term.

The first thing about this post that struck me was how disorienting I found it. I read LGM all the time and have for about 2 years, and I still found the whole very inside baseball. I think the problem is once you start debating the meaning of “latte sipping intellectual” you’ve already lost. More precisely once you start parsing the meaning of “latte sipping intellectual” you’ve already lost.

As Robert Farley points in the post, “latte sipping intellectual” is basically a phrase right out of right wing think tank, which is to say it’s a smear. Also he’s a not wrong to suggest it has a tinge of anti antisemitism. But the problems start because you can’t assume the person using the phrase is aware of either fact. Also even if they did mean “elite jew” it’s not like you pointing it out is going accomplish anything. “Oh, you’re right, I’ll endeavor to demean the anti war movement in a more sensitive way. My bad, LOL”

A good smear is meant to be a land mine, and the proper reaction to a land mine isn’t brag about how you know how to disarm it, instead just focus on not stepping on it.

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