Gross impoliteness

[Bradley A. Esparza]

A succinct reply was a choice I made that indeed did not give the perhaps
necessary connection to this lists stated goals and requirements. And, given
my unstated bias to the fundamental study of language in social context as
opposed to out of social context, I am not willing to divorce language from
politics. Call it scholarship, logic or rationalization, if you must. It is
interesting the juicy semantic meaning and social inference made of such a
short statement of but seven words; and that such limited information can
incite such passion as seen here.

I thought perhaps the original referent was speaking of George Tenet. Him
being the unwilling blame-buddy of this presidential administration's
current reasoning for engaging in armed conflict based on information
provided under Tenet's stewardship. Tenet intimates his provision of said
information was misappropriated and misunderstood.

So, as member of a larger linguistic community which, of course, is itself
defined by several individual speakers such as myself, I only sought to
enlarge the corpus of cultural intuitions that Mr Landau had introduced on
the subject. My only assumption, I suppose, is that Mr Landau and the larger
linguistic community would benefit from an additional informant. I shall
leave that assumption open to debate.

Cheers, Bradley A. Esparza

On 6/15/07, Marc Sacks <msacks at theworld.com> wrote:
>
> At the risk of getting further away from what I think this list's purpose
> is (i.e., language, not politics) I'm afraid I'm missing the point of this
> reply. The message simply presents the line; it doesn't comment on its
> truth value. Moreover, I hope James Landau isn't defining as "gross
> impoliteness" any viewpoint with which he disagrees. This particular one,
> although I can't vouch for its correctness, is held by large numbers of
> people, including many whom I respect. In any case, I don't see how it
> rises to the level slander of either President Bush, both of whom (along
> with Vice President Cheney) have always been closely aligned with oil
> interests.
>
> Marc Sacks
> msacks at theworld.com
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> > Subject:      Gross impoliteness
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Sagehen posted the following colophon:
> >
> > ~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
> >     DIE FOR OIL?   * * *   LET GEORGE DO IT!
> > ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > This is grossly impolite.
> >
> > The claim that the US was going to war for lower oil prices, or for oil
> in
> > general, is a slander that was made about the FIRST President Bush and
> the
> > Gulf War.  Yes, I say slander.
> >
> > I distinctly remember that there was a fair amount of opposition to
> going
> > to war in the Persian Gulf among the Democrats in Congress.  (I honestly
> > do not recall about Congressional Republicans; the Democrats were much
> > more memorable).  But did anyone in Congress get up and say, as someone
> > said about Korea, "Wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time"?
> > (Sorry, I don't have the YBQ handy to check that quote).  No.  The only
> > things that were made against the Gulf War was the slander that G. H. W.
> > Bush was going to war for oil (specifically for cheap oil) and the
> > disingenuous argument that if Bush extended the deadline, Saddam would
> > negotiate seriously or something.
> >
> > So now it is a decade and a half later and what do I see when I read
> > through my ADS-L digest?  A slander that doesn't gain anything by having
> > been recycled.
> >
> > I say this is both grossly impolite to the list and totally out of place
> > in a list whose purpose is to provide a forum for gathering information
> on
> > philological questions.  I ask Sagehen to stop posting political
> messages
> > on this list and to apologize to the list.
> >
> >     - James A. Landau
> >       Test Engineer
> >       Northrop-Grumman, Information Technology Division
> >       8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
> >       West Atlantic City  NJ  08232  USA
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _____________________________________________________________
> > Netscape.  Just the Net You Need.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org