from "blood libel" to "pogrom"

[Jonathan Lighter]

See the previous thread on "violence."

JL

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 5:43 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      from "blood libel" to "pogrom"
>
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>
>  From a Washington Times editorial defending Sarah Palin for the use of
> "blood libel":
>
> http://tinyurl.com/6z9e548
> > This is simply the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against
> > conservative thinkers. The last two years have seen a proliferation of
> > similar baseless charges of racism, sexism, bigotry, Islamophobia and
> > inciting violence against those on the right who have presented ideas
> > at odds with the establishment's liberal orthodoxy.
>
> So now the blood libel has escalated to "pogrom", has it? After all, a
> blood libel is usually followed by a pogrom. What next? A genocide?
> Clearly, there is some redefining going on.
>
> But this is not, actually, why I wanted to cite it here. I was more
> interested in the second sentence and its serial "and". Or is it? More
> specifically, what is the antecedent object of "against"? Is it
> "baseless charges" or "inciting violence"? In other words, is "and"
> connecting "inciting violence" with the other "baseless charges" or does
> it make it parallel to those "baseless charges". This is a significant
> distinction, especially in the current political climate. One is merely
> a litany of random accusations, the other is a justification for the use
> of "pogrom" here. And I am not convinced a serial comma before "and"
> would have made a difference.
>
> In terms of style, I've often found that serialization of items of
> different weight is more likely to be misinterpreted unless the heavier
> items appear toward the front, i.e., in this case, if "inciting
> violence" preceded at least two terms among "racism, sexism, bigotry,
> Islamophobia". Moving it away from the heavy clause also might help. As
> I said, I see it a question of style, but might there be a syntactic
> justification for the ordering being important in interpretation?
>
> In other words, if the statement was meant to include "inciting
> violence" among the "baseless charges", it might have been better in
> this order.
>
> > The last two years have seen a proliferation of similar baseless
> > charges of racism, sexism, inciting violence, bigotry and Islamophobia
> > against those on the right who have presented ideas at odds with the
> > establishment's liberal orthodoxy.
>
> Of course, that presents a different problem--now we got an incitement
> of "violence, bigotry and Islamophobia" that, again, is exactly the
> opposite of what is meant. So there is no perfect solution then, is
> there? And, given that it was supposed have been crafted by competent
> writers (a debatable point, I'm sure), there is also the question
> whether the ambiguity was deliberate (designed to deceive) or accidental
> (merely inept).
>
>     VS-)
>
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