“Jokes about socially unacceptable things aren’t just “jokes.” They [normalise] that unacceptable thing, [telling] the people who agree with you that, yes, this is an okay thing to talk about.”
rhetoric
Don’t mistake losing *an argument* with losing your *right to argue*
We see it too often online, and more than we’d like to offline too: this idea that “I’m entitled to my opinion” means something more than merely being entitled to express an opinion one holds – that somehow all opinions are equally entitled to respect from other people, or that all opinions are equally entitled to be treated seriously.
Patrick’s post lays out why this frequently whimpered whine is nonsense.
Spurious Quotation of the Day: Big Government
Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Quicklink: Language, as a tool, is never neutral
Language is a weapon used to make ‘others’ of people in poverty.
Fallacy Watch: No True Klansman
I may have contributed to a new term for a rhetorical ploy we see more and more. Here’s how it happened – I’m rather proud of this coinage, but wonder whether we may be reinventing the fallacious wheel. Is there an already apt term in rhetorical jargon?
Today in nodding furiously: what do you mean when you say you’re entitled to your opinion?
If “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion” just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. But…
Arsehat alert: misuse of the word “victimisation”
Here’s an example of the word salad involved:
I missed this back in 1995: quick facts about that McDonalds Coffee lawsuit
It would be nice to think that there weren’t still ignorant twerps repeating the idea that the lawsuit was unfounded/frivolous/a grave miscarriage against a poor defenceless megacorporation/harrumph/wharrgarbl, but sadly there still are.
When one’s right to dissent is so terribly, terribly suppressed…
…that one can only manage to get one’s views published in the opinion pages of a national broadsheet, one knows that the nation is in a parlous state of enforced conformity indeed.
Apparently there’s no context on Twitter
So it’s said, by nong after dreary nong around the interwebs. It’s just that one string of 140 characters, that’s it!
Hoyden About Town 