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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank
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To: Tom Clarke who wrote (17823)7/9/2001 9:35:58 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (1) of 82486
 
Why should his bumbling cause you unease?

It doesn't. But the pattern it represents does. I'm not saying I'm losing any sleep over it, and I don't want to make too much of it, but my unfair-o-meter reacts when I see any pattern of bigotry, and especially when it's directed at me and mine so that I am personally in a position to know it to be ignorant and unwarranted.

I know that plenty of people are jerks. And plenty of politicians are jerks. But there's a difference between an "unfortunate choice of words" and an underlying bigotry. When individuals make unfortunate choices of words and good people don't take them to task for it, it's because there's a conscious or unconscious acceptance of what those words represent.

I remember the flap about the Begala column. There's nothing comfortable about being on the demeaned side of an inappropriate generalization. There is a difference, though, when that generalization comes from a columnist and when it comes routinely from the political leadership of one's country. I remember recently watching a local DC Sunday morning roundtable where one of the participants reacted with the look and body language of someone who has just taken a big gulp of sour milk and snapped that of course we need not take into consideration the opinion of citizens who don't even go to church--perish the thought. She was a jerk, but a talking-head jerk, not a law-maker jerk. It's different.

Nothing wrong with otherness. Who wants to conform, anyway?

I agree with that. I relish my individuality. But, again, there's a difference between the choice of nonconformity and the victimhood of exclusion.

Karen
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