War on everything... but women?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzxU2fDcrp0

Daily Show: Fox Denies War On Women But Finds Wars On Just About Everything Else

O, behold! Some classic stuff from the amazing Fox News, here summarized by Stewart. The mind-bending hypocrisy and stupidity of the Fox hacks who erroneously call themselves a "news" organization.

So, according to Fox News, there's no war on women... BUT there's a war on... watch out...

Christmas...
Easter...
Fall holidays...
Halloween...
Fossil fuels...
The Constitution...
Ladies Night...
Fishermen...
Salt...
Chocolate milk...
Sugary drinks...
Food...
Spuds...
...and of course, where without it, the War on conservative Women!

Well, that at least means some women are included!

Hm, the whole "War On... Something" sort of rhetoric seems to be going over the top already. It's fucking obnoxious, hyperbolic and insulting to the intelligence of the watcher/reader/listener. Well, at least the three big social Wars in the last decades, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror... had some clearly defined terms and clearly formulated purposes (I'm not arguing about the usefulness of their methods right now). Granted, they had some very clear examples to describe their means, actions and subsequent results. But even then, the latter one is the probably the only one among the three that comes somewhat close to warranting the use of the term "War". The rest of those War-On-s? Just catchy slogans crafted and pushed through by sensationalist "news" media seeking ratings. News at 11, eh?

To suggest that people who don't like it when things are not going exactly their way, are then carrying out a deliberate, orchestrated "war" against said things, is the ultimate example of a logic that's flawed beyond repair, as it takes the arguer's worldview and assumes it's correct in terms of the other side's motivations and intent, without even bothering to investigate what said motivations actually are, let alone making even a shy attempt to initiate a debate with the opponent on the issue. It constitutes a whole package of logical fallacies crammed into one stinky, grotesque bundle, and the stench being fanned up to no end. And then we wonder why the whole political "debate" smells like a cesspit.

Comments

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I say that all words with i and e should either have the i before the e or the e before the i, or just use e or i.

English is such a clusterfuck

Thank you Normans.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The Frenchies tend to screw things up like that, oui.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when you deliberately alter your own language to make its grammar fit another language without looking to see if the shoehorn even fits.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Sach a shu mast pinch laik hel!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

See, I'm not even kidding about that. People really did try in the 17th Century when they were inventing dictionaries to modify the English grammatical system to include Latin and Greek traits even when this made no sense whatsoever. This is why English has words like Democracy instead of Rule of the Commonwealth.

http://ling.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/data/B_HIST_EU.html

It's one of the most bizarre things I've ever heard of, though IIRC Russian went through the same thing in the 19th Century to transform it into a literary language. Ironically the first lingua franca of the "civilized" world was well, French. Even in England. I'm just glad that smart people don't have to sound like ducks making love any more. ;P

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

First Lomonosov systematised Russian into several "styles", each of them appropriate for the respective classes in society; and then Pushkin reformed it by merging the neighbouring styles and making high Russian accessible to the masses, and colloquial Russian sound poetic, epic, or whatever feeling it was supposed to convey. Hence the immense variety and richness of Russian nowadays. (Damn, what a tangent!)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not to mention what the Soviets did to the language, which IIRC was pretty much akin to Newspeak (and is one of many forgotten aspects of real-life inspiration behind 1984). Though IMHO little tops what Ataturk did to Turkish in terms of cutting out the Arabic and Persian influence from the Ottoman language. The language-geek in me cringes at that.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Then don't get me started on the purity-of-language doctrine in Iceland... We even have a name register of allowed names! It's a miracle some Faroese-related names like mine tend to sometimes sneak in.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I don't speak Russian, but when the remains of the Czar were DNA matched and reburied in St. Petersburg, Time magazine's article mentioned that the descendants of the Romanovs who came to the church spoke a style of Russian not typically heard-- a court style of Russian that is heavily infused with French pronunciation and sounds. The writer of the article said it was very elegant sounding. I guess the equivalent for English speakers would be Queen Elizabeth II's way of speaking, but yeah -- I know this analogy doesn't *completely work*.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Da. That was high Russian, the court speak that was introduced by Petr I in his maniacal obsession about making Russia look and sound European. He even built a new city from scratch amidst the northern marshes that looked like a hybrid between Paris and Vienna (he employed European engineers and artists to shape it), and named it after himself, making it the new capital of the country - go figure...

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Yeah that makes sense because French was the official language of all the courts in Europe at the time (it's wild to see 18th century court documents from say Darmstadt in Fraktur French. MON DIEU!). I will check around on Youtube for any sound files of this older court Russian style accent.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

French was the lingua franca - hehe, the name says it all :)

Mentioning those German towns, it's curious how national mentality stereotypes have altered over the ages. The Germans were always seen as the romantic, frivolous dreamers. Now they're the robotic, punctual, exacting workaholics. Or so we're being told.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Well yeah but they must have had a whole lot of other things to do at the time, I guess, like knighting, fighting off the plague, finding clothes that fit Henry VIII etc. etc.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This was in the 17th Century, around the time of the Glorious Revolution. In the Elizabethan era scholars still spoke in Latin and they were the primary source of literacy at the time. Though there was no standardized spelling whatsoever. It makes reading those works written as they were then a pain in the ass. It's why I don't even like reading Civil War source material because I hate it when the same word appears spelled five ways on the same page.